Céline Galipeau, BA’82, was born in Longueuil, but spent almost her entire childhood in Togo, Senegal, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Jordan. All her life, she heard her parents speak Vietnamese. One of her uncles was a high-ranking official in the South Vietnamese government. She spent a year at university in Jerusalem and another in Amman. For much of her career as a journalist, she was stationed in foreign capitals.
“In many ways, the culture here was foreign to me,” says Galipeau, now one of Quebec’s most prominent journalists. Now the anchor of Téléjournal, she became the voice and face of Radio-Canada’s flagship program in January 2009.
Since she started in journalism in 1983, Galipeau has become a familiar face on television, serving as a foreign correspondent in major centres including London, Moscow, Paris, and Beijing. In Kosovo, authorities tore up her press card right in front of her. In Chechnya, she had to leave the country at night to avoid bombings. “Strangely enough, this adventurous life didn’t frighten me at all; it was perfectly natural,” says Galipeau.
Her mother, Pham Thi Ngoc Lang was a refugee from the Indochina War (1946–1954) when she met Georges Galipeau, a journalist with La Presse and an accomplished globetrotter, on a ship. In 1961, her father became a UN diplomat, initially working for scientific organizations, then for refugee aid organizations. For the next 16 years, family life involved a series of relocations, and Céline studied alongside the children of diplomats.
The Vietnam War provided a tense backdrop to her childhood. The far-off conflict had major repercussions for the Galipeaus, as the Pham family held prominent positions within the South Vietnamese government. Every evening, the Galipeaus listened to the BBC news bulletins and then shared their thoughts on them (excellent training for the future journalist). “My mother had family in Vietnam, and she brought them all to Canada,” Galipeau recalls.
Galipeau explains that she has retained some very deep-rooted traits of Asian culture, including the habit of always smiling and a strong sense of family. She can see the moment approaching when she will welcome her now-widowed mother and her younger sister, who has Down syndrome – her older sister has passed away. “In Asia, children take care of their parents, and that was instilled in me very early on,” says Galipeau, whose first trip to Asia, to Beijing in 1995, was a revelation. “I had never felt so strongly like I was coming home.”
A brief ‘rebellion’
At 20, Galipeau arrived in Montreal – a city she hadn’t lived in since early childhood. Her father, wanting her to reconnect with her roots, enrolled her at UQAM. She only spent one semester there before transferring to McGill. “I felt more at home in multicultural environments,” she says. “Thirty years ago, it was the only truly international Canadian university.”
At McGill, Galipeau pursued a double major in political science and sociology. She cherishes her memories of Professors Charles Taylor (political science) and Maurice Pinard (sociology), who taught her “how to learn.”
But above all, she appreciated the activism of international students. “For every conflict in the world, there were students on both sides. It was fascinating.”
Galipeau began her journalism career in 1983 as a night reporter at radio station CJMS. But few people know that at the same time, Galipeau was pursuing a much different interest and studying fashion at LaSalle College.
“I wondered if I had what it took. I could very well have built my own little weekend empire, but ultimately it was the adrenaline rush of breaking news that convinced me to take the plunge.”
Céline Galipeau, chief anchor of Radio-Canada’s Téléjournal
“The biggest rebellion of my life!” she says. “My mother is an artist and my father is an intellectual. I was naturally drawn to journalism, and I fought against it a little.” Throughout her childhood, Galipeau watched her mother make clothes for the family, and the young woman was strongly drawn to colors and textiles, to the point of considering opening a workshop and a boutique.
A tragedy prompted Galipeau to commit fully to journalism: in 1984, a man named Denis Lortie attacked the National Assembly with a machine gun, obsessed with killing Premier René Lévesque. He ultimately murdered three civil servants and wounded 13 others before being arrested. “When I arrived at the [college], no one knew what I was talking about. That morning, I went home and never set foot there again.”
Long before she covered international conflicts as a correspondent, Galipeau began her career at Radio-Canada in 1985 as a substitute reader for Bernard Derome, the legendary news anchor, who had been in his position since 1970. “But I immediately wanted to be out in the field,” she says.
Her life would be eventful: moving to Toronto in 1989, she covered the Meech Lake Crisis and its aftermath. “I doubt that Canada and Quebec have changed much since then, even though there have been changes,” she says. “The issue isn’t as hot-button anymore, but the same questions come up with every election campaign.”
