On November 15, Karl Tremblay, one of Canada’s most prolific singer/songwriters, died at the age of 47 after a battle with cancer. The tragedy of his untimely death was palpable, and the outpouring of tributes came from around the world. Everywhere, that is, except from English Canada, where Tremblay is largely unknown.
This is not because he was a low-key, behind-the-scenes type of figure. No, Karl Tremblay was the frontman of the Quebec folk-rock band Les Cowboys Fringants, who have sold out arenas both at home and around the world. His beautifully warm voice has been entertaining crowds since 1995. Their break-out album Break Syndical (2002) established them as the band of an entire generation, introducing millennials to a reinvented version of traditional French Canadian folk music. Les Cowboys’ unique lyrics are at once ironic, melancholic, and comedic. Most well-known among them are “Plus Rien,” a song about the man-made demise of humanity, “Marine marchande,” a tale of an impoverished man who leaves his wife for a better life at sea, and “L’Amerique pleure,” examining the tears of an American trucker from the perspective of a driver’s rear-view mirror. If you tuned into Netflix’s recent docuseries on the Tour de France, you saw Groupama-FDJ belting out Tremblay’s song “Les étoiles filantes” as they celebrated their hard-fought victory on stage 18. And while in Argentina this past summer, I met a Swiss couple who described Tremblay as the best live performer they had ever seen, after having watched Les Cowboys headline Switzerland’s largest music festival in 2019.
All of this has made Tremblay and his Cowboys the top-streamed Québécois band, ahead of Charlotte Cardin. And yet, they are entirely unknown to Canadians who live outside of Quebec. They’ve never won a JUNO and have failed to permeate the English-Canadian music scene. This is difficult to comprehend if you’ve seen the viral videos of Tremblay singing his final concert on the Plains of Abraham in Québec City this past summer in front of 90,000 fans. While a Swiss couple in Argentina immediately connected Karl Tremblay with Canada, my family in Hamilton, Ontario, couldn’t name a single song, and neither could I until I moved to Québec eight years ago. This is the two solitudes.
The case of Tremblay and Les Cowboys Fringants captures the extent to which English Canada adopts a (North) American culture while Québec has built something entirely distinct, with its own network of talented artists and creators. The irony is that English Canadians wouldn’t look twice at the most well-known faces in Quebec if they were walking down Yonge Street. There appears to be no correlation between the level of popularity that an artist achieves in La Belle Province and their ability to connect with the rest of Canada. Language is an obvious reason for this. Céline Dion had to produce music in English to reach global superstar status. But the extent to which an artist like Tremblay can be wildly popular in Québec and around the world while remaining completely unknown in English Canada demonstrates just how impenetrable our two solitudes are.
Tremblay and Les Cowboys Fringants are hardly a unique example of this. Québec film director Xavier Dolan’s masterpiece film Mommy was an immediate hit in Québec and on the international stage, and yet Dolan didn’t seem to be known to English Canada until he directed Adele’s viral music video for her hit song “Hello.” And it’s not difficult to understand why. While Mommy came out in 2014, it was only added to Netflix, where it could be streamed with English subtitles, in March of 2023—a full 9 years after its release. Up until recently, the two solitudes meant that French content was for French audiences and English content for English. As streaming becomes the dominant way that Canadians consume content, perhaps the two solitudes will finally overcome the one-inch barrier that is a subtitle and experience a turning point.
But music is a different medium from television and films. One cannot listen to music with subtitles. And if Karl Tremblay and Les Cowboys Fringants are any example, it is safe to say that the people of our two solitudes do not have an interest in reaching across the barrier and experiencing the best it has to offer. I consider myself a lucky minority who gets the best of both our Canadian worlds. Tremblay and Les Cowboys Fringants have been foundational to my Québécitude, as I integrated into Quebec society. I am not embarrassed to admit that as of July 2023, I had listened to 5,000 minutes of Les Cowboys, learning quips and phrases that helped me navigate life here, all while thinking about how I would have never discovered them if I had not uprooted myself from English Canada and moved across the border. It is a shame that most Canadians will never experience the Québec culture that the rest of the francosphere is not only consuming but celebrating.
There’s no doubt that we need less solitude and less polarization in our world right now, especially amongst our fellow Canadians and neighbours. The lyrics of Tremblay and Les Cowboys in their song “Ici-bas” call on us to stay hopeful despite it all: “Tant que mes yeux s’ouvriront/Je chercherai dans l’horizon/La brèche qui s’ouvre sur mes décombres/La lueur dans les jours plus sombres/Tant que mes pieds marcheront/J’avancerai comme un con/Avec l’espoir dans chaque pas/Et ce jusqu’à mon dernier souffle/Ici-bas“
(Translation: As long as my eyes are open/I’ll search for the horizon/The crack in my rubble/The light in my darkest days/As long as my feet walk/I’ll walk like a fool/With hope in every step/Until my last breath/Here in this world)
Do yourself a favour and spend some time listening to Canada’s very own Karl Tremblay and Les Cowboys Fringants. Don’t let language or subtitles keep you from discovering the brilliance that is the Québec artistic scene—something that is fêted around the world.
And rest in peace, Karl. This English Canadian thanks you.
