In a hard-hitting book criticizing both the media and political methods, her former leader and her former party, Taschereau’s former solidarity deputy Catherine Dorion recounts her difficult time in politics, from which she has removed with post-traumatic shock. .
After her exit from the “political jungle”, the one who was deputy for Taschereau, between 2018 and 2022, had to take a six-month break to recover. He had to untie the knot of negative emotions he felt to the point of causing anxiety attacks and vomiting.
A psychologist helped her a lot. “He said to me, what you’re describing are symptoms of post-traumatic shock,” she says during an interview that happened, coincidentally, on the day the CAQ dropped the Quebec streetcar, news that didn’t surprise her but disappointed As an MP, she fought ardently in favor of this project, and against the third link.
Today, the exelegit is much better. She took time for herself and with her three daughters, including the youngest. Born with a heart malformation, in the last year of her term, she is now doing very well.
But above all, wrote Catherine Dorion, another form of therapy is more effective. “I put order inside myself, I wanted to take the intensity of what I had experienced to understand, analyze, take the time.”
Difficult relations with GND
Everything goes there, in this titled work The Hot Heads: Notebooks of Punk Hope, which appears on Monday, from Lux Éditeur. Through this work of writing, the ex-MP and artist opens up about these years spent in “the formatted bubble” of parliament, where long parliamentary rituals are too often useless, she believes.
She describes having suffered, much more than one could imagine. “I needed freedom of expression, without fear,” he will say often during our interview, an idea that is at the heart of his activism.
So Catherine Dorion opens up about her difficult relationship with chef Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, whose methods she feels control and centralize behind-the-scenes games. He criticizes him for letting the party fall into the mold of the old political parties.
“From the depths of our trench, one thing is clear: we don’t like each other very much,” she wrote of the man who hardly appreciated her manners and the visibility she enjoyed.
When Law 21 was passed, for example, GND criticized him for posting a video on social media. This is not their first warning. “You have more attention than the spokespeople, that’s not normal,” he told her. “As they say in the theater: Ion top of the stage. This is inappropriate. I have to have less impact,” he says.
His goal, the artist insisted, is not to get into Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois’ hamstrings. “I believe in the intelligence of the reader, who will be able to see the nuances”, he proclaims. Still, she wasn’t really impressed or inspired by her former boss.
Media criticism
Catherine Dorion also takes a very hard look at the media, which you can’t criticize without being attacked and taken down, she says.
Some consider that the media attention has served her, others criticize her for having diverted attention from her party. He retorts that he wanted to use his artistic knowledge, as do lawyers and others involved in politics, to say things forcefully, which he did not hear from politicians in the National Assembly.
His battle: to fight against inequalities and multiple dominations, those of the too invasive working world and the frenetic pace of life in our society.
“I never wanted to think that this fight would be fought over things that seemed to me as banal as clothes,” he explains. I never wanted to create a national movement around laundry. I believed it when they told me there was no real dress code for women in politics. I come from such an open world.”
The caged bird
During one of Catherine Dorion’s last days sitting in Parliament, a member of the CAQ placed a Stephen King quote on her desk. It sums up well, I think, the shock experienced by the artist committed to politics.
“Some birds are just not meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are too colorful, their song too free, too beautiful. So we let them go, or they fly away when we open the cage to feed them .Part of you, the part that first knew it was wrong to imprison them, rejoices, but the place you live in is even sadder and emptier after they’re gone.
However, Catherine Dorion does not regret her time in politics, because she learned a lot. He probably left a bit of naivety, not all of it, he explains, but he has grown from it, and with the conviction of having done his best.
The artist will return to the stage in February, for a piece about democracy, a subject that will not stop worrying her.
► karine.gagnon@quebecormedia.com
