Interview with Harold Gagné: a close ally for organ donation and cystic fibrosis

On 17 October last year, on its thirtieth anniversary, Living with cystic fibrosis awarded the Michel Paquette Prize to journalist Harold Gagné. This caring man has supported the cause of organ donation for several years through his very human and very respectful reports. Also, he is unequivocally an important ally for the cystic fibrosis community.

Having been one of his subjects of reports, I feel privileged today to change roles during an interview and to get to know this great reporter better... this great man!

Mr. Gagné, your love for communications is not new... How did you become interested in this field?

I was born in Gaspesie in 1959, but I spent a large part of my childhood and adolescence on the North Shore, in Baie-Comeau and Sept-Îles, where I fell in love with radio very early on.

The first time I went into a radio studio, during a preschool activity, I was 5 years old. I was mesmerized by this environment and by the fact that a man could talk into a microphone to thousands of people. When I came home, I said to my mother, “This is the job I will do when I grow up! ”

How did your communication activity start?

A few years later, I had the chance to do student radio during my high school and college studies. At the same time, I found a small job at the weekend to announce the specials over the microphone in a department store. There I met a real radio presenter who suggested that I come and work at CKCN Sept-Îles station.

I started spinning records at night and then animating at night. I was sharing the latest successes with young people who called me to get a special request.

I then made the heartbreaking choice to leave this fascinating but uncertain and low-paying world to continue my studies in political science at Laval University in Quebec City, where I stayed for a year. I loved the classes. I had very good grades but I didn't have enough money to continue, so I came back to radio in Sept-Îles where I worked for 6 years. I quickly abandoned animation to do public affairs and journalism. I was able to conduct hundreds of interviews with provincial and federal politicians, well-known artists, etc...

When did you start your career at the TVA network?

The management of the television station CFER TVA Rimouski, across the river, noticed me in 1986 and hired me. There I learned all the basics of television reporting. Then in 1994, I decided to try a new experience by becoming information director at CHEM TVA Trois-Rivières.

Four years later, I missed the land. I went back to reporting, this time at TVA Montreal. I have been there since 1998. In August 2016, I have been a journalist for the TVA network for 30 years.

During all these years of journalism, I added two other certificates to my political science certificate: in administration and management, by studying at night and on weekends.

Did you always know that journalism was the profession you wanted to do?

I have always been drawn to many other professions. After a short stint as an officer cadet in the Canadian Armed Forces, in 1979, I nearly studied criminology. I dreamed of being part of the military police and intelligence services but fate wanted otherwise. There was no openness in this area. I did not like military life. It's a world apart.

I think I could have been a lawyer too.

You are also the author of three books dealing with fairly delicate subjects. Could you tell us about it briefly?

When I was younger, I told myself that one day I would write articles, maybe a book, but that seemed almost unreal, until the day in 2006, I conducted a television interview with Madame Monique Lépine, the mother of Marc Lépine, the mother of Marc Lépine, the Polytechnique killer. The 30-minute show was much too short to answer all the questions. Madame Lépine, who had hidden herself from the media for 17 years and was confiding in a reporter for the first time, was looking for the truth, the reasons that prompted her son to kill several women. We decided to go and meet witnesses of the time: Marc's friends, police officers, teachers. I wrote a book, summarizing our meetings and the life of Monique Lépine in 2008. It bears the title of TO LIVE.

Two years later, I decided to write another book about the children of the DPJ: What is the point of growing up?

This cause is particularly close to my heart. I cannot accept that children are abused or abandoned, that others have serious problems because of bad relationships.

I am probably the journalist who has visited youth centers in Quebec the most. I interviewed dozens and dozens of children and adolescents who were scarred for life. They also shared their story in several series of reports broadcast 10 years before the holiday season at TVA in order to raise money to buy gifts for them.

Finally, three years ago, I thought it was time to publish a final book, this time about the elderly: Let us grow old! I talk about my grandmother, who died too young from cancer at the age of 63, and who marked my life, palliative care, elder abuse. As long as families have not faced the illness of elderly parents, their placement in CHSLD, or their death, they generally care little about aging. We live in a society that glorifies youth and prefers to stay away from it all. But soon, there will be more old people than young people in Quebec. It will be necessary to discuss it well.

