The 98.5 FM pressed the panic button.
And RDS, without even bothering to send a press release, hastened to make the man from his waves, his schedules, his showcase disappear.
Yanick Bouchard has become a ghost. A name that we no longer dare to pronounce. A blurred face, relegated to oblivion by two giants from Quebec media.
His crime? A message as short as it is unaware. Three words sent to Instagram to minister Caroline Proulx as she buried her own mother: “Two vulva to funeral”.
A message of rare vulgarity, of rare cruelty, of rare indecency.
The kind of sentence that scratches you for life with a profession. And that’s exactly what’s going on.
Cogeco had the courage to say it publicly. RDS preferred silence. An embarrassing silence, an accomplice silence. A silence that saves anyone.
Because the facts are known. And the Dégoulinade of Bouchard lies did not convince anyone. Pretext that a colleague would have taken his phone “to write to a common friend”?
Seriously?
No one believed in this ridiculous defense. Not his bosses. Not the minister. Not the public.
And this is where the real problem begins. Because there is nothing more desperate than seeing someone faulty, then refusing to assume.
Recall that in 98.5, other columnists made slippages. Jeremy Filosa had been suspended for his remarks on the lunar mission. Louis Lacroix for a controversial Facebook publication at the Super Bowl. They were recalled.
But they had not sent a sexual insult to a mourning woman. They had not broken the border of humans.
Yanick Bouchard went too far. It has gone through a moral line that even the most tolerant refuse to excuse. He hurt. Free of charge.
And now it’s erasure. RDS no longer pronounces its name. He was replaced by Jérémie Rainville, without explanation. 5 to 7, without a word. No mention. No admission. No trace.
This silence speaks stronger than any denial.
And in this context, RDS ‘refusal to publicly assume its decision is an additional insult to the public. Because this audience has seen. He read. He understood. And above all, he will not forget.
Yanick Bouchard is today the symbol of what we no longer want to tolerate. Not just vulgarity. But arrogance. Impunity. The deep respect for human pain.
It may well whine behind the scenes. He may well beg that his hand is stretched out. But the hand he stretched was closed. And it is the face of a mourning woman that he slapped with it.
So yes, Cogeco is in hot water. But it is especially Yanick Bouchard who drowned on his own.
This story will not erase in oblivion. It will remain like an indelible stain in the history of Quebec media.
-And she will forever mark the end of the public career of a man who, out of arrogance or insensitivity, has trampled on the borders of the human.
Double dismissal may still be officially confirmed. But in the heart of Quebec, the verdict fell. Final.
In her public declaration, Minister Caroline Proulx confirmed that she received formal apology from Cogeco, which testifies to the seriousness with which management has treated this case.
But revealing: it does not even mention the name of Yanick Bouchard, nor that of RDS. Not once. Not a word. Nothing. He became nonexistent. Striped. Undesirable.
And this silence speaks volumes. Bouchard may have apologized in the air, his name no longer deserves to be pronounced by the one he humiliated.
And above all, he dared to lie to the public, trying to wash his hands with an incredible excuse:
“A colleague took my cell phone to write to a common friend. A shameful, laughable, indefensible defense. Quebec does not believe in this version. Cogeco does not believe it. And obviously, Caroline Proulx either.
It must be clearly said: if the minister had not published this impactful message on her social networks targeting the host, Yanick Bouchard would have continued her life as if nothing had happened, proud of her horrible joke.
It was not by being “called” publicly by a bereaved minister, at a time of extreme human pain, that he was forced to backtrack.
The message, since deleted, still resonates as a slap:
“While I would be sending my mother yesterday, Yanick Bouchard published a message of a rare indecency on my Instagram account. I denounce it firmly. His words are unacceptable and must have consequences. Public apology is essential. »»
What remains is a man in free fall, trapped in his own faults and his inability to assume them with decency. His lack of courage to tell the truth will have cost him the little dignity he had left.
RDS, for its part, should be ashamed of not having issued a press release like Cogeco, nor an excuse message to Caroline Proulx.
The class … it is not bought …
But if there is one truth that no one can no longer ignore, it is that Yanick Bouchard was not just growing from the top of the cliff: he plunged on his own.
He built his own hatch, he sawed the branch on which he was seated, and today, even his most indulgent colleagues look away.
The media industry, so quick to protect its own members in gray areas, has decided to draw a clear line. A point of no return.
And while RDS earth in an embarrassed silence, that Cogeco keeps the course on the discipline, it is especially in the public arena that Bouchard cashes the hardest blows.
Perhaps he wanted to provoke, he perhaps wanted to exist stronger than the others. But what he provoked is his own erasure.
And no one reaches out to save him
