It’s not uncommon to express one’s grief for the loss of a lifelong spouse in writing.
“My cousin said something quite beautiful: ‘Normand’s death birthed a poet.’ I was quite touched by that. Whoever thinks they’re a poet?” said Adèle Fontaine of her new book, My Sundays with Normand.
The emotional results of her writing seem to resonate strongly with local readers. Just a few weeks ago, it was at the top of the Edmonton fiction bestsellers’ list, over Billy-Ray Belcourt’s This Wound is a World and The Dutch Wife by St. Albert novelist Ellen Keith, and a book by some guy named John Grisham.
Poetry doesn’t usually get so much buzz but it’s there for a reason.
Fontaine wrote these beautiful poems as a way of keeping in contact with the man she loved. Many radio listeners were saddened to hear of the passing of popular and longtime CHFA host Normand Fontaine nearly four years ago. He was an enduring personality in the Francophone community through his radio career, not to mention his artistic and literary work. He doodled during his broadcasts and painted during his retirement. Fans can even revisit their love for him by checking out the Normand Fontaine fonds, which includes his own poetry and short stories, along with some recordings of his ‘Les Normandises’ radio show at the Provincial Archives of Alberta (available in both French and English).
He loved music and had a beautiful voice but his heart needed some help. In the late fall of 2014, Normand went in for surgery to repair numerous blockages. Sadly, he experienced a stroke during the operation and never recovered. He was in hospital for four weeks before his body experienced its last failure.
Less than seven weeks later, she started writing to him on Sundays and has kept the practice ever since. Reading the tender, touching poems is enough to make you fall in love with him, with her, and with the two of them together. The way she writes and speaks of him even four years later demonstrates the depth of that love.
“I started making lists of things. I started making lists of books that I had read and books that I was going to read, things that I wanted to do. Just making lists of what I was going to do and how I was going to live through all this,” she said.
Writing poems was on the list at one point, too, but the words just didn’t seem to flow. That is, they didn’t flow until they did and that current hasn’t stopped yet.
Originally, she was only writing them for herself though she did share them with their seven children. They, in turn, encouraged her further.
“A few people said, ‘Adèle, this needs to be put into a book.’ I really didn’t want to send them all off to a publisher who is going to tell me that this is all shit. I can decide that for myself.”
She self-published with modest expectations.
“I thought I would sell 25 but now it’s getting out of hand. People say what you’ve done, Adèle, is make the ordinary sacred.”
My Sundays with Normand is now available at the Bookstore on Perron, as well as Chapters in St. Albert. She has a book signing lined up from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 8, at Chapters on Whyte Avenue. Another is anticipated at Zocalo on 95 Street in the future but details haven’t yet been confirmed.
