Jean-Daniel Lafond

From Freepedia

His Excellency Jean-Daniel Lafond, CC (b. 1944) is a French-born Canadian filmmaker, and the husband to Governor General Michaëlle Jean, making him the Viceregal Consort of Canada.

Lafond was born in France during the liberation of Paris. He subsequently taught philosophy from 1966-1971 "while pursuing research in audio-visual training and communications". In 1974 Lafond left France for Quebec and became a Canadian citizen in 1984. After teaching at the Université de Montréal he left the university to focus on film-making, radio and writing. He has written and directed several documentaries, including Les traces du rêve (1986), La manière Nègre (1991), Tropic North (1994), La liberté en colère (1994), Haiti in All Our Dreams (1995), Last Call for Cuba (1999), The Barbarian Files (1999) and Salam Iran, a Persian Letter (2002), which received the Gémeaux Award for Best Documentary, and Le Cabinet du Docteur Ferron (2003), about writer Jacques Ferron, a notorious and respected Quebec sovereignist.

Many of his films examine the process of democratic change in the perspective of hardline Quebec separatists, and take a negative view towards violence and state oppression.

He has also developed an original body of work for radio in Canada (La Première Chaîne) and France (France-Culture), and has published several books with Éditions de l'Hexagone.

He was awarded the Prix Lumières (1999) and he is co-founder of the Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal (Documentary Film Festival of Montréal).

Lafond has two daughters Estelle and Élise from a previous marriage and two grandchildren.

Controversy

When in 2005 his wife was nominated by Prime Minister Paul Martin as the next governor-general, controversy arose when his past resurfaced. While the personality of Michaëlle Jean was mostly accepted throughout Canada, Lafond himself had early on been suspected of being a Quebec separatist because some of his movies. When an article in a sovereignist journal made its way to the press, alleging that Lafond had befriended a former FLQ who had built for him a cache "to hide weapons" in his library, protest became louder, and many journalists and politicians accused the prime minister of having done too little research on Lafond's background. Later in August, his wife reacted to this in a formal letter announcing she and her husband "had never adhered to a political party or to the sovereignist ideology".

Confusion continues to surround his loyalties. In his book, La manière nègre (The Black Way), he wrote, "So, a sovereign Quebec? An independent Quebec? Yes, and I applaud with both hands and I promise to be at all the St. Jean [Baptiste] parades." However, in October 2005, in an interview with Radio-Canada he said, "I never believed that I could become a separatist. I have a great deal of difficulty with nationalism in general." He also called members of the sovereignist movement who had called him a traitor, terrorists. At the same time he affirmed that he was a Quebecker before a Canadian. He believes that he has always fought for the "cultural independence" of Quebec, but nothing further. [1]