I was eleven when I moved to rue Bordeaux. I had gone to spend the weekend at my friend Danis’ chalet, as I happened to do from time to time. When I got back on Sunday, I had to go to my new address, where, during my absence, my mother had moved in with the usual help of her friends.

It was a small apartment block and since my mother hated them particularly, I had never lived in one before. Arrived in front of the glass door that separated me from the portico where were the trunk boxes of all the occupants of the block, as well as a cupboard where the concierge stored his various accessories; I found myself uncertain where I was going, a little disoriented by the novelty of going for the first time to an apartment that I have never visited and where I will spend most of my time for at least the next year.

A little reassured by the intense sound of vibration emitted by the « buzzer » which released the door to me after a few minutes of waiting, I entered the building quickly, making sure to reach the second door before anyone had their finger. on the switch, do not remove it, which would have blocked my way and forced me to ring again.

After having quickly visited the place and said hello to my mother and the few friends who had come to give her a hand to tidy up the apartment, I hastened to go to my room, where, of all the boxes that were there. I found and eventually I had to empty the contents and put them back in my room, I grabbed the one that I knew contained what I wanted most in the world: my collection of « comic-books ».

Initiated to their readings a few years before, the parallel universe where the heroes who filled the pages evolved had invaded every nook and cranny of my imagination. Week after week. I ran to the corner store, to get, in exchange for the few dollars that made up my weekly allowance, the adventures of the « Fantastic Four », the « Avengers », « Iron Man », « Captain America », but especially « Daredevil ».

Blinded during an accident where his face was struck by a radioactive object, young Matt Murdock had succeeded, through tenacity and determination, to become an athlete and a vigilante fighting for justice. Dressed in a mask to protect his anonymity and thus protect his loved ones, he made order reign in the ill-fated neighborhood from which he came, alone, armed with his courage, a stick, and his keen senses. superhuman degree by the accident of which he had been the victim.

I had found my vocation; I was going to be a super hero.

That year, we went on a trip to the United States. As my mother was alone and my father did not pay the pension he was supposed to give her every month, this summer she had to take a second job in the evening at the St-Jacques clinic. neighborhood popular clinic.

So I stayed several evenings a week, alone at home, listening to translations of American detective series at Télé-Métropole: Kojak, Dragnet, Stop Thief, SWAT… I also spent a lot of time reading, rereading, classifying and cataloging my precious « comic-books », and to research and acquire the numbers that I lacked in order to have the complete series. So I scoured the streets of the city in search of small shops where I could find the treasures that perhaps lay there.

This is how I discovered, one day, the dusty and hyper flammable (we noticed a few years later) book palace. Six storeys of seasoned timber, built at the turn of the century to be used as a factory, and which had been filled, jumbled, with books, magazines and several tons of whatever publications, printed on paper; with the aim of reselling them, at a fraction of the original price, and where, for the next few months, I would venture, almost every week, to unearth the few gems that the mystery of this mess would deign well reveal me.

That summer I went to see « The Empire Strikes Back » about twenty times in the cinema.

At my birthday, which, as in all years, came the end of summer and the imminent return to school, I received as a gift, a little Spanish cat that I named Gribouille on the recommendation of my aunt. My mother had organized a « corn roast », where, as usual, she had invited the family, but also several of her friends who, all, were accompanied by several offspring. It was therefore surrounded by more than twenty friends that I celebrated the start of my eleventh year, in joy, in the middle of the fairground atmosphere that inevitably reigned at home, all the times when my mother and her friends were celebrating.

I had, that year, as a teacher, a kind of crank with frizzy gray hair, dressed, it seemed to me, in a jacket cut out of a carpet, and which had been, due to an unfortunate incident in which he had uses force with a student who is dismissed for his services after only a few weeks. Mr. Perrier.

