Paul Demers | |
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Background information | |
Born | Gatineau, Quebec | March 9, 1956
Died | October 29, 2016 Ottawa, Ontario | (aged 60)
Genres | folk rock |
Occupation(s) | singer-songwriter |
Years active | 1979–2016 |
Paul Demers (March 9, 1956 – October 29, 2016) was a Canadian singer-songwriter. [1] He was best known for writing the song " Notre Place", which came to be recognized as an anthem of the Franco-Ontarian community. [2]
Born in Gatineau, Quebec, [1] his family moved to Ottawa, Ontario when he was 16. [1] He began performing as a musician in adulthood, touring music festivals across Ontario and forming the band Purlaine in 1979. [1] Following a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in the early 1980s, however, he took several years off from music to undergo cancer treatment. [1]
He came out of retirement in 1986 to write the lyrics to "Notre place", which was originally commissioned for a gala to celebrate the passage of Ontario's 1986 French Language Services Act. [1] The song came to be adopted as the Franco-Ontarian community's unofficial anthem, [2] and was formally designated as the community's official anthem by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 2017. [3] [4]
Following "Notre place", Demers returned to touring, both as a solo artist and with musicians Robert Paquette and Marcel Aymar in the group Paquette-Aymar-Demers, [5] released three albums, and worked as a theatre producer and director. [6] A biography of him, by writer Pierre Albert, was published by Éditions Interligne in 1992. [7]
Demers was diagnosed with mesothelioma in January 2016. [2] He gave a retrospective interview from his hospital bed to the Ici Radio-Canada Première program Grands Lacs Café in the fall, prior to his death on October 29. [2]