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Shooting the film “1837” by Christian Giraldeau

A photograph, edited to look like a comic strip, of a man with a beard and long brown hair. He is wearing a coat, a burgundy scarf, and small round glasses. He is examining a roll of film. On the lower left corner are the words: “Shooting the film [1837]”.

Image: Photographer unknown (graphic design by Audrey Fauteux-Robillard), 1976.
Private collection of Monique Villeneuve.

Audio excerpt: Interview with Christian Giraldeau, one of the organizers of the Fêtes du Vieux Saint-Eustache, by Sandrine Contant-Joannin, ethnologist, 2023.
Excerpt length: 2 minutes, 13 seconds. Patrimoine culturel Vieux-Saint-Eustache collection.

Christian Giraldeau was one of the organizers of the Fêtes du Vieux Saint-Eustache between 1974 and 1976; his main role was to create various types of content for the event. Here, he talks about finding a barn for the shooting of a fire scene, and the participation of a well-known actor in the film 1837, produced by the Fêtes du Vieux Saint-Eustache team. This excerpt of the interview is transcribed below:

Christian Giraldeau (CG): I’d found the place. I was scouting around the county, and when you go down the Sainte-Sophie Range, you know, you get there and you take Sainte-Sophie from Oka, across from the creamery.

Sandrine Contant-Joannin: Yeah, yeah.

CG: Across from the monastery. Right. You go toward the Sainte-Germaine Range. The Sainte-Germaine Range is at the top of the hill. Then you go down. You know the view from Saint-Benoît? Well, there was a barn there that had been abandoned for decades, I’d say, maybe a century.

So it was an old wooden barn and people were bidding on it when Mirabel airport was built. You know, when property was being expropriated to make way for the airport. And there were people who would bid on farms to get the wood from the barns, which was already in high demand at the time. And uh so that old farm, the old house… We went to the auction. Actually, it was Gilbert who went on behalf of the City, to the auction to buy the farm to… for the fire, to burn it at night with the silhouettes of, of the soldiers and the patriots who… And I, from the film, I took some photos, I did a few photos of the place anyway.

Yves Desgagnés was in the film too. It was his first time on screen. He was a student at the time, at the École nationale de théâtre with one of his buddies – he was a guy from the Gaspé who had an accent you could cut with a knife. Anyway, that was a fun scene… The young Yves Desgagnés.