This past weekend I attended a memorial service for Guy Tremblay, a sometimes-homeless singer and volunteer worker affectionately known as ‘Ti-Guy’ in the shelters and soup kitchens in downtown Montreal.
The service, at the Notre Dame des Lourdes chapel on St. Catherine street East was warm and unpretentious, marked by the social context of an area that has a lot of marginalized people. The testimonies to Guy were touching, describing him very candidly as a sometimes-manipulative guy with addiction problems, but sensitive, generous and talented.
Guy was one of the main characters in my film Les Enfants de Choeur/The Choir Boys, about Montreal’s homeless choir, La Chorale de l’Accueil Bonneau, released about ten years ago. My terrific editor Louise Côté really liked Guy, and all his good and not-so-good sides were much in evidence in the film. People sometimes ask me – with a critical tone in their voice – why I included a scene were Guy, under the influence, pointedly tells me “Magnus, if you film me now I will…” He didn’t say #*$#@#, but it’s clear what he meant. Well, we showed him the fine cut, and he graciously accepted it without requesting any changes.
Guy was 47 when he died, one week after participating in his last concert. The homeless choir has come back to life, under the name ‘La Chorale sous les étoiles,’ the Choir under the Stars. They sang at the service – not a funeral, because Ti-Guy had been buried already in his hometown of St. Siméon.
The producer of ‘Les Enfants de Choeur’, Paul Lapointe, as well as the editor Louise Côté and DOP’s Martin Duckworth, Andrei Khabad and François Beauchemin join me in saying: Salut Ti-Guy, you enriched our lives and we are grateful for it.
Thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with this blog.