The day after the death of her father, the poet and rocker Lucien Francoeur, his daughter Virginie gave a moving testimony, recounting having spent her last moments at his bedside reciting poems in his ear.
• Also read: Lucien Francoeur, 1948-2024: Quebec loses its rebel poet
“Despite all his excesses, I, my father, would have gone to hell to find him. I always wanted, I would have done everything to save him,” Virginie Francoeur told Sophie Durocher on Wednesday in an interview on QUB radio at 99.5 FM Montreal.
A last breath of poetry
The poet, singer, radio host and teacher died Tuesday evening at the Jewish General Hospital, where he was transported on October 22 due to cardiac arrest.
“I held his hand and we recited poems into his ear,” said his daughter, a professor at Polytechnique.
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“We were at his bedside, my mother and I. We spent all our days there. We read his poems to him and also those of Miron, Nelligan, Rimbaud,” she explained, stressing that poetry helped them get through this ordeal.
“Rocker until the end”
Known for his outspokenness and his flamboyant style, Lucien Francoeur never compromised on his personality, recalled Virginie Francoeur.
“My father lived at 150,000 an hour. Even at the hospital, when we went to get his clothes, he was wearing a leather jacket, his jeans, his 511s, his red lizard cowboy boots. He went there as a rocker until the end,” underlined Ms. Francoeur.
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Comedian Michel Barrette, a long-time friend of the deceased, remembers a man “larger than life”.
“He was one of the funniest people I’ve ever met in my life. An intellectual rocker who had an opinion on everything,” he testified.
“As much in happiness as in anguish and suffering sometimes, it was intense,” he said. That I loved that guy, that I loved that guy.”
*This text, generated with the help of artificial intelligence, was reviewed and validated by our team based on an interview carried out at QUB.
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