Frank, one of our teachers, always says: “have your gear with you all the time.”
Yes, this can pay. On my way home from school yesterday, there was an accident. I stopped and grabbed a few shot. And it did the front page of the Intelligencer!

Don’t be mislead. Ontario’s poutine is NOT poutine. It’s a cheap imitation of what Quebec cuisine can do to your cholesterol.

I went to Quebec City, my hometown, for a couple of days. I came back yesterday. Of course, I could not resist the urge to have an Asthon’s poutine. Ashton’s is a fast food chain only available around Quebec City, and is the most well known place to have a poutine in the area. Most (all?) are open 24h, so a lots of drunk people can be seen eating poutine around 3am, when the bar close.

Here is my “profile” assignment. The picture that goes along the text is here.


For Robert Rancourt, wrestling is life. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

“I live my gimmick - the wrestler’s character or unique traits that defines him - everywhere”

When he was five year old, Robert’s father brought him to a wrestling show. There, he saw Édouart Carpentier, one of the most famous wrestlers of all time, wrestled. That’s all he needed. “I want to be this man,” he said.

About 15 years later, Carpentier helped Rancourt, still a green in the business of wrestling. “He liked me a lot. He knew I had a lot of willing,” remember Rancourt. “Robert Rancourt will never go outside of the province of Quebec,” said Carpentier. “Use you native heritage. Get an Indian gimmick. That will work,” he added.

And it worked.

After he changed his gimmick to become the native Sunny Was Cloud in 1984, Rancourt started to tour the world. When he was a kid, Sunny was not good in school except in French and geography. “When they were announcing ‘Abdullah the Butcher, Sudan’s champion’ or ‘Yvan Kolov from Russia’ on a wrestling card, I wanted to see where those countries were and how they lived up there.” Now he was able to see those places first hand: France, Belgium, Germany, Iran, USA, western Canada, the Maritimes.

“In professional wrestling or in a movie, the bad guy has the lead 75 per cent of the time. And then the good guy makes a comeback. If the bad guy wins, that means there will be a sequel,” he says.

It was about 20 years ago in Japan that he started a long match where the good guy will desperately tried to make his comeback.

Sunny War Cloud was homesick and bored. Since almost no Japanese wrestlers speak English, he sticks with the few who can and does everything to be their buddy, including trying cocaine. It was the golden age of wrestling. With the four thousand dollar per week he was making, it was easy to take a lot of it.

At first, coke helped his career. After a line, he was having a boost of energy and was able to perform better. But pretty soon, he started to lose weight. He started his career at 200 pounds, then gained 40 pounds in three months while using steroids – “I did not know exactly what they were giving me,” - but eventually fell down to 175 pounds. That is no good when wrestling fans pay to see something different. “They want to see big guys. You can’t be like them”.

One time, he even had to go back into the locker room to sniff a line during a match. At the end of the show, the promoter fired him.

In 1991, Sunny was at his lowest. He wrestled only one match during this whole year. He was back in Jonquière, the small northern town of Quebec where he was raised when his parent adopted him in 1955.

He sold his house and his taxi licence to sniff coke with the profit. He was stealing food at the grocery so he can eat. He was selling drugs, and he was his best customer. He did not like how things were going for him, but the good guy was not ready for the come back yet.

“I did a lot of bad things. I could have been arrested so many times,” recalls Sunny. He thinks that, somehow, police was protecting him because they admired the big native guy. That’s a good thing, because he might be dead now. Before he turned pro, Rancourt was working in a factory. One day, a pile of heavy material fell on him. He was trapped, unable to move. He passed out. After the incident, Rancourt developed a severe claustrophobic syndrome. He is one of the less than 200 Quebecers legally allowed to not fasten his seatbelt. “In a cell or handcuffed, I would be dead in 15 minutes,” he thinks.
It was a rainy day of December 1991 when he heard the “go home” – the signal given by the referee to proceed to the end of the wrestling bout.

He had not slept for three days, and he was living in a crappy apartment that he did not pay the rent for the last three months. He was living with a stripper.

“Marriage is 50 per cent sex, 50 per cent food,” says Sunny. His first wife looked after the latter part, and now he was hanging out with any girls willing to give him sex. “It’s easy when you have a lot of coke.”

