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Gelinas, Gratien

Denis Bouchard in the 1996 revival of Bousille et les justes at the Théâtre du Vieux Terrebonne, directed by Fernand Rainville

Born in St-Tite, Quebec in 1909, Gélinas was vaulted into the cultural consciousness of the province as early as 1937 when his radio character, Fridolin, gently lampooned contemporary mores. The character also launched Gélinas into the theatre as the star of several years' worth of comedy revues known as Les Fridolinades. The shows were performed to huge success from 1938 to 1946 and were revived as late as the 1990s at the Théâtre du Rideau Vert and on Radio-Canada television.

Though considered pure entertainment, Les Fridolinades and Fridolin were the source of not only the tone of much of the country's subsequent neo-naturalist drama and comedy, but also for the amiable Québécois Everyman character that would mark many of Gélinas' later works ( Bousille et les justes and Tit-Coq especially).

Bronze depiction, at the Monument National , of Gratien Gélinas in Les Fridolinades (Sculpture by Pascale Archambault; Photo: GLC)

Gélinas became the darling of the popular theatre scene when his first true play, the drama Tit-Coq, became a hit and went on to tour the rest of the country and the United States. Gélinas was now performing in English as well. He also appeared in Michael Langham 's celebrated Henry V (1956) at Stratford .

In 1957, he founded the Comédie-Canadienne , which would become a hothouse for a new generation of Quebec artists (ie: Marcel Dubé ) as well as the site of the premieres of most of the rest of the Gélinas opus (Bousille..., 1959; Hier, les enfants dansaient , 1966). After the company disbanded, Gélinas went on writing and acting on stage, television and in film. His most recent play, La Passion de Narcisse Mondoux, in which he acted over 300 times, was premiered at the Théâtre du Rideau Vert in 1986 (he played the two-hander opposite his wife, Huguette Oligny and they performed in French and English, in the US and Canada).

Gratien Gélinas (Montréal, Québec - ca. 1980 André Le Coz/Archives nationales du Canada/PA-199456)

He was also a translator: notably of George Ryga 's The Ecstasy of Rita Joe and of the musical Hair. He was a Companion of the Order of Canada and received nine honourary doctorates. He was married twice, to Simone Lalonde (1935 to her death in 1967) and to Oligny (1973 to his death). With Lalonde he had six children.

His granddaughter, Anne-Marie Sicotte, published the first volume of her biography about him, La Ferveur et le doute, in 1996. In it, Gélinas described his childhood and his parents' divorce in the 1920s which left him feeling like an orphan. This sense of orphanhood would haunt many of his works and would, sometimes, be interpreted as a political message (ie: the orphanhood of Quebec within Canada, etc.).

He died of pulmonary complications in Deux-Montagnes, Quebec, March 16, 1999. He had suffered from Alzheimer's Disease in his last years

Last updated 2009-04-02