REALLY BELIEVE JEAN BEAULNE
has never given up being a Baronet.
Three decades have passed since he left the group in 1969, but he still
remembers those years of folly and fame, combined with the years of
poverty and the difficult process of becoming an artist. Together with
René Angélil and Pierre Labelle he lived through the late 1950s and the
1960s with the heedlessness and vulnerability of youth. For a dozen
years Jean Beaulne shared his daily existence with René. The two know
one another like brothers. Time, and Céline Dion's career, kept them
apart for a while, but inevitably the major events of their respective lives
brought them together again, almost as if these two old comrades could
no longer escape their past.
I met Jean Beaulne in the course of my work as a journalist. I
attended the funeral of Pierre Labelle, the third Baronet, and noticed
the pains Jean had taken in organizing the moving ceremony, which
was attended by René Angélil, who was accompanied by his wife,
Céline Dion. Jean Beaulne was able to make the Baronets live again
that day. It was the last time the three of them would be together.
René and Jean were accompanying Pierre on his last journey, and as
they said goodbye to their old friend they were also burying a part of
their youth.