The actor and author Raymond Cloutier delved into the memories of his time in Charlevoix 50 years ago to offer us Gone adrifta novel about the hopes and disillusionments of the 1970s counterculture.
The novel tells the destinies of two characters who live the experience of a commune founded in Saint-Joseph-de-la-Rive in the protest movement of the time. “I was taken on a theatrical adventure in 73. I was a bit part of this drift. It’s not a book that could be described as autofiction, but there is a lot of real life,” confides the writer.
Raymond Cloutier considers that Charlevoix was a region “extremely strong on the countercultural level. There was a lot of explosion in this part of Quebec, I witnessed it personally. »
Before living this experience, the young man of the time was already “in this movement”. He had worked at the youth pavilion at Expo 67, which allowed Quebec to “open up to the world”. He also spent part of 1968 and 1969 in France, marked by the demonstrations and strikes of May 68.
“The consequences of May 68 in Paris reached here,” recalls Raymond Cloutier. “It created rapid modernity in Quebec. It’s a society that was very traditional, very morally rigid and which changed over the course of a few years. »
If the creation of communes and free love “were a major phenomenon of liberation”, Raymond Cloutier also transposes in his book what he calls “the drift, that is to say that at a given moment, “It all fell apart and then we had sometimes disastrous consequences.”
He even uses a very Quebec term to say that things have “fallen apart”, speaking of a “fairly significant questioning.” Some of those who were in these movements found themselves a little in passivity, in a sort of social wandering.”
For the author as for his characters, “it was a bit like the end of the dream”.
Gone adriftpublished by Art Global, will allow a certain generation to relive it and others to discover it.
