“Most people find it funny,” says the town crier, but he has an important job to do
With a paper scroll, a bell, and an umbrella, the newly hired town crier in the Quebec City neighborhood of St-Roch spoke to a crowd in the pouring rain on Wednesday.
“Hey, Hey! Charles-Auguste Lehoux said in French, “Come together.”
Some people watching smiled. Others stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to hear the announcements, which were about everything from jobs and volunteer opportunities to where to buy fresh fruit in the city.
“It’s a lot of fun to see people all around listening,” Lehoux said.
“Shouting out loud in public is a lot of fun, and you should try it someday. It’s almost like a way to get things off your chest.”
Lehoux says that the town crier, a European tradition that goes back hundreds of years, could play an important role in 2023 by making it easier for people who can’t read or don’t have access to computers to get information.
“Most people laugh at it. Most people probably think that it’s more of an entertainment or tourist job, but it’s not. “It’s about the facts,” Lehoux said.
“It’s a big plus if it’s also a little bit of fun.”
He says that, as a choir director and singer, he had to apply and audition for the part-time job before he got it.
Lehoux said, “I worked on my audition with my singing coach, and it was a lot of fun.”
“Just me by myself, like yelling “La la la la la!” in a public park on a Monday morning.”
“Short-term solution,” said the town crier
This project has been going on for a long time. It started in 2019, according to Pénélope Dagenais-Lavoie, a project manager for the group Engrenage St-Roch, which is behind the project.
In 2019, they did a survey of the community and found that 66% of people in tough economic situations didn’t get information shared on the internet. She says that when everything, including social life, moved online, the pandemic made the problem even worse.
“That’s a big problem,” Dagenais-Lavoie said.
“That’s how we came up with the idea of a physical town crier who is here and makes information easier to find.”
Lehoux reads announcements that are also posted on the community bulletin board in Complex Place Jacques Cartier, which is a town square.
People might think he should wear an old-fashioned costume when he makes announcements, but Lehoux says his job is less of a tribute to the history of town criers and more of a tool.
He says that many people still have trouble reading and writing. Lehoux used to teach music to kids who had just moved to Canada. He says that many of their parents had trouble reading in French because it was not their first language.
“We don’t often think about it, but today, even in Quebec, literacy is a real problem,” said Lehoux. He said that teaching people to read is a long-term solution, but that his new job can help in the meantime.
Lehous said, “I think this is a really low-tech solution for people.” “I think town crier is a great idea for a short-term fix.”
Even in winter, the crier will still make announcements twice a week
Lehoux hopes that word of this project will get around town and that the town square will get busier each week as he makes announcements every two weeks at 12:30 p.m., even in the winter.
“Just wear really, really warm clothes, and you’ll be fine,” Lehoux said.
Lehoux hopes it will be like when people in Quebec used to meet on the church steps on Sundays to talk about what was going on in their community.
Lehoux said, “I really want to set up a weekly meeting place where people can come to meet each other, say hello, chat for a bit, and then hear the latest news.”