Over 30 francophone authors from the Outaouais and as far as Montreal and Quebec City gathered in Fort Coulonge on Saturday to share their books with the community and celebrate the French language.
Salon du livre events are book fairs, typically hosted in larger urban centres such as Gatineau or Montreal, meant to showcase French-language authors from Quebec and around the world.
Sandra Lemire Wolf, an author who’s lived in Sand Bay since 2019, said she wanted to bring this event to Fort Coulonge because since moving to the Pontiac, she found the region to be lacking in cultural resources for its francophone community.
“French is not only a language, it’s the culture. It’s our DNA. It’s what we laugh about, it’s our food,” Lemire Wolf said. “It’s more than just a language. It’s who we are, and it’s important for the community to celebrate that.”
She invited authors from across the province to showcase their work at the event, and was thrilled at how many showed up.
Among the 35 authors represented at the event was Franco-Ontarian Michèle Vinet, whose five novels have won multiple literary awards.
“Here, there’s a francophone community that maybe has fewer resources than it would want,” she said. “So we came to bring literary francophone resources to this community.”
Lemire Wolf estimated the full-day event, hosted at the Pontiac Conference Centre, saw between 250 and 300 people attend.
The event featured various presentations, including a performance by children’s author Ghislain Larocque, who shared his book Patrick le dragon, as well as a roundtable discussion about the importance of the preservation and promotion of the French language featuring authors Benoit Paré, who wrote a book about the history of Fort Coulonge, and Luc Bouvier who wrote a book on the history of francophones in the Pontiac.
Young reader Sofia Horth and her mother Sabrina Turcotte were among the first visitors browsing the books laid out across the dozens of tables in the conference centre on Saturday morning.
Turcotte said her daughter Horth loves to read, but has fairly particular taste.
“We came here to look at books, and figure out what she might want to read,” Turcotte said in French, noting she was also shopping for her son, who just began Grade 7 at École secondaire Sieur-de-Coulonge.
“I find it interesting for francophone culture [ . . . ] to have these authors come and present their books here,” Turcotte said, noting it was nice to see all of these books written by Quebec authors collected in one place.
Filling a hole
Fort Coulonge mayor Christine Francoeur said she was happy to welcome such an event to the community.
“Since we closed the library we haven’t been able to have access to too much culture here in Fort Coulounge. When this was brought up to me I was like, ‘Oh my god, yes, we really need this,’” she said.
She said the municipality closed its public library in 2022 after deciding it was not getting used enough to justify keeping it open.
“Nobody came to the library. We were taking notes every time it was open to see who would be coming for the past two years. There might have been five people who came in regularly and that’s it, so we decided it wasn’t sustainable,” Francoeur said.
But as Fort Coulonge residents are not permitted to use the library in Mansfield, the community is left with a cultural hole to fill.
“People want culture, they need culture, and it’s not just the adults, the kids too. There’s lots of kids here today,” she said.
Offering an opportunity for francophone children to connect with and learn more about their cultural heritage was key to Lemire Wolf’s ambition with bringing this event to Fort Coulonge.
“The French culture, we try to celebrate it. We have to do it for the young ones, so they know where they’re from.”
