Here is the portrait of the one that represents our pastel light green color of CASA yarn:
Pauline Julien, author, performer and actress, who has been nicknamed "La Passionaria du Québec", the frank, the artist with the flamboyant head, with her ardor and her sweetness, with her rants and her smiles, her shawls and his songs which made history during a career spanning more than 30 years.
Born on May 23, 1928 in Trois-Rivières, she is the youngest of a family of eleven children. At 17, Pauline found herself in Quebec to study dance, music theory and theater.
In 1950, she married actor Jacques Galipeau, and in 1951 she went to Paris where she took drama classes. Her daughter Pascale was born that year, and her son Nicolas in 1955. She stayed in Paris for 6 years, she performed in theater there and in 1954, she began a career as a singer in the cabarets of the Left Bank. Pauline performs a repertoire composed of songs by Bertolt Brecht, Léo Ferré and Boris Vian. In 1958, at the time of her separation from Galipeau, she made her debut at the Cabaret Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the Montreal meeting place for French song.
Pauline Julien released her first album in 1962, this one has an evocative title: Finally Pauline…, it was the start of a great career for the singer. She will record 23 solo albums and receive two major awards from the recording industry.
In 1964, Jean Gascon wrote in La Patrie: “Pauline Julien is a curious mixture of strength and fragility, assurance and insecurity, youth and maturity, knowledge and instinct, newsboy and woman. This bipolarity makes her both elusive and extremely endearing. If I had to describe his talent with just one adjective, it's the captivating word that I would choose. »
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Pauline Julien's repertoire consisted almost exclusively of songs by Quebec authors. She began to write the texts of some of her songs in 1968.
In the 1980s, she developed a great bond with the French singer-songwriter Anne Sylvestre, of whom Pauline frequently interpreted certain songs, notably Tu n'as pas de nom and Une Sorcière comme les autres. The two artists put on a show in collaboration with the poetess Denise Boucher, which will be presented in Quebec and Europe for more than two years, under the title Gémeaux croisées.
In addition to theater and song, Pauline Julien has also made her contribution to the cinema by playing in several Quebec films such as Bulldozer by Pierre Harel and the death of a woodcutter by Gilles Carle. In 1985 after having spent two and a half months in Nepal, she wrote her first book L'échapaée belle, Nepal, and this will launch into the writing of a second book: It was a time when we saw each other a lot, published in the summer of 1998.
After her separation from Jacques Galipeau, she was the companion of the poet, journalist and politician Gérald Godin for more than 30 years, until his death in 1994. A fervent feminist since the 1970s, she defended the legalization of abortion, but she is also a political activist for the independence of Quebec. It was in 1964 that she made the headlines by refusing to sing in front of Her Majesty Elizabeth II, Queen of England and … of Canada.
She was also imprisoned while protesting against the War Measures Act during the October Crisis of 1970.
Towards the end of his life Julien suffers from degenerative aphasia, a neurological disease that affects language and inflicts partial paralysis on him. Unable to sing anymore, she ended her life in 1998 at the age of 70. Its documents are kept in the premises of the National Library and Archives of Quebec.
In Montreal, two places dedicated to Francophone arts are named in her honour: the Center des arts de la scène Pauline Julien and the Salle Pauline Julien, as well as the Center Pauline-Julien, which is dedicated to adult education.
(Source: Wikipedia, Canadian Encyclopedia, Le Devoir, Québec Info Musique, The lyricist, See)