It was not uncommon for this teaching Australopithecus to fall asleep during school hours, sometimes even in the middle of a sentence. He also came out of class regularly, several times a day, only to come back a few minutes later, looking confused and his face flushed with some strange ritual he was performing in the teachers’ bathroom. Either way, he had been replaced by a new kind, alternate-method educator named Paul, who most students considered « a fag. »

It was in this sixth year class that I met Daniel and André, also passionate about « comics ». Dragging together backyards, alleys and any other place that could provide us with a place to climb or jump, we shared this passion, this dream, of being covered in a sticky costume and of becoming masked adventurers, Heroes . During hours when the teacher spoke in front of the class, we secretly modeled the muscular forms of the heroes of our « comic-books » to then draw the different costumes in which we: « Captain Justice », « Hell Wolf » and « Black Devil », let’s go and bring justice.

So it was one afternoon after school, during one of our training expeditions, that a conversation occurred about Dodo, a neighborhood guy I had noticed during the summer, when he wowed the little boys in the neighborhood by indulging in athletic and acrobatic feats that were far beyond my own abilities, so he immediately disliked me.

« Do you know Dodo? » « 

« I think so, a cool one who lives on my street? » « 

« It’s hot in Christ this guy! » « 

« Yes, put it on, he’s a great stuntman, he’s already jumped down from a third floor. « 

“He does pirouettes, flip-flops, it’s sickening. « 

“It seems that he would have already participated in black masses with his brothers. « 

« Do you know they’re in Popeye’s brothers? » « 

« The Popeye’s? « 

“It’s a gang of bicycles. « 

Dominic was a little legend among the neighborhood kids; to hear them, he was a prodigy, and it is with this bias, that while we were training to make jumps from the stairs adjacent to the floor, located in front of my house, that we met him, a a fine October evening, as he passed, returning home.

“   Hey Dodo! « 

“  Hey André, are you okay? « 

“Hey Man, let’s practice doing stunts! « 

« Are you tempted to train us? » « 

Even if, at first approach, he seemed a little reluctant to the idea, as if he had been asked this a thousand times before, he was still not that difficult to convince and we learned that same evening to do jumps. hands, step over fences, and do judo somersaults to break falls. Dodo had of course, question of impressing us, practiced all kinds of acrobatics the most incredible, each other. He had also obviously made the three of us fly in the air in one of those friendly brawls that were to become commonplace.

Dodo was an entertainer. He was at his best when he had an audience to admire him. He performed, in front of us, feats that he had never practiced, or then, once or twice, in a natural way, as if it were the hundredth time, and this, often at the risk of serious accidents.

He always seemed to be the best, at all, nothing was to his test. He could easily rob a score of pursuers. He could climb onto a roof through a facade and come back down from behind, in two or three minutes. He could leap over a moving car and flip his hand on the hood, then dive head first over the fence across the street and come in, roll, and get up. of the same momentum and keep running.

It was therefore under his tutelage that we spent the following winter, jumping in the snow and doing pirouettes, climbing on the roofs, walking silently, and sometimes also, illegally entering the high school. who was right in front of us, during clandestine training missions.

It was one January evening, while I was slowly recovering from a pneumonia that I had contracted, during the two weeks of Christmas vacation, spent jumping in snow banks, that Dominic who had come to visit me, spoke to me about it for the first time.

There was, in this neighborhood a mysterious inhabitant, who haunted the roofs of the neighborhood in the evenings when the moon was clear in the sky. Dressed in a colorful, clingy suit, silent as a shadow, he was called the Omega Man. The young people of the district had seen him, for years, perform prodigious feats. He would have been seen crossing an alley, from one roof to another, with a stride, only to disappear in a cloud of smoke. Dodo had seen him too, several times, and every time he had tried to approach him he was gone, like a dream.

He could talk about it for hours. One day when I was starting to recover and we were strolling down the street, he pointed to a hut, serving as a mini fourth floor, on the corner of Marie-Anne and Bordeaux, which he believed to be the landmark of Omega Man.

