Science Culture Lives in Québec
I’ve lived in Québec for the majority of my life, and after some 34-odd turns around the sun, my wife Catherine has helped me to a realization that I’d like to share.
You may already know that, in a hemisphere primarily represented by jurisdictions with English, Spanish, and Portuguese as official languages, the French-Canadian province of Québec is a comparative powerhouse of culture. While many from outside Québec are already familiar with Céline Dion, it is perhaps less well-known that this province generates an astonishing volume and quality of French-language performing arts, across the fields of music, television, theatre, and radio.
I’d like to bring up a cultural trend in Québec that is so underrepresented outside of the province — and even in my own anglophone minority—that it has practically escaped notice. I am writing, of course, about science culture: fait chez nous. I’ll present a few examples of TV shows that are available in Québec for anyone with an antenna or an internet connection, demonstrating just a small sample of the options available at a comparatively low barrier to access.
Those of you in Québec/Canada can watch these shows via the links below. For those who are outside of the region restrictions, clips can be found elsewhere on the web.
Le Gros Laboratoire [Radio-Canada]
A relative newcomer to Québec TV, Le Gros Laboratoire (“The Big Laboratory”) is about as close as you can get to a live demo of the scientific method. Based on the Dutch show “Het Instituut”, each episode tests various research questions — mainly drawn from sociology or social psychology — against a sample cohort of 100 volunteers drawn from across the province. While the methods employed are probably not up to the standards of your average Nature reviewer, the show does a fantastic job of tracing the path of the scientific method from “ask a question”, through “test”, and finally “question your results”. This show is hosted by Jean-René Dufort, holder of a bachelor’s degree in Microbiology, and Marie-Pier Élie, a trained science journalist.
Watch here: https://ici.tou.tv/le-gros-laboratoire
Bonus: Dufort also brings his scientific training to his particular comedic take on the news in “Infoman”, the show for which he is best known.
Génial [Télé-Québec]
One of my favourite television shows in Québec, Génial (“Brilliant”) is hosted by Stéphane Bellavance and Martin Carli. It’s a gameshow with several different games covering the entire scientific spectrum. One of these games goes as follows: a scientific principle is explained, an experimental apparatus is presented, and the guests have to guess the result. Points are rewarded for close answers, all participants usually walk away with some new insight. What I like most about Génial is it goes beyond testing participants for their scientific knowledge, and — just like the scientific enterprise — rewards reasoning and extrapolation based on a known principle.
Watch here: http://genial.telequebec.tv/emission/
Les Aventures du Pharmachien [Radio-Canada]
I have a special place in my heart for Olivier Bernard, also known as Le Pharmachien (“The Pharmafist”). Bernard is a licensed pharmacist who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career to combating pseudoscience myths— so much so, that he has been targeted for vicious harassment by antivax groups. The entire scientific community should have his back. Le Pharmachien is a made-in-Québec health science mythbuster, and Bernard walks the viewer through a nuanced understanding of complex topics related to everything from biology to health care policy.
Watch here: https://ici.tou.tv/les-aventures-du-pharmachien
Découverte [Radio-Canada]
Charles Tisseyre is synonymous with nature documentaries in Québec, and Découverte (“Discovery”) is lusciously-shot television. Tisseyre is a homegrown Attenborough, weaving stories from across the entire spectrum of science and technology.
Watch here: https://ici.tou.tv/decouverte
J’aime Hydro
You’d probably laugh me out of the room if I told you that a four-hour piece of theatre about an electrical utility would be popular enough to spawn a radio show, podcast, book, and television presentation — but this is Québec, where you can talk about aspects of hydroelectric energy from the Faraday principle to indigenous land rights, all while calling a source of national pride into question. I read the book, saw the play, and was spellbound. It’s really a must for anyone who lives here.
Klô Pelgag
Sometimes being way out ahead of the pop music curve means trading mass appeal for creativity, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped Chloé Pelletier-Gagnon from enjoying accolades and ticket sales alike (COVID-19 notwithstanding). I can count at least two of her major hits as having direct scientific references or themes, and she’s absolutely one of the most innovative artists currently producing music in Québec. Give her a listen.
How It’s Made
Despite being of the great manufacturing/engineering television shows for some 20 years, few know that How It’s Made is itself made in Québec! Originally hosted by Olympic swimming gold medalist and LGBTQ advocate Mark Tewksbury, this show is one of the rare Québec exports to be known worldwide. Featuring hypnotising footage and some of my favourite music in television, How It’s Made walks viewers through different industrial processes and artisan crafts, explaining everything in simple and accessible language.
Special Mention: Boucar Diouf
The short list of people who’ve successfully made the leap from marine biology research to comedy has to include Boucar Diouf. He’s a brilliant and engaging storyteller, bringing his humour and insight to stage and screen. It’s a fantastic mix that makes for informative and entertaining science communication, and Diouf is often invited as a contributor for science reporting in the news.
Our civilization seems to depend more and more on science and technology while also managing to understand it less and less. Our current shared struggle against COVID-19 is a convenient example: while the best of the scientific community work to develop a vaccine, there remains a significant portion of individuals sowing fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the relationship of basic hygiene to public health. Our various institutions would do well to find a way to stem the tide of this dangerous ignorance.
I believe that everyone should have a good understanding of scientific principles, and I think that to spread that understanding, we need to meet people where they are. Importantly, we need to do this without either insulting them by adopting a condescending tone, or robbing them of a nuanced understanding by oversimplifying the material.
I count myself as a pretty strong fan of science culture in general, and if you were to ask me to name some widely-known, actively-working science popularizers off the top of my head, I’d be able to name Bill Nye, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Sir David Attenborough. That’s four people, all of them men, all of them drawn from the English-speaking world. As of the 2016 census, Québec has a population of 8.16 million people, and can boast (at least) five science-based TV shows on its own. My own list is incomplete (I left out Le Nutritionniste Urbain or Électrones Libres).
Imagine the boon to science culture at large if the world were to follow Québec’s example.
Coda: One of the nice thing about being bilingual is that you get to learn words that exist in one language that don’t exist in another. Every once in a while, you come across a gem of a word which, in addition to being the right term in the one language, also bears a resemblance to a word in the other. There’s a word in French for popularizing a topic without necessarily simplifying it for the larger audience. That word is “vulgarisation”, with the latin root meaning “common” or “popular”, and without any of the negative connotations that the word “vulgar” has in English. Perhaps that spirit is a valuable lesson to be gained from Québec’s success.
