Loïc and Régis's Last Meeting

Loïc and Régis’s Last Meeting is the final encounter between Loïc and his older cousin, Régis D’Anjou, in Ottawa in May 1994. It brings their shared political and intellectual history into painful focus: Régis looks back on his influence within Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s circle as a betrayal of his own philosophical and poetic nature, while Loïc witnesses an old man’s anger, self-reproach, and stubbornly surviving faith. The visit ends with a trembling farewell that Loïc already fears may be the last.

The visit and the book

Loïc remembers the spring 1994 meeting with a surge of remorse because the rupture between the cousins came afterward. The scene is framed from that later knowledge, but its emotional force lies partly in what remained uncertain at the time: the visit itself is tender and attentive, and neither man can know exactly what their parting will mean.

A violent storm breaks over the expressway running through Ottawa and delays Loïc on his way to Régis’s home, which overlooks a park beside the Ottawa River. At the door, Loïc recognizes the familiar, imposing figure but immediately notices how much age has diminished him. Régis’s walk has slowed; his frame is thin and increasingly bent, his white hair sparse, and arthritis has deformed his hand. His mind and memory remain sharp, yet his speech is slower and his laughter less frequent. His indignation, by contrast, is still vigorous, especially when he denounces what he sees as the degradation and spreading barbarity of the age.

Loïc has recently published an article about a reissue of Régis’s best-known book, a work that won several prizes in the early 1960s. He had described it as a fierce dissection of French-Canadian society and as an exorcism of its inner demons, identifying its author as a kind of exorcist. Because Régis has not yet responded to the article, Loïc arrives anxious that his reading may have disappointed him. Régis says he is not disappointed; he is surprised by the image of himself reflected in Loïc’s interpretation, particularly by its emphasis on his preoccupation with French-Canadian nationalism. The article thus becomes more than a review: it opens a space for Régis to assess the public cause that shaped his life.

Political regret and the cost of service

Régis admits, with the distance of hindsight, that Pierre Elliott Trudeau pushed Quebec too far and that he himself may have helped bring about that result. He recalls encouraging Trudeau in that direction, comparing his own support to pats on the back given to a boxer. The image makes political influence feel both intimate and culpable: Régis had not merely observed the conflict but had helped strengthen the force he now condemns.

His regret extends beyond a political judgment. Régis says that his involvement cost him his soul and his philosophical force, along with the poetic counterpoint that had animated his thought. He sees politics as the enemy of poetry and laments that he descended into the same low-level combat he despises. Loïc listens without interrupting, so intent on not disturbing the confession that he nearly holds his breath. Régis’s fury briefly erupts against Trudeau, whom he accuses of wanting to prove he was still capable. Then he checks himself, asks God’s forgiveness for failing in charity, and recognizes how far his life has come from what he might once have expected.

Loïc understands this outburst as more than a political quarrel. To him, Régis’s anger at Trudeau continues an older conflict with the father, as though Régis were still probing the source of that hostility—and his own inner life—to escape an inherited fatality. The political history is therefore personal as well as national: a struggle over Quebec and political power also exposes the intimate wounds through which Régis interprets his own choices. From the outside, his service to Trudeau appears to have elevated him, eventually making him a senator and, seemingly, a prince’s influential adviser. Loïc instead sees a cost: the commitment seems to have dried up Régis as a writer and thinker.

Faith in an obscuring age

Régis’s spiritual life has also altered. Theological books no longer attract or console him, and his fervor seems to have burned down like an exhausted candle. Yet he distinguishes the loss of consolation from the loss of faith: even if only empty shells remain, he insists that faith itself has not abandoned him. His account is complicated by his disappointment in theologians he once admired, some of whom, in his view, drifted toward subtle denials of Christ’s divinity. He identifies modernity as a force that erodes transcendence and blurs the sacred, and recognizes that he himself was affected by the same tendency. Although he considers himself resolutely anti-modern, he had participated in the transformation of the Quebec Church and had been drawn to contemporary art and its iconoclastic deconstruction.

Loïc feels compassion for his cousin, whom he imagines moving through an increasingly dark and narrowing tunnel. The image does not make Régis’s faith triumphant or easy. He remains a pilgrim in a night of faith, persistently holding to belief because he sees it as his only possible salvation. He turns to Christ and to the Incarnation as his ground of hope, while also treating himself like Job on the ash heap, burdened by self-accusation. For Loïc, this persistence resembles a desperate grip on the mast of a wrecked ship driven toward the reefs of old age: belief endures, but the vessel around it is failing.

The exchange also places this private crisis against a broader reflection on worldly success and historical judgment. Watching the tropical fish in Régis’s aquarium and the birds outside, Loïc considers existence a gift rather than a contest between success and failure. Fame, he thinks, is no reliable measure of fulfillment: celebrated criminals and frauds share the heights with geniuses, heroes, and saints, while many worthy people live and die unknown. What an age raises to prominence can reveal its moral condition. In the context of Régis’s regret, this reflection quietly challenges the prestige once attached to political ascent.

The farewell and its signs

After leaving the house, Loïc turns toward Régis, who remains on the threshold to see him off. Régis raises his arthritis-twisted hand in a final, trembling salute. His bearing seems dignified, almost ceremonial, and Loïc is overcome by emotion. He remembers Régis’s remark that he prays with his fish. In the rear-view mirror, he looks back again and wonders whether Régis senses that they are seeing each other for the last time. The question is left unresolved in the moment; the later memory of the meeting gives the farewell its lasting weight.

On the highway, the radio reports two unusual events in Quebec. Plaster has fallen from the ceiling of the National Assembly of Quebec, knocking down a Liberal deputy and injuring two others. Loïc wryly imagines the incident as a possible sign that the sky is falling on a treacherous government. Almost at the same time, a meteorite fragment lands near Sorel. A geologist estimates that the roughly ten-centimeter black rock may be between three and five billion years old. Set beside that immense journey through time, the cars carrying Loïc along the highway seem to trace tiny human passages. Yet he contrasts the dead matter of the meteorite with the eternal life he believes is lodged within human beings.

The meeting closes not with political reconciliation or a resolution of Régis’s spiritual struggle, but with Loïc’s gratitude that he has been able to speak with his cousin about such matters, shadowed by the fear that the opportunity may not last. The storm, the trembling hand, and the ancient stone do not prove that fate has marked their parting; they gather, instead, around Loïc’s awareness of human fragility. The encounter becomes a farewell through its retrospective framing and through the contrast between Régis’s failing body and the convictions he continues to defend.