Small extension of wood and tin round ed three windows, which had been added to the house, I do not know what function the « Shack Omega, » as we were now baptized the scene, was in addition to our mythology juvenile and was to be at the heart of all my thoughts for the next few weeks, just that, a few weeks later, as the last signs of winter were retreating, I decided with André and Daniel to try Unravel the mystery by going there via a metal ladder, condemned, which allowed me to climb on the roof through the balcony of an apartment on the third floor.

Crossing « the English court » we therefore climbed the fire escape, to then hoist ourselves, one by one, along this ladder which had in fact become two metal rods, and walking silently on tiptoes like us. We were drawn into it, and we headed for the corner where the hut was.

Arrived at the edge of this mysterious place we approached, hesitating, and examined attentively the door which had been barricaded and whose window had been replaced by a dismal sheet of tin. Having quickly removed the few wooden planks that held the door from opening, we quickly realized that in addition to being barricaded from the outside, the door had also been locked from the inside.

A little scared of the possibility that someone, Omega Man or someone else, could not get out of it, we still risked trying to force the door, but we duly quickly face the obvious, that the only way it was possible to open this door was from the inside, and that, unless it was still there, which was becoming less and less likely due to the absence of any signs of life while emanating, and this, in spite of all the hustle and bustle that we caused there; the person who had barred the door of this cabin must inevitably have come out of the windows.

So I decided, clinging firmly to the edge of the roof of the hut, to walk along the mini ledge that surrounded it, and, in a gesture motivated by the excitement of the moment, I braved the abyss of more than twelve meters which separated me from the ground and slipped me up to the middle window which was not barred, and pushing it in, I entered it gently.

After having opened the latch which barred it, I opened the door slowly in front of the illuminated looks of Daniel and André who hastened to enter in their turn. Small dusty cabin, barely over a meter and a half high, abundantly illuminated by three windows and in which there was that odor which results from the accumulation of dust on surfaces of old dry wood; “The Omega cabin” was to become our secret landmark, our Mount Olympus. Isolated from the rest of the world by the dozen meters that separated us from it, we would go, from there, in the weeks and months that were to follow, to plan the operations, the night-time activities that would establish our reputation. From there, we were going to fabricate myths.

There was on the rue DeLorimier, on the other side of our block, an abandoned house, which we knew under the name of « Maison Chinoise », and which, deserted for several years already, had acquired, in the neighborhood, the reputation for harboring vagrants, drug addicts and other neighborhood criminals.

Many stories circulated about it where the huge three-story house served as a den for thieves who stored their goods there or in which aggressive and unfriendly « robineux » came to shelter from the weather and the eyes. There was therefore a gloomy atmosphere and several young people from the neighborhood even maintained that the place was haunted.

It was therefore filled with apprehension that we approached, on this radiant spring day, one of the many doors which gave access to the interior of the house and that we followed Dominic who, entering carefully into the premises, we calmly motioned to follow him. Located under the rear balcony, this half-door which had obviously been barricaded several times, gave access to the basement of this century-old house. Heaped up here and there in the rooms bordering the corridor we had taken, piles of newspapers and mattresses shared with heaps of the most diverse objects the space of these spacious apartments.

Frightened by the thought of stepping on a sleeping wanderer or meeting some other monster that might have taken refuge there, we proceeded through the dark hallway with the utmost restraint, and in almost complete silence. One by one, in single file, we approached the central room where the staircase leading upstairs was located. Gradually reassured, we began to let our nervousness come out in the form of a few laughs of excitement.

It was then that we realized that Dodo, our leader, and guide in this adventure, had disappeared. Seized with great terror, we instinctively gathered us close to each other and, our gaze pointed towards the door through which we had entered, strained our ears to pick up some signs of our hero’s life or to detect any dangers that might arise. could arise from this lair, into which we had entered.

Faced with total silence, we began to quietly return to the door through which we had entered and which would serve as an emergency exit if ever some problems should arise. Our evacuation rate increased in tone as we heard footsteps coming from the upper floor and our silent procession on tiptoe quickly turned into a frantic rush to escape potential danger as quickly as possible. who had just been guessed.

