This is how Louise Portal found love 30 years ago


With more than 50 years of career, Louise Portal no longer needs an introduction. An actress and singer, she is also a recognized author and a very popular speaker. If she has often confided in her life and her past, she has agreed to reveal a few secrets to us.

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I WAS ENCOURAGED TO BECOME AN ARTIST

We had a family very focused on arts and culture, and, from our adolescence, our parents encouraged us in this. You have to go back to the 1960s, it was not like today. At that time, family life and school life were still very important. It was the Vietnam War, peace and love, women’s liberation, we demanded things, but through love. It has nothing to do with today, there was nothing aggressive or violent. I’m glad I was born in those years. It was also just after the end of the Second World War, people wanted to celebrate life and love. It was a good time. With my sisters, we did amateur theatre, we sang at school, I staged fashion shows at Gagnon Frères, in Chicoutimi… We were very creative. It is an exceptional heritage, because all the children were encouraged to pursue an artistic career, whether it be song, writing, cinema, theater or television. My brother was also a producer for 30 years at Radio-Canada, and he likes to write a lot.

I WAS INTENDED TO PLAY

When I was younger, I would have liked to be a fantasy skater, but I don’t think I would have had the qualities needed to be an athlete. With my sisters, during our childhood in the mid-1950s, we dressed up a lot and we often played Madame. I very quickly dreamed of being an actress. I believe that I had a destiny already traced in advance. After years of amateur theater in Saguenay, I was refused the first time at theater school, but I was finally accepted the second time. I have been doing this job for over 50 years now.

I NEVER FINISHED CONSERVATORY

I have a lucky star. At the end of my second year at the Conservatory, I received an offer to participate in a teletheatre at Radio-Canada. I was to play in the play Paradis perdu, by Marcel Dubé. I got special permission from my manager to work on this project. It was extraordinary for me, because I was working with Monique Mercure and Denis Drouin. I played their daughter. I came back to the Conservatory and I finally had to give up in the middle of my third year because I had an offer to do a major Quebec tour with another piece by Marcel Dubé. It was two months of rehearsals and two months of touring. My career started like that and it never stopped. The Portal sisters (Louise, Priscilla, Geneviève and Pauline) loved to dress up. Louise had an enviable career despite the interruption of her theatrical studies. Here in 1974 on the set of La p’tite Semaine, alongside Olivette Thibault, Yvon Dufour and Jean Besré.

I BELIEVE IN LOVE

For me, love is the engine of everything. If we are in love, we will be less in judgment, in criticism or in self-pity. We are going to be more in gratitude, more turned towards others. We will also take more care of ourselves and our environment. Love is the most important spiritual value for me. When I was younger, it didn’t have the same imagery or emotion as it does today. I had, in my twenties, very romantic years, I was the princess in waiting, and I didn’t always choose the right companions in love, but that’s normal. I did not know myself yet like today. I now have wisdom and perspective. I’ve lived through enough seasons in my life to know what exactly the love of one being for another means.

I MET LOVE ON SKATES

I met Jacques, my lover, almost 30 years ago. A friend introduced us, and he put us hand in hand on a skating rink in Old Montreal. I was talking a lot and at one point I looked at him. I didn’t quite know what was going on. But when we stopped skating and went to join our friends, the only thing that came out of my mouth was, “I don’t know what’s in this hand, but we don’t want to to leave her.” I was 43 at the time. We stayed together all day and even the first night, which was not my habit. I later learned that he had been in a massage therapy practice for over 15 years; so he has a great presence in his hands. For his part, that evening, he said to himself that if he stayed for the night, he was going to stay for life. It’s going to be 30 years next March since we met, and it’s still so fulfilling and nourishing. We are truly privileged to have this love.

I DREAM OF PLAYING RENÉE MARTEL ON SCREEN

I believe a lot in the demands we make of the Universe, it’s very strong. If it’s good for us, it happens. When it doesn’t happen, it’s because it doesn’t fit into our life path. It is very particular. At my age, I can say it’s real, it’s not something esoteric. I have asked for it often, things that have happened many times. There are also things that I hadn’t necessarily asked for, but that I had felt, and which also happened. When it happens, I tell myself that I am aligned on my life path, I am not lost in cross roads. The older we get, the more we face things, and the less we need to take side roads to get back on our path. For example, I’ve been asking for years — and I’ve already talked to producers about it — to play the life of Renée Martel on screen. I find that we look alike physically, and she has an exceptional career. She is a woman who has had a fabulous career and who has had an incredible life. But it’s not happening yet… Either it’s not for me, or it’s going to happen much later and I’ll be too old. But you have to accept that and accept it.

I MADE A PILGRIMAGE TO TEXAS

I traveled a lot during my fifties, because I was an ambassador for Quebec cinema. I went to Brazil and twice to Cannes. I also went to shoot in Lebanon and the Dominican Republic for a French film. But my most beautiful trip dates from about fifteen years ago. I went to San Antonio and Austin with my husband, Jacques. It was like a pilgrimage to my husband’s youth. In his early twenties, Jacques lived in Texas, where he worked as a mason and landscaper. He wanted to give me the tour of his life during this time as he was starting down the road to sobriety. It was extraordinary. I met friends he had known at the time, former work partners. It allowed me to discover him differently, and to go to the sources of the young man he was. We were just the two of us, it’s a very good memory of the trip.

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This is how Louise Portal found love 30 years ago