Le honky tonk

Quebec's country and western festivals, like those captured in Carole Laganière's documentary Country, continue to grow in popularity. (Alain Corneau/National Film Board of Canada)

Nearly half a million people converged in the rolling hills of Quebec farm country last week, to sway to the twang of honky tonk en français in a collective ritual that becomes more spectacular every year – the Festival Western de Saint-Tite.

For 10 days each September, the streets of this small town of 4,000, about 160 kilometres northeast of Montreal, are crammed with horses and wannabe cowpokes. Front porches are converted to storefronts selling maple syrup, poutine, horse tapestries and basement country recordings. And roughly 8,000 gleaming RVs park cheek by jowl in a rather surreal makeshift village on the outskirts of town.

Over 120 cowboys from across North America compete in the festival's eight rodeos – organizers say their event is the second largest in Canada after the Calgary Stampede. Dozens of bands and solo acts perform outdoors and under immense tents where beer flows freely and singing along in French to Quebec country chanteuse Dani Daraîche, and in English to Johnny Cash is de rigueur (as are tight jeans and cowboy hats). Two thousand people attend the annual western wedding at the Saint-Tite church. This year local bronco rider Sebastien Thibault got hitched under a life-sized statue of a horse mounted above a praying Jesus.

So why is North America’s French-speaking minority – often viewed by outsiders as the most European and resolutely français on the continent – drawn to a scene that’s so firmly rooted in Anglo culture? Especially since hurtin’ music and cowboys are viewed by many Quebecers, particularly city dwellers, as quétaine – a term for all things tacky and unsophisticated. (Think Elvis impersonators and front-yard nativity scenes.) And while Saint-Tite is by far the biggest stud in the saddle, there are dozens of other western festivals across the province every summer.

According to Saint-Tite’s artistic director Sylvain Bédard, the reason for Quebecers are into country culture is simple: la vie western and everything associated with it – the horses, the fringed shirts, the achy-breaky tunes – are just plain romantic. “Country represents simplicity, adventure and freedom,” he says wistfully. “And country music is the music of the heart. It’s about emotions.”

And although Quebec has never been big ranch country, the cowboy fetish may be connected to the province’s rural past, says filmmaker Carole Laganière.

She travelled the festival circuit to make her 2005 documentary Country, a melancholic look at how many find a sense of family by travelling the small town festival and western circuit. “The land is part of our roots. We were a rural culture until very recently. People are still close to that.”

One of the first performers to translate the music of the Tennessee hills for les Canadiens (French Canadians) was Willie Lamothe. Born in 1920 in St-Hyacinthe, Lamothe recorded Je suis un cowboy canadien and Je chante à cheval with RCA in the 1940s. He also performed dozens of American country hits and sang with Gene Autry and Hank Snow throughout the 1950s. For six years in the 1970s, he hosted the TV show Le Ranch à Willie.

Quebec pop star Isabelle Boulay recently recorded a country album. (Emanuele Scorcelletti/Gamma/Ponopresse)

Lucille Starr is another big name from the 1960s – among both French and Métis Canadians. Star’s hit Quand le Soleil Dit Bonjour Aux Montagnes (When the sun says hello to the mountains) is a classic played over and over at Saint-Tite. Today groups such as the Famille Daraîche are popular – the family’s matriarch, Julie Daraîche, maintains she’s the biggest selling francophone country artist in the province. But despite their dedicated fan base, Quebec country and western chanteurs – with their big hair, satin shirts and French language knock-offs of There’s a Tear in My Beer and You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me Lucille – remain on the margins of the music scene. But that’s changing, says Saint-Tite festival president Josette Naud.

“For a long time, country and western was quétaine but Saint-Tite gave it a place to grow. We all watched Willie Lamothe on TV. It was part of our culture but we were embarrassed about it,” says Naud, who is decked out in a white straw cowboy hat and pink western shirt.

The fact that a major pop star such as Gaspésie-born Isabelle Boulay recently recorded a country album helps give the music legitimacy, as does Patrick Normand’s show Pour l’amour du Country on Radio-Canada specialty channel Art TV.

Of course Quebec country and western culture isn’t just about music, it’s also about horses and line dancing.

Unlike the smaller festivals, Saint-Tite has a major rodeo, so it draws big-name cowboys from the United States and Canada. But the bronco riders don’t usually mix with the Famille Daraîche fans, likely because most are hard-bodied men under 25. (Who else would intentionally hitch themselves to a hysterical wild horse?)

For these guys being a cowboy isn’t so much a way of life as an extreme sport. According to the Cowboy Association of Eastern Canada, there are 340 competitive cowboys in and around the province and most hail from the suburbs, not the range. The word is that these oh-so-cool lanky dudes – there’s nothing like the back view of a cowboy in chaps to make one long for the days of the Wild West – tend to shun folksy francophone country music for American stuff. This year Saint-Tite set up a special bar at the edge of the festival site for the cowboys to drink away from the fray and watch replays of their performances on big screen TVs.

Although the cowpokes keep to themselves, for thousands of regular folk, Saint-Tite is an unpretentious venue to socialize, cut loose and perhaps long for simpler times. Open air drinking is permitted, so many had six-packs of canned beer clipped to the belts of their Wranglers. The local hockey rink is converted into a hall where hundreds gather to line dance, either with a partner or solo as part of synchronized, parallel lines. The dozens of men and women – among them teenage hipsters and older folks – gliding together across the floor with such grace and precision was a remarkable sight, particularly for an urban dweller used to the age-segregated city bar scene.

Festivals such as Saint-Tite are just one indicator of how much Quebecers like to gather; this impulse is clearly a way to reinforce their collective identity. But if Quebecers meet in Saint-Tite to strengthen their common culture, what is the nature of the culture they are celebrating? Unlike Montreal’s FrancoFolies, Quebec City’s Festival d’été (Summer Festival) or other events showcasing Quebec's French-language film, TV, theatre and music, Saint-Tite remains on the fringe of the province’s pure laine cultural edifice.

Saint-Tite's festival headliner this year was Kenny Rogers. (Scott Gries/Getty Images)

Line dancing is identified with the United States and many Quebec country and western singers sing American and English Canadian songs. This year, two of the festival’s headliners are a Shania Twain impersonator – known as Shania Twin on the circuit – and (the real) Kenny Rogers. So there’s an intriguing paradox here. The crowd at Saint-Tite presented an overwhelming image of francophone cultural cohesion, but many of its influences come from the United States and, amazingly, English Canada.

One of the most interesting moments at Saint-Tite was the predominantly rural crowd’s response to an appearance by Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe. (Although Saint-Tite has been Bloc since 2004, the riding was held for four decades by former prime minister Jean Chrétien, a Liberal.) When Duceppe (not wearing a cowboy hat) drew a raffle ticket at the rodeo, there was restrained applause followed quickly by a wave of booing. Was the crowd revealing ambivalence to the independence projet? Or did the presence of a politician simply get in the way of an ole-fashioned country good time?

Patricia Bailey is a Montreal-based writer.

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