J.D. Potié
PONTIAC May 15, 2019
On May 15, a Pontiac resident was celebrated for her contributions to youth in her community over the last couple of years at a ceremony held at the National Assembly in Québec City.
Fort-Coulonge resident Suzanne Vallières-Nollet, received the Youth Recognition Award presented by Québec Premier Francois Legault on behalf of the Secretariat de la Jeunesse du Québec for her efforts coordinating activities for local youth with the Carrefour Jeunesse-Emploi du Pontiac.
The award consisted of $1,500 and a bronze trophy designed in the shape of relay baton made to symbolize one generation of volunteers passing the torch to another.
For Vallières-Nollet, the prize was very meaningful as it recognized all her initiatives at Carrefour Jeunesse-Emploi Pontiac. To receive it on behalf of the province provided the icing on the cake.
While she’s received significant awards in her life, including a lucrative scholarship that subsidized her research project when she was completing her Masters degree in literature at the Universite du Québec à Montreal (UQAM), Vallières-Nollet felt like this one was more significant than a sum of money.
“I think this prize holds something bigger symbolically because I think that what I did at the Carrefour of the last couple years was able to affect people in my community in a larger way,” she said.
“And I’m happy that this prize was given to someone in the Pontiac,” she added. “I’m sharing this with all the people in the Pontiac. I’m not the locomotive in all this. I’m just a passenger in the train that is the Pontiac.”
With everything it entailed, the most rewarding part of the prize was sharing it with everyone who helped her along the way, Vallières-Nollet said.
“I’m not hiding this in a box to look at it every night,” she said. “The goal is to share it with others.”
Her candidacy was submitted by some of her co-workers, which Vallières-Nollet was aware of.
Considering the amount of benevolent people doing wonderful initiatives throughout the province, she didn’t have high hopes for winning.
When she received the call from the Secretariat à la Jeunesse at the end of April, notifying her that she was selected for the award, she was quite surprised to say the least.
As one of 11 laureates in the youth and intervener categories, Vallières-Nollet was honoured to be selected for the award, the invitation to the National Assembly and the opportunity to meet Premier Legault in person.
“In those kinds of things, you always have a sense of imposter,” she said. “When you work in community service you’re always out on the field, so you’re certainly not used to these kinds of things.”
A native of Montreal, Vallières-Nollet moved to the region four years ago, with hopes of saving an old abandoned home in Fort Coulonge that was to be demolished.
Coming from a family where finances were never an issue, and having fortunately faced very few dramatic hardships in her life, Vallières-Nollet’s was driven to provide the same privileges she had to those who don’t have the opportunities she was blessed with.
“I’m a young, privileged white woman,” she said. “I think that’s important to point out because I’ve been very fortunate. My goal is to give back to the most people possible. I know I didn’t choose to be lucky. But how do I make it so that’s it’s not only me who benefits from it?”
Now fully immersed into numerous aspects of her community including founding the international Female Film Festival in Fort Coulonge last year, involvement in Groupe PhareOuest and time on the administrative council for various organizations like Le Patro, the Jardin Educatif and the PPJ Committee, Vallières-Nollet is dedicated on doing everything she can to benefit residents in the area.
With a lack of services provided in the region, she believes that volunteer work is the backbone of thriving rural communities and the best way of benefiting it’s residents.
“The Pontiac is a region held up by its residents,” she said. “If we want to put less weight on the shoulders of each resident, each one has to find his or her place. That’s why we need involvement and diversity so everyone feels like they have their place and their say in our community.”
In her two years at Carrefour Jeunesse-Emploi Pontiac, Vallières-Nollet has spearheaded a variety of initiatives dedicated to providing a diversity of opportunities for local youth to be active contributors in their communities.
Among those included la Grande Tournée, where she accompanied four local high school students to visit other rural regions in the province for a week.
The goal of the initiative was to see what people in regions similar to the Pontiac involved themselves in municipal entrepreneurship and how they make the world a better place.
On her free time, Vallières-Nollet enjoys gardening and is also passionate about arts and culture, having founded the International Female Film Festival in Fort Coulonge last year.
“I love cinema, theatre,” she said. “I really love dance. I read like a library rat. Anything that is cultural I’m crazy about. And anything that is nature, like birds, bugs, plants, flowers and all that. And I’m also interested in everything politics and human rights.”
Now with plans of leaving Carrefour Jeunesse-Emploi Pontiac behind for good after landing a job at l’École secondaire Sieur de Coulonge as a substitute teacher, she intends to keep in touch with her former coworkers.
“I’m sad to leave this team, but I’ll come back and see them,” she said.
As for the future, Vallières-Nollet plans on continuing to give back to the community.
With the second edition of the International Female Film Festival in Fort-Coulonge coming this summer and her involvement in various community organizations in the region such as the protection of the PPJ she isn’t planning on stopping her benevolence any time soon.
“I’m doing all sorts of things,” said Vallières-Nollet. “I’m like a project bug. I keep coming up with ideas. I never really have the money to do them but I try to do my best with all of them.”
