Mr. Speaker, today, a great poet is being buried at Trois-Rivières, Mr. Alphonse Piché, who died on December 2.
A year after his birth in Chicoutimi in 1917, his family moved to Trois-Rivières, where he remained for his entire life.
His poetry celebrated the great St. Lawrence, love and life, and it transcends age, ill health and death. Mr. Piché was honoured by numerous literary prizes, including the Governor General's Literary Award, and an award bearing his name is given out annually at the Salon du livre de Québec.
According to Alphonse Piché, the task of the poet is an impossible and unending one, balancing imbalances, recording the unspoken, translating the unspeakable, tackling the absolute. To him, the greatness of man lay more in his attempts at discovery than in his actual discoveries.
I would like to quote some of his own words in tribute to this remarkable poet: “Sleep, my brother, there in the soil of eternity, take your rest among the endless generations, safe in the bosom of mystery, your mystery”.