Animated by a feeling of panic, more and more invading, we rushed, at full speed, towards the only source of light: become, in a fraction of a second, our only access to the relative security of the outside; when all of a sudden, against the light, a silhouette appeared that cut our way, transforming the mixture of excitement and panic from which we were possessed into a feeling of deep dread which expressed itself in a chain reaction of screams when we heard him let go in a loud voice: « They are here, I have them !!! « .

Dashing sharply on Daniel who had almost come out, the individual grabbed him firmly with one arm while trying, on the other, to hold back my waistcoat which he had managed to grab one end. Seized with an irrepressible panic and an equally uncontrollable confusion, it took us several long seconds before we realized that our assailant was none other than Dodo who had once again made a joke to us, and who, quick like a panther, had succeeded in losing us and quickly crossed the house on the upper floor in the opposite direction, to rush back to the door where he made the last gestures of his staging.

Warned of the situation by the laughter that we let go, as we realized the comedy of the situation, André emerged from the corner where he had been hiding and, giggling nervously he returned to the formation and we walked once more towards the room. inside the house, this time completely free of all fear, Dodo visibly familiar with the area and certain of their safety.

When we reached the first floor, we were dazzled by a few rays which pierced through the many tears which ran through the films of paper which covered the windows of the house from the inside, and which revealed to us the splendours hidden behind the walls of this mysterious building. Under ceilings more than four meters high, each of the three floors of this house, in a fashionable architectural style at the turn of the century, housed nine spacious rooms where there were some old furniture covered with dust as well as, just like below. -floor, piles of newspapers and mattresses. There too the ground was littered with the most diverse objects scattered all over the ground.

What a joy it was to ‘ have, to ourselves, this elegant and mysterious palace. Several times a week, coming back from school, we would stop there for a few moments, returning home with the few items that we had picked up in this mess and that we used in our acrobatic demonstrations and in our training. This is how I noticed one day, when I was coming back from my lessons, that Dodo and André had brought back some of the mattresses that covered the floor of our Ali Baba cave and that they had placed them on the floor of my yard so that they could be used to break our fall to jump off the roof of a small shed a few meters high that ran along one side of my yard.

Already busy that they were using the installation, I hastened to join in the activity, and, according to the few technical advices which Dodo quickly gave me on the edge of the roof, I threw myself the buttocks in front to land sitting in the mattresses as he demonstrated to me by launching himself downstairs, him, with a perilous forward, landing in the mattresses on his back.

This moment, exhilarating as it was, was only the first moment in a series of events which would culminate a few weeks later, but which now seems to me with the perspective of time, to have been like a golden age, which lasted an eternity, and where, all the ordinary which becomes, it seems to me, the standard of our lives, faded, to let shine in our existence, the moment of spring, a hint of magic, this light rare that demonstrates to us, beyond any doubt, the sublime design of the world.

In the days that followed, we busied ourselves industriously picking up all the decent mattresses we could find at « M C. » first, then on the sidewalks in the neighborhood. All this activity did not fail to attract all the kids in the area who rushed, every afternoon, after school, to come and watch our acrobatics and, for the more adventurous, to try to accomplish some of the jumps, or stunts, of which we gave them the example.

So in the space of one or two weeks we attracted more than ten people a day, some days more than twenty. Proudly wearing a vest bearing the emblem Dodo had drawn on it, we regrouped under the banner of a group, a gang. Made up of me, Dodo, André and Danis, a friend that I hadn’t seen for some time and that I had recently called to join our adventures, the ACs: Acrobats, stuntmen, were born.

We organized shows and games which always involved more and more participants, certain “couraille” games monopolizing more than thirty players. During these events, we split the group into two clans, one of which, the pursuers, had to catch up and touch the members of the opposing team until they were all, thus, eliminated; the pursuers then became the pursued and the pursued the pursuers.

