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ON MAGAZINE
On October 13, 1990 Celine Dion appeared on the cover of the famous magazine "Le Lundi", published in Quebec, Canada.
ADISQ GALA
On October 21, 1990 Celine Dion took part at the 12th ADISQ Gala Ceremony, wich took place at the Place-des-Arts in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Celine was accompanied by her manager, Rene Angelil. ADISQ, the organization that honours excellence in the Quebec music industry, gave to the francophone singer, Celine an award for Anglophone Artist of the Year. At the gala that year, which was televised live across Canada, Celine, in a disagreement about the category, refused to accept the award. "I´m not an English speaker", Celine declared. "Wherever I go, no matter what country I´m in, I tell people I´m a Quebecker". There was a moment of stunned silence, a few boos, then thunderous applause. ADISQ president Andre Menard rushed backstage, where a soap opera-style drama was brewing. Celine´s decision to not accept the award, and the statement she made when turning it down, became the basis for a controversy that received a great deal of coverage in Canada´s anglophone press. Ginette Reno was lecturing Celine. "You're not making any sense. If you didn´t intend to accept the award, you didn´t have to accept the nomination. You made a bad mistake, girl". Celine was sobbing. Rene tried to get Ginette to listen to reason. When he saw Menard, he turned toward him, thinking he was going to bawl Celine out. But Menard´s intentions were peaceable, and he just wanted to talk. He knew that Celine´s rejection of the award would cause trouble, and sooner or later, someone would have some explaining to do. Celine´s refusal and her statement set off a hot controversy in a province where everything related to language is hypersensitive. Even Jacques Parizeau, the leader of the Parti Quebecois and a die-hard supporter of independence, joined the debate by sending Celine his congratulations. So intense was media reaction that the award winners themselves were forgotten completely. In the industry, people were accusing Celine and Rene of undermining the winners. ADISQ even claimed that Celine and Rene had planned the whole thing. Mario Lefebvre, head of promotion at CBS records, had signed and returned the entry form approving the category Best English-Language Female Singer. What Rene did do, however, was bring before the public a debate that the ADISQ people would have preferred to conceal. He admitted to a reporter from the Montreal daily La Presse that they´d decided to act three weeks earlier. "I only hoped Celine would win so she could make her statement". Since the summer before, he´d been criticizing ADISQ for adding categories so that all their young hopefuls would have a better shot at an award. "At first, I didn´t realize what was going on", he admitted. "Then, when I figured out what they were trying to do, I said to myself that it would serve them right to be shown up as fools. Either they´re idiots and they can´t realize how badly they´re making Celine look in Quebeckers´ eyes, or they´re smart and they´re doing it on purpose. It was a pernicious prize. Sure, Celine recorded an album in English, but that didn´t make her an English-speaking artist. The ADISQ people were trying to put us in an impossible position. As far as I´m concerned, it was a setup". During that same ADISQ Gala, a local comedy group performed a cuttingly satirical song mocking Celine and her sister Claudette, who had just released an album produced by Rene. It depicted Celine as a compulsive winner, and her sister as an envious, frustrated loser. For Rene, it was proof positive that ADISQ, and particularly the hard-core pseudointellectuals who had taken it over, had nothing but contempt for his artist.
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