Racked by stress of 'ferocious renoviction,' former Quebec literary critic dies of heart attack

The apartment Jean-Roch Boivin spent the last 30 years of his life in is an empty shell. The walls have been stripped to their original brick. There is no floor, only beams dividing the space from the unit below. His beloved window overlooking Montreal's storied Square Saint-Louis is bare.

Boivin died Feb. 19 at the age of 79. He suffered a heart attack just weeks after moving out. He'd finally settled with the building's new owner, following an anguished fight to stay. 

Friends and family believe the stress caused by the move and the pressure tactics exercised by his new landlord contributed to his death. 

"It was very hard for him," said Wasim Osman, sitting on a small couch in his studio apartment tucked against the wall he shared with Boivin. "To remember that he has all these memories, carrying them with him to a new place, having to start a new life."

Those memories included watching the comings and goings of legendary playwright Michel Tremblay, who for years lived across the park, listening to a bohemian couple play tango music down below, going to the little farmer's market — taking in the neighbourhood's history and humanity.

Osman is the last holdout at 255 Square Saint-Louis Street. A racket of drilling and banging from construction crews on the floors below echoes throughout an interview Tuesday afternoon. A contractor had attempted to prevent a CBC crew from conducting the interview inside after consulting with his boss.

Osman and Boivin, a former literary critic for Le Devoir newspaper, became friends as the worst of the pandemic forced isolation into every home. 

Osman, a 34-year-old former Syrian refugee (and now Canadian citizen), moved into the building shortly after arriving in Canada in 2016, then into the top-floor unit next to Boivin's in 2018. For the first year or so, Osman and Boivin exchanged bonjours as they passed each other in the hallway, but nothing more. 

One day during the pandemic, Osman heard intense coughing next door and checked on his neighbour. The two grew close after that. They watched movies on Monday nights — classics by Elia Kazan and Sydney Pollack that Boivin wanted to show Osman. 

Osman would bring Boivin stuffed vine leaves his sister made. Boivin taught Osman about Quebec history and Montreal's changing mores of the 1960s, when he first moved to the city as a young gay man from the small town of Dolbeau on the north shore of Lac-Saint-Jean, about three and a half hours north of Quebec City. 

"He was kind and gentle. He understood why I didn't learn French yet," said Osman, who fled to Canada after being injured in the Syrian civil war.

"I was so happy to hear from him, of his life, how the standards and the values changed in the '60s."

Boivin, in turn, had wanted to learn about Osman's world. One of the last two books he was reading was an 1,800-page tome on the history of Syria. (The other was Londres, the recently unearthed manuscript of French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline). 

Osman and another neighbour, Greg Couture, who joined the fight against the new landlord, are named in a short obituary for Boivin published in Le Devoir this week. It said he'd died "after being the victim of a most ferocious renoviction."