How did your involvement with the population affected by cystic fibrosis begin?

Even though I have not written a book on organ donation, I have been genuinely interested in it since Valérie Mouton came close to death in July 2004. His father, Denis, alerted TVA to the importance of organ donation. I found myself, with my colleague Claude Charron, in a room at the Hôtel-Dieu in Montreal, listening to Valérie, gasping for breath, pleading in favor of signing the donor card. A few days later, a real miracle happened. A donor has been found.

I remember hearing the good news from his father who called me. With my cameraman, we jumped into our reporting bus only to meet up a few minutes later at the Hôtel-Dieu. She left the scene in an ambulance to go to Notre-Dame Hospital to have her double lung transplant. Arriving there, ignoring the security guards, we took an image of Valérie, thumbs up in the air, already victorious, even before her surgery. The video, very powerful, gave courage to many people waiting for transplants. It meant life rather than the end.

This encounter with Valérie and her family was significant and subsequently allowed me to come into contact with other patients with cystic fibrosis. I wanted to help them all in my own way!

You have followed the evolution of several people after their transplant... A lot of successes that are very satisfying! Unfortunately, a few have lost their battles. I am thinking, among others, of Laura Leblanc, who died shortly after her transplant. How are you coping with these departures?

Laura, a 19-year-old woman from Saguenay, who died in January 2014, after waiting far too long for a lung donor, will always be part of my thoughts. I was convinced that it was going to have the upper hand over cystic fibrosis. Complications occurred after the transplant at Notre Dame Hospital. I could only imagine the sadness of her parents, her sister, when she stopped living.

In the past, I was already very interested in kidney, liver and heart transplants. In the early 2000s, I became friends with a man in his fifties who was due to have a heart transplant at the Royal Victoria Hospital. I had him promise to call me when he had a donor, which is what he did one morning, around 4 am. He was so happy! In the afternoon, his daughter contacted me to thank me and to tell me that he was dead. It upset me.

This is another reason why I keep talking about organ donations. Did he have the perfect donor? Could it have been saved with better public awareness? It will always haunt me.

Organ donation is at the center of many of your reports. What impact do you hope for?

I hope that listeners will never forget these positive stories, and unfortunately sometimes negative ones, and that they will reflect on the importance of organ donation. It is not necessary to impose a choice on them but to progressively advance discussion and actions to save as many people as possible who are waiting for new organs.

These days, I am almost a 5-year-old girl who absolutely needs a heart to survive. I can imagine the anxiety and the will of his parents. It is necessary to talk about it publicly, even if it is an extremely delicate subject, in order for there to be an increased number of donors. That way, it can be saved. I am convinced of that.

What do you remember from your numerous encounters with people with cystic fibrosis?

All these encounters make me appreciate life more. Sick patients, their families, show courage that I might not have. They are very important to me. They have values and desires in them to build a better world, a society where we will one day be able to save all those who need the gift of life!

What are your plans for the future?

As a journalist, I now want hospitals and doctors to allow us to show the population what a transplant really is, with its process, its decisions, its hesitations, its victories, its failures. We have put a lot of emphasis on emotions over the last 10 years, on the testimonies of patients waiting for a transplant, on the importance of signing your card, of talking to your family about it. Now we need to explain, using images, what we are really talking about, and at the same time, set up a system that encourages health workers to do everything they can, everywhere in Quebec, to get the largest number of donors.

We have already come a long way. In 2004, when Valérie Mouton was transplanted, the public relations department at Hôpital Notre-Dame criticized her father for providing me with a video of his daughter, in her hospital room, thanking those who prayed for her. Ten years later, a doctor told me that these images, these reports, had been a catalyst for Transplant Québec and for the cause of cystic fibrosis.

You often have to push the limits of the system to achieve noble goals. This is what I will continue to do, respecting the choices of individuals, convinced that donating organs at the end of life is a personal decision that should not be imposed, simply considered.

Interviewed by Valérie Mouton

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