Chantal Renaud born 26 August 1946

Chantal Renaud (born 26 August 1946) is a Canadian script writer, and formerly a yé-yé singer and actress. She was the wife of former Quebec Premier and Parti Québécois leader Bernard Landry.

Montreal born Chantal Renaud's career began in a period of great cultural effervescence in Quebec and France in the late 1960s. It was thanks to René Homier-Roy that she landed a job as a journalist at the Photo-Journal in 1964, then directed by Jean-Charles Harvey. At the time, she was only 17 years old, but that did not prevent her from flying to France to do interviews with Coco Chanel and Bob Dylan.

Later, back in Montreal, Chantal Renaud bumped into Jean-Pierre Ferland by chance. He invited her to Radio-Canada, where she got the position of compere for Jeunesse oblige, which she hosted in French and English for the 1966-1967 season. As was the custom with star hosts she was soon offered the opportunity to record a few songs herself. After a duet with Donald Lautrec, "Ne dis rien" by Serge Gainsbourg, she undertook a series of hits, some of which were borrowed from Sylvie Vartan, "Comme un garçon" and "Irrésistiblement". These songs usually deal with playful themes such as "Zihuatanejo" or childish ones such as "The Unicorn". Her earliest releases were on Jupiter Records, one of Québec’s major pop labels of the era.

                                  

While continuing to record frequent 45s, she soon reoriented her career and resolutely turned to theatre (Clémence Desrochers' musical revue Les Girls, alongside Diane Dufresne, Paule Bayard and Louise Latraverse) and cinema. This form of expression was then in the midst of a revolution in Quebec and it was not long before she was given leading roles, notably in the films L'Initiation, Finally and L'Amour humain. She also recorded the 1969 theme song for the Musicorama summer tour, organized by the brand new Radio-Mutuel network, "Opération vacances". 

A little later, she surprised her fans by writing the lyrics of a new 45 rpm record in which she expressed herself in a much more local French. "Plattsburg drive-in blues" and "Viens que j'te démanche" participate in their own way in the shaking of the artistic values of modern Quebec, as do the films in which she participates, for that matter. She was nominated four times as Breakthrough Artist of the Year in 1967, 1968, 1969 and 1970. In 1971, she received the Méritas for Best Actress in Quebec.

In 1973, she finally flew to France with her husband at the time, Jacques Riberolles, and turned the page on her career as a singer as she was tired of the stardom that prevailed in Quebec. "I didn't like popularity!" she said in an interview. She then resumed her writing habits and, in addition to collaborating with various magazines, published a few novels, including Le Loup Blanc, which was published in Quebec in 1983. In total, she wrote hundreds of screenplays for series as well as for cinema. She was also the author of the screenplay for the film Prince Lazure which was shot in 1991, starring the singer Mitsou. In 2001, she received two awards for a TV movie: the Sept d'or and the FIPA d'or at the Biarritz Festival for the film Fatou la Malienne.

She herself returned to her native Quebec and on 26 June 2004, after a courtship of some years, she married the widower, former Premier of Quebec and then Parti Québécois leader, Bernard Landry. She figured prominently in the 2003 documentary À Hauteur d'homme about the 2003 Quebec general election, during which Landry defended his post as leader of Quebec. He died on November 6, 2018. Since 2019, Chantal has been president of the non-profit organization Le Cercle des amies de Bernard Landry.

(Edited from Quebec Info Musiqe, Radio Canada & Wikipedia)