This is how we gradually appropriated the block where we almost all lived. Each courtyard, each flowerbed, each alley, was used to the maximum of its possibilities, to the great despair of the inhabitants of the district who could no longer see us crossing their fenced yards, climbing on their balconies and running on their roofs. .

One evening, when I was coming back from going to see a movie at the cinema, I met, arriving in front of my house, André who was surrounded by the kids from the neighborhood, who, looking totally excited and his eyes riveted on the roof of my house, told the most incredible stories. According to him, who had just arrived on the scene, the young people told him that while they were training, with Dodo, to do pirouettes on the lawn of the parterre of the block where I lived; Omega Man would have appeared to them. 

Strolling along the chain of roofs, and Dominic having seen him, he would have immediately started in pursuit. Having noticed our leader trying to approach it by climbing the facade of the three-story building, to the total amazement of the kids in the area, he would then have disappeared in an intense red flash, his silhouette apparently dissolved in the thick cloud of smoke that resulted.

When Dominic returned a few minutes later, he told us breathlessly that there was no sign of him anywhere. and that Omega Man seemed, once again, to have vanished.

In our training sessions for the next few days, he reigned supreme and unmissable excitement as the name of our legendary hero was on everyone’s lips and the few witnesses to the event repeated tirelessly, to whoever wanted it. ‘hear their versions of events.

The training sessions then gathered more and more people and also stretched further and further into the evening, and as the days grew longer and longer, as summer approached, we multiplied the missions. of surveillance and exploration in order to try to make contact with the mysterious character or to gather some information on his identity.

Then one evening, while Dodo invited us to visit his hangar where he had set up a laboratory, he disclosed to us the secret of Omega Man. A tradition that he himself had borrowed from the oldest of his brothers, he had staged, over the years, dozens of appearances of the lunatic, and it was this time with the help of André that he had made the last appearance.

Smoke, mannequins, ropes, grapples and pulleys, there was everything here to simulate the most incredible, the most fantastic apparitions. Well hidden from view, behind a false wall, which was accessed by a secret door built inside a cupboard, Dominic and his brothers had built a secret room, a dark room where they devoted themselves to developing photos, and where Dominic made us enter revealing us the uniform, the combination and the mask, of Omega Man.

New initiates of this esoteric tradition, swore to us, that evening, to always keep the secret and to perpetuate the tradition, Omega Man, guardian of the night, servant of the dream, would continue to live. The costume having been passed on to André, the torch was in our hands and it was now our honor to ensure the continuity. It is therefore, inhabited by this spirit that we busied ourselves, during the weeks following this revelation, to perfect our techniques, of course, but also to develop the surroundings to prepare the night outings that we were going, in our turn, to put on. on stage.

Various accessories were left in strategic places, along the various routes which were arranged to facilitate our movements. Fences were modified, padlocks cut, objects left here and there, along our roads, as ladders, to allow us to easily climb to places where it would have been more difficult, we had even removed the bricks from some walls , so as to allow us to climb quickly and easily.

________________________________________________________________

Then one day on my way back from school I was told by “Néné”, a young man from the neighborhood, that “La Ville” had come during the day and had brought all our mattresses on the pretext that it was a fire danger. . Like that, without appeal, our dream was torn from us. Our collective hallucination had been interrupted. Mr. Pinard, my next door neighbor, had had enough, and he had unilaterally used the police to put an end, once and for all, to our activities. This event came to end, suddenly, a perfect season, a collective Satori, in June, 1981.

Afterwards, it was as if the spell had been broken. The bubble had burst, the gang dispersed like billiard balls to the scrapyard. Dodo moved to Rivière des prairies, I to Ville LaSalle, and although we continued to socialize and perpetuate our intrepid adventures, the magic that reigned in the heart of our gatherings seemed to dissolve with the quantity of participants and Omega Man, pure flame. which shone in the crucible of the union of our passions, faded, like a dream on awakening.