Serge Fiori's national funeral celebrates his life, his music and his dream for Quebec

Montreal Gazette

16-07-2025

Music
By
The national funeral for Serge Fiori Tuesday afternoon at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier of Place des Arts was much more than a funeral. It was actually a full-scale tribute concert in honour of the iconic Québécois singer-songwriter and co-founder of the much-loved progressive-rock band Harmonium.
But it wasn't just a concert, either. It was a heartfelt homage to the man and the musician from a slew of homegrown stars, almost all of whom had either worked with him or were good friends of his. In the end, this magical, nearly two-hour event was a nostalgic love letter to a time — Harmonium's heyday in the mid-1970s — when Fiori and millions of other Quebecers dreamed of someday creating their own country.
Fiori, a Montrealer with Italian roots, never wavered in his support of the independence movement and for fighting for the French language ici, even though his songs never explicitly referenced such matters. He died on June 24, Quebec's Fête nationale, at the age of 73.
Many on stage Tuesday underlined his commitment to Quebec, starting with Premier François Legault, who was one of the first speakers. He said he wore out his copy of the first Harmonium album as a teenager in 1974.
'He made us more proud to be Québécois,' said Legault.
Former Quebec City mayor Régis Labeaume, a friend of Fiori, said the two agreed on everything except hockey. Labeaume was a Quebec Nordiques fan, Fiori a fervent fan of les Canadiens.
'You would never accept us saying 'no,'' said Labeaume, clearly referring to Fiori's position on the two referendum campaigns. 'And that, we're going to remember.'
Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon — who, at 48, is much younger than Harmonium's original boomer fans — said before Tuesday's event that Fiori spoke for a generation, and that it was always about much more than music with the singer-songwriter.
'The generation before mine, the people who lived through the golden era of Harmonium, it's almost like a cult,' said St-Pierre Plamondon. 'So it's the celebration of a genius. But it's also recognizing someone who was the opening act for René Lévesque.'
That's a reference to Harmonium's trip with the first Parti Québécois premier to California in 1978 to promote Quebec and the band.
'They went to California to talk about Quebec and independence,' said St-Pierre Plamondon. 'In one of (Fiori's) last interviews, he said that if we don't deliver this project (of independence), Quebec culture has no future.'
Fiori famously turned down a million-dollar offer from CBS Records for Harmonium to re-record its songs in English, but even though he only ever sang in the language of Charlebois, the band was popular right across Canada, selling out 3,000-seat theatres from coast to coast at the height of its fame in the 1970s.
Montreal's CHOM was the first radio station to play Harmonium, oddly enough before any French-language stations here, and turned on a whole generation of anglophones to the band.
Former CHOM morning man Terry DiMonte, who was at the funeral, became friends later in life with Fiori. DiMonte wasn't working at CHOM when they started playing Harmonium, but hearing their folky, melodic progressive rock opened his ears to a whole other world of music.
'When I was a kid and was beginning to get into music and first heard Harmonium, I thought: 'Wow, there's bands of the calibre of the bands I'm listening to from Britain and the United States right here in our backyard,'' said DiMonte. 'That in turn introduced me to, 'Oh, wait a minute, there's a whole Quebec culture, television, radio, actors, musicians… .' And I think for my generation, he was at the forefront of that and had a massive impact not just in Quebec, but across the country. It was his personality, his passion and his ability to write music that spoke to people.
'At a time when progressive rock was at its peak in Quebec with Supertramp; Yes; Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Genesis, he stuck his hand up and said: 'Hey, wait a minute, I can do this, too, from a Quebec point of view.' The songs are very powerful and the melodies are McCartney-like. Language wasn't a barrier. People bought into the music because the music's so good.'
There was a lot of talk about Fiori's dream of a Quebec nation during Tuesday's funeral/concert, but of course it was also about music and celebrating the life of a man who elicited so much love.
The event began with a poetic monologue from actor Luc Picard, then seven acoustic guitarists — including Michel Rivard and Richard Séguin — came on strumming. Then members of Harmonium appeared on stage, minus Michel Normandeau, who is in Paris. They performed a moving rendition of Histoires sans paroles. Séguin sang Ça fait du bien, from the 1978 album Deux cents nuits à l'heure, made by Séguin and Fiori.
Radio and TV host Normand Brathwaite talked of how he and Fiori both suffered from serious anxiety, a problem that stopped Fiori from performing for the last 40 years of his life.
The finale had author and rapper Sébastien Fréchette, a.k.a. Biz, taking the stage to announce that Fiori's last project was a new version of the Harmonium classic Un musicien parmi tant d'autres, a work in progress with 11 Indigenous artists from Quebec. Then Indigenous singer-songwriter Mathieu McKenzie led everyone on stage in an inspiring rendition of the song, which appeared to end the show.
All on stage turned their backs to the audience and looked up at a giant photo of Fiori, and they were startled when suddenly the thousands in the crowd began singing an a cappella version of the Harmonium anthem. It was perfect. It was as if le peuple took possession of Fiori's music.