Then, starting in 1992, it was on to London, Moscow, Paris, Beijing, and she would closely follow all the major conflicts – Chechnya, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq.
The biggest controversy of her career would be her reporting on the war against the Taliban from Quetta, Pakistan, where she appeared wearing a headscarf. Her gesture sparked a major uproar, which she only became aware of when her bosses asked her to give a one-minute explanation for why she was wearing the headscarf.
“At the time, I was surprised by the controversy. I’ve lived in several Arab countries, and I was used to it, and the veil probably doesn’t shock me as much as it does others,” says Galipeau, who finds the entire Quebec debate on reasonable accommodation fascinating. “It was a necessary condition for doing my job as a journalist [in those countries].”
The challenges of returning home
After the Iraq War, she returned to Montreal – this time to stay. It was a bigger adjustment than she expected. She and her husband – journalist Jacques Bissonnet – didn’t even know how to enroll a child in school. They had to learn everything from scratch. “But I’m happy that my son is growing up in Montreal.”
A similar period of adjustment was required for her new role as the weekend news anchor for Téléjournal. “I was able to find my footing again gradually.” The role of news anchor isn’t simply to read the news: in conjunction with the editor-in-chief and the producer, an anchor is responsible for the ‘staging’ of the newscast: which story to lead with, which stories to follow with, and how to connect them – all while keeping in mind the need for rhythm, relevance, and variety (as much as the news cycle allows).
Another challenge for the new anchor: relearning the intricacies of national, provincial, and even municipal politics. “I have a lot of respect for my colleagues who cover local news. Internationally, the news is straightforward: it’s about getting there quickly. Here, you have to dig into cases like the City of Montreal’s questionable contracts. It’s less straightforward!”
To her surprise, Galipeau received a significant boost in her new role thanks to the “Guy A. Lepage effect.” Lepage hosts Tout le monde en parle, the most-watched program on the TV network, aired just before the Sunday news. And from her very first episode in September 2004, Lepage adopted the custom of ending his show by inviting viewers to stay tuned for the news with the “radiant”, “smiling”, “sparkling” Céline Galipeau – the adjective changed every week.
“In reality, the Lepage effect was due to [his] ratings, which brought us a lot of viewers,” says Galipeau. So much so that the once obscure Sunday newscast became the most watched of the week. Overnight, journalists were jostling to join the team or have their reports featured. “It gave us negotiating power we didn’t have before, and we went after staff, resources, and budget.” That’s how Galipeau managed to continue reporting from abroad, notably from India, and even, once, broadcast a full newscast from Afghanistan.
Shifting to a bigger stage
When Derome announced his pending retirement at the beginning of 2008, Galipeau was widely seen as his obvious successor, but she hesitated, overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. “I wondered if I had what it took. I could very well have built my own little weekend empire, but ultimately it was the adrenaline rush of breaking news that convinced me to take the plunge.”
Galipeau became the chief anchor of Téléjournal in January 2009, at a turbulent time, when viewers’ habits were changing under the combined impact of the internet, specialty channels, and competition from TVA, whose newscast had dethroned Téléjournal in the ratings. “Téléjournal is no longer the 10 p.m. ritual everyone tuned in to, but I doubt the very existence of newscasts will be called into question within the next 10 years. Ratings are holding up relatively well, and Quebecers, in general, get a lot of their news from television.”
Still, change is in the air. The newsroom is being reorganized in response to budget cuts and the rise of the internet. Gone are the days when radio and television operated in silos: now, the same journalists are expected to work for television, radio, and the web. Each must find a way to retell the news previously broadcast on radio without repeating themselves. “There are 36 ways to present the same news story,” says Galipeau. “There’s a balance to be struck; we need to be able to explain more.”
Another major challenge will be live coverage of election nights, where Derome’s unique blend of humour and gravitas will be missed.
“We’re still figuring out how to do it, but it’s clear there will be more on-the-ground reporting, more decentralized work, and not just with a single presenter,” says Galipeau. “I can’t say more because we’re still studying how to proceed, but I intend to say the famous ‘If the voting trend continues…’ at least once in my life!”