One of his sons knocked on the door. It was his birthday and he was there to get his present. Sunny had money for drugs, but not for a birthday present. In the wrestling world, especially in those years, there was the kayfabe - the illusion that professional wrestling is not staged. The crowd did not know that wrestling was faked. Even if they did, they didn’t know exactly what was real or not. Sunny was ashamed of himself and did not want his son to see him like this. He wanted to be kayfabe with him.
The kid knocked on the door for five minutes. Through a hole in the blinds, he looked his son leaving empty handed. One hour later, he kicked the stripper out of his apartment.

The good guy was ready to makes his comeback, but he needed a fresh tag team partner. On TV, he saw something about a therapy house. He called and asked for help. Welfare workers bought him a bus ticket. During the five-hours trip to Montreal, he sniffed $200 of coke. That would be the last time.

Six months of therapy was followed by six months of work at the house. “We were 25 people at the beginning. Four finished. I’m the only one still straight.” But Sunny knows that he will struggle for the rest of his life.

In wrestling, the best feuds are usually the one that can last for long. “I’ve been fighting this for 14 years. I will never be cured.”

Thursday afternoon, I have a call for Future Shop. “Your computer is ready, sir.”
15 minutes later, the computer was in my hand.
2 days later, the computer was broke again.

Friday, I went to Toronto to tag along for the day with Peter Power, Toronto Star staff photographer. Let’s be honest, the assignments were not really exciting, but seeing first hand how things goes in a big daily was great! I met lots of people, and we went for a beer with some other staffer at the end of the day. It was really nice.

The day before, I received a call from Frank O’Connor, photojournalism program coordinator at Loyalist College, asking me to call back someone at the Toronto Star for a freelance gig. So while in Toronto for my ride with Peter, I was able to discuss face to face with the photo desk to know more about it. The job was to take place the next day (Saturday, November 19).

A bit nervous, I went to a small town one hour away from Belleville to take the pictures they needed. Since the picture will be published later on, I prefer to not show it now or not even tell more about it. But let’s say it was technically very challenging. Like Frank says all the time: “It’s not a photo that is going to change the world,” but I am pretty happy with what I have. Ryan Jackson was also called to make another picture for the same article. He was a bit overzealous: he spent 5 hours on it! Lucky for him, the family he was taking picture of was really cooperative!

My first freelance for a major newspaper will be remembered as the day I almost died.

After about an hour there, I was feeling strange, and I was sweating a lot. I put that on the fact that I was nervous and a bit angry that things were not going as I wanted at this point. But when the job was completed, I started to have difficulty to breath. I then remembered the big human-loving dog the family have. Since I’m not allergic to ALL dogs, but I love them all, I like to pet and play with them. I was covered with his saliva and hair, and I was reacting to him.

I left, but things were going worse and I was 1 hour drive from my asthma inhaler. I was looking for a hospital or a drug store, but it was an isolated road to the highway 401 so there was no one to see. At one point, I thought I should call 911 from my cell phone to ask where were the nearest one, but I was not sure I was able to talk. That was by fare my worst asthma attack ever.

Somehow, I manage to drive back home and get 2 or 3 puff of my inhaler.

How good it was to breath again!

Now that I was alive again, I rushed to Aaron, Lisa, Natalie and Kevin’s house to burn a CD of my pictures on one of their computer (remember: my laptop is down again). I needed my memory card to cover the Bull’s game less than one hour later.

I guess this will be a good story to tell to my grand children 50 years from now when they will ask me how I started in the business!

What happens when the game end at 9:30pm, that the deadline is at 10pm for the Newspaper deadline, that your computer is dead, that the newspaper computer is so slow that you can’t work on it and so you have to select your picture from the LCD screen of your camera between the game play?

A chimping party!!

Photo by Kevin Hill

My laptop’s motherboard fried more that a week ago now. When I want to update my site, I have to come to school, and it is really not convenient. That’s why I don’t update this blog as often as I would like to. I should have my laptop back sometime this week.

I don't know why, but as a quebecois, I feel like a cliché each time I order a poutine at the cafeteria or a French Vanilla at the Tim Horton. EACH time I order one, I feel silly...

Je ne sais trop pourquoi, mais j'ai l'impression d'être un cliché lorsque, en tant que québéquois, je demande une poutine à la cafétéria ou une cafée Vanille Française au Tim Horton. A CHAQUE fois, je me sent un peut stupide...