Paul Demers

Born in Gatineau, Quebec,[1] his family moved to Ottawa, Ontario when he was 16.[1] He began performing as a musician in adulthood, touring music festivals across Ontario and forming the band Purlaine in 1979.[1] Following a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in the early 1980s, however, he took several years off from music to undergo cancer treatment.[1]

He came out of retirement in 1986 to write the lyrics to "Notre place", which was originally commissioned for a gala to celebrate the passage of Ontario's 1986 French Language Services Act.[1] The song came to be adopted as the Franco-Ontarian community's unofficial anthem,[2] and was formally designated as the community's official anthem by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 2017.[3][4]

Following "Notre place", Demers returned to touring, both as a solo artist and with musicians Robert Paquette and Marcel Aymar in the group Paquette-Aymar-Demers,[5] released three albums, and worked as a theatre producer and director.[6] A biography of him, by writer Pierre Albert, was published by Éditions Interligne in 1992.[7]

Demers was diagnosed with mesothelioma in January 2016.[2] He gave a retrospective interview from his hospital bed to the Ici Radio-Canada Première program Grands Lacs Café in the fall, prior to his death on October 29.[2]

• Paul Demers (1990)
• D’hier à toujours (1999)
• Encore une fois (2011)