Mon ami, Pierre

I remember.The shock of red hair.The rumbling voice.The eager laugh.The penetrating eyes.His hands–the hands of a worker.

I knew Pierre Véronneau for almost fifty years. We met when we were both young, beginning our careers, Pierre at La Cinémathèque québécoise and La Cinémathèque française lower down, I at the Canadian Film Institute. Montréal and Ottawa, French and English, Québec and Ontario—but not two solitudes. Our collaboration was quick and easy, effortless and collaborative. He looked like Abbie Hoffman with his unruly, curly hair. I looked like a Beatle. We both wore glasses. I changed. He didn't!

Over the years we worked on books, articles, conferences—and yes, a film—together. At first our connection, perhaps inevitable as we were both working for cultural film organizations—in fact, the CFI and CQ were the two Canadian members (two was an exception, another story) of FIAF, the famed international association of film archives—was over the documentation of Canadian film. In those long-ago days of the 1970s, we had the common goal of simply documenting current and historical film production. We published Film Canadiana, La Cinémathèque Nouveau cinéma canadien/New Canadian Film. This collaboration broadened over the years into historical research, published articles, co-edited books. My research took me to Montréal many times, into the world of Québec cinema, one of my passions, and into the hallways and screening rooms of La Cinémathèque.

Our professional lives kept intersecting. He edited a collection, Les cinéma(s) canadiens; I edited the English edition Self Portrait. I edited a book on Cronenberg, The Shape of Rage, and Pierre edited the French edition, L'horreur intérieure. I was one of the English researchers on the NFB's documentary, Has Anybody Here Seen Canada?; Pierre was the Québec researcher. Not my twin, but my brother, the two of us joined together by our passion for discovering our own cinema, call it what you will: Canadian, Québécois.

For us, working in Ottawa in the 1970s, the shining models on the hill beyond our reach were the British Film Institute and La Cinémathèque française. I added La Cinémathèque québécoise to this list. This happy band of ciné-crazed adventurers, led by the indomitable Robert Daudelin, joyously embraced their love of film, archiving, documentation, and retrospective programming with envious passion and commitment. I admired what they were building. My CFI dream fell to pieces after ten years, to be created elsewhere.

Pierre was a historian as much as he was a film lover. He laid the basic groundwork for much of the study of Québec cinema. His work on the early Québec cinema of the 1940s and 1950s—Renaissance Films and the Quebec Production Corporation—was groundbreaking. His love of Pierre Perrault was a thread throughout his life, as was his passion for the physical equipment of cinema. He published more, worked on other films, and then, inevitably, started to teach. He was a storehouse of information, and, more importantly, never grew tired of sharing his enthusiasms. La Cinémathèque had its share of challenges over the years, its ups and downs, but Pierre was a constant. Whenever I needed to reach out to them, I knew who to contact.

I saw less of Pierre over the years as our paths diverged; the last time was only a couple of years ago. He came, along with his wife, to see TIFF Bell Lightbox—my dream of a CFI, La Cinémathèque, BFI, and La Cinémathèque française rolled into one. I showed him around, floor by floor. He was fighting his disease then, a little shrunken, there was less red hair—but the voice, the laugh, the eager eyes were still the same. Alive, curious, gentle.

Je me souviens.