Marie-Hélène Larochelle, first winner of the Janette-Bertrand Prize

It was at the end of an evening rich in emotions, marked by tributes, that the author of Toronto never blue learned that she was the winner of the very first edition of the Janette-Bertrand Literary Prize, awarded Wednesday at the Montreal Book Fair.

“I can’t believe that I’m the one who’s standing,” said Marie-Hélène Larochelle, her voice broken by sobs after bursting into tears under the influence of surprise.

“I am not the winner; It is the women who are the winners of this first feminist prize,” she exclaimed once at the microphone, to a round of applause.

“This price is a weight to bear. We have to live up to it from now on, live up to Janette Bertrand and make her proud,” she confided to The Press after the award ceremony.

Toronto never blue, third novel by Marie-Hélène Larochelle published by Leméac last winter, follows in the footsteps of women broken by life in the Queen City. Since his first novel, Daniel et Vanya, the literature professor at York University in Toronto, where she has lived for 17 years, constructs a body of work that examines different forms of violence and monstrosity.

“The pandemic has made people experiencing homelessness much more visible and this reality more glaring. It is this driving force that was the start of this need to write about itinerant women, who are on the fringes of the margins,” underlined Marie-Hélène Larochelle.

“It’s really a punchy book about the distress and misfortune that we don’t want to see,” he declared to The Press the president of the jury, Pauline Marois. It’s very hard, it’s coming to get us. And when we finish this novel, we wonder how it is that situations like these can exist. »

Janette Bertrand, who was present for the ceremony, elegant as ever, pointed out that Marie-Hélène Larochelle’s novel had short sentences as she likes them and that she was even a little jealous not to have written a book like this one. there, which triggered laughter in the crowd gathered in the Agora of the Book Fair, at the Palais des Congrès.

M^me Bertrand was also entitled to a standing ovation when she went on stage after a shower of tributes, among others from the general directors of SODEC and Télé-Québec, Louise Lantagne and Marie Collin respectively.

“I never thought that at 99 years old I would have a literary prize, I who did not consider myself a writer. I have read all the books and I cannot believe the liberated words of these women,” added Janette Bertrand.

The author Marie-Hélène Larochelle also underlined that the legacy left by M^me Bertrand is the one to have had “the audacity not to please”. “That’s why we admire her,” said the winner, who told us she was working on a fourth “equally feminist” novel about women’s friendships.

The prize which bears the name of Janette Bertrand has a scholarship of $5,000. It was created last year at the Montreal Book Fair to reward literary works that support and promote gender equality, women’s autonomy and the fight against gender violence, in homage to the work of Janette Bertrand.

« [Ce prix] is an exceptional symbol, underlined Pauline Marois. Janette Bertrand was the one who opened doors for women, who testified, who wrote, who used her experience to bring us towards more equality, towards a better understanding of what we experience as women and of the right we had to pursue our dreams and our ideals. »

The finalist titles for this first edition of the prize were File a complaintby Léa Clermont-Dion (August Horse), It could have been a movieby Martine Delvaux (Heliotrope), The unsightlyby Claudia Larochelle (Quebec America), and Self-portrait of anotherby Élise Turcotte (Viola).

“Read all these books,” insisted Janette Bertrand. They teach us things about life. Make them known so that they become lasting even when I am no longer here. Let’s continue reading, and as long as we have humans who will write, we are saved! »

Visit the site to find out everything about the Janette-Bertrand Literary Prize