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Founding Director of Alternatives, Pierre was a man of multiple passions. A voracious reader with indefatigable concentration, he kept an eye on all that went around in the world. A trained economist and academic, he believed in walking the road with the people fighting for social justice. Be it in Palestine, South Africa, Brazil, Pakistan or the interiors of India, he wanted to be there to learn and support.
Recently he was diagnosed of a tumour which turned out to be cancerous. But it was a very localized affair and the treatment of chemo and radiation therapy had concluded on 3 March. He wrote a long email to the Alternatives team on 5 March, preparing for the tasks ahead. His message began, “I had the last radio therapy treatment yesterday and so I am entering the recovery period, which will be less demanding for the next 2-3 weeks. Of course, there are still after-effects, but I expect to gradually get back into the normal "beat" in the days to come. I am writing to you today to re-launch your thoughts and ideas in the debates that we will have in the coming weeks”.
Tributes are coming in from friends and comrades from all over the world. He will be fondly remembered by his numerous friends, students and comrades. Many in the coming years will continue to learn from the several books and zillions of articles he published.
An old time comrade Judy Rebick, founding publisher of rabble.ca remembers him “He was an extraordinary alliance builder internationally and between Quebec and English Canada. He introduced me to international solidarity work through Alternatives and the World Social Forum. He encouraged me to write about the struggle in Latin America and to go on a mission to Palestine. He was a great leader, an extraordinary thinker and had a big heart. The world will miss Pierre just when we need him most”.
Our friend Malcolm Guy, a political activist and filmmaker wrote: “Pierre was dedicated to serving the people who struggle for liberation and fundamental change. We will have to work hard to fill the space he leaves. Our sincere condolences to his friends, comrades and family.”
And his struggle for justice started when he was in his teens. On 26 November 2021 he had gone to the hospital for his first body scan. On his return he wrote to me: “This scan took lots of time. I suppose now they know all my little secrets. They were struck by the many [bullet] pellets I have in my back. I was glad to tell them that it came from the police and the scabs during the taxi drivers strike in November 1969.” This incident had happened when working as a taxi driver he had gone to support taxi drivers striking against the airport monopoly of taxis and buses by the Murray-Hill company.
Our friend and comrade from Niger, Moussa Tchangari, founding Director of Alternative Espaces Citoyens wrote to us: “Pierre’s journey as a fighter, from his native Quebec to several places in the world, is recounted in a recent book that I enjoyed reading; a particularly interesting work through which Pierre plunges us, sometimes with a touch of humor and derision, into the "small world" of Quebec revolutionary activists of the 1970s.
Through this book, which is intended for the younger generation, Pierre also immerses us in various progressive and revolutionary milieus where he went to meet men and women who rose up against injustice and exploitation; and we discover how he became what he was until March 8, 2022: a great alterglobalism activist, a resolutely committed revolutionary, far removed from the dogmatism and parochialism of his youth. Those who knew him will testify to his open-mindedness, to his will to contribute to the gathering of all progressives in Quebec and elsewhere in the world; they will testify to the small and large stones he turned to build Alternatives Canada, Alternatives International, Cahiers du socialism, and many other solid institutions.
In Niger, a country he visited at the invitation of Alternative Espaces Citoyens within the framework of the first Niger Social Forum in 2006, we remember Pierre Beaudet as a great comrade who always believed in us and in our struggle.”
Our friend from Palestine, Refaat Sabah, founding Director of the Teachers Creativity Centre shared with me the last letter Pierre wrote to him which ends as “I will keep you posted of my own challenges. And hoping that you keep me posted with your advances and challenges in our beautiful Palestine”.
And here in Quebec, the “tiny village of Asterix” as Pierre often called it, the sitting member of Quebec parliament from the Left party Quebec Solidaire Andrés Fontecilla writes “Pierre Beaudet, suddenly, too suddenly, has left us. His family, his friends, his comrades, the entire Quebec left is shaken today. It is all of Quebec that has lost an intellectual, an activist, a man committed to the struggles of his time, located at the very heart of the Quebec socialist project; fighting for social justice and the social and political advancement of the people, of his people. For the Quebec left, today, the soul is at half-mast...”
Pierre is survived by his two sons Alexandre and Victor. His former partner Anne Latendresse published a touching tribute on her Facebook page:
“Pierre, the father of my son, my accomplice of more than 30 years, left us during the night of March 7, 8. Death came to get him at home, without even waving to us. We were not prepared...
Your beautiful messages full of love, camaraderie, friendship and sympathy, coming from the four corners of the world, touch us and accompany us in our sorrow. They also give us the courage to go forward like Pierre who, in adversity, never gave up…
His heart was so big that he carried the whole planet and embraced those men and women who suffer and struggle to transform the world. With lucidity, he despaired at our inability to achieve this. But from Gramcsi, he had learned to practice "the pessimism of intelligence and the optimism of will".
