Loïc Bolduc—Régis D’Anjou

The relationship between Loïc Bolduc and Régis D’Anjou binds kinship to a shared investigation: Régis is Loïc’s cousin, colleague, mentor, and friend, and his death leaves Loïc to continue tracing the D’Anjou family’s hidden history. Their bond persists in the work Régis leaves behind, but also in Loïc’s difficulty deciding what can be revealed about a family secret that he had once tried to keep out of public view.

Kinship and Professional Association

Régis is identified as Loïc’s cousin and as someone with whom Loïc worked in the prime minister’s cabinet in Ottawa. Their connection was both familial and professional; Régis was also Loïc’s mentor and friend. By the time Loïc learns that the D’Anjou family’s history may become a public scandal, the relationship has become part of the inheritance he must handle: family knowledge is at once a bond between them and a burden of discretion.

A Shared Investigation

Régis had pursued the origins and history of the family cameo, and after his death Loïc takes up his cousin’s investigative work. A discovery in an old baptismal register gives the family story a concrete archival foothold: the rescued infant adopted by the D’Anjous had been given the name Éloi, which could be read as Élie in the unclear handwriting. Loïc considers how this name became attached to the future founder and recognizes the possible significance of the cameo’s presence with the child. Régis had photographed the register, preserving a record that Loïc could build upon.

The cousins approached the research differently. Loïc used online judicial records, historical archives, and newspapers from the American Midwest, searching the Library of Congress from home. He reflects that Régis had known little of the World Wide Web at the time and was resistant to computers and new technologies. Loïc’s method therefore extends the inquiry beyond the materials and tools available to his cousin, without displacing Régis’s foundational work.

Secrecy, Loyalty, and Legacy

Loïc’s connection to Régis shapes his response when the family’s private history threatens to surface. He fears that renewed attention to the disappearance of Roger Bolduc might expose the story of the cameo, which he had tried to keep secret before gradually distancing himself from it. The desire to protect the family’s privacy sits uneasily beside the investigative duty he has assumed from Régis.

That conflict follows Loïc into his writing. As he begins a work blending memoir and novel about the fateful cameo and his search into its origins and passage through history, he is held back by scruples about how far he may go in depicting real people, especially Régis. He was not only the cousin whose research Loïc continued, but also his mentor and friend. Loïc’s account of the family saga thus becomes an act of continuation and a test of loyalty: he must decide how to give form to what Régis uncovered without treating their closeness as permission to disclose everything.