Fred Pellerin finds hope in storytelling—and always has
The storyteller sits down to discuss why he keeps performing after 25 years, what he learned during his daughter's cancer battle, and why narrative still matters in a world of 30-second videos.
The day's top stories, food & events — every morning at 7. Unsubscribe anytime.
Fred Pellerin has been telling stories across Quebec and Europe for 25 years. His new show "Au nom du père" is selling tickets without fanfare or highway billboards—audiences simply show up because they know his name. He spoke with La Presse's "Juste entre toi et moi" podcast to explain why the work still matters.
Pellerin frames his craft as counter to the speed of modern digital life. "In an era of rapid consumption, where you won't watch a video longer than 30 seconds online, we're still all hungry to hear stories," he said. Whether on an iPhone, at the movies, or on stage, humans consume narrative constantly—even influencers, he notes, tell ongoing visual stories that build toward something. He remains largely disconnected from that world, naming only his 92-year-old neighbor Léo Déziel as an influencer of sorts, someone who carries stories the way traditional storytellers do.
Pellerin continues performing because despair is easy and stories are resistance. "I tell stories to keep the flame alive. Stories give me hope," he explained. His method is to "embellish reality, to colour it," a choice that requires faith in collective and communal things—the kind of faith that asks you to believe in beauty so that beauty can exist.
His new spectacle features a village priest, though Pellerin himself holds no belief in a God towering above. His faith runs toward community and shared culture—the kind that lets a whole village say "pétale" instead of "pétale" because that's how Saint-Élie-de-Caxton speaks, a small choice made together.
The one moment Pellerin paused his storytelling machine was during his daughter Marie-Fée's battle with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2019, when she was 14. When doctors delivered results, his impulse to transform reality softened. Real fragility demands a different approach.