| Paul Demers | |
| Background: | solo_singer |
| Birth Date: | 9 March 1956 |
| Birth Place: | Gatineau, Quebec |
| Death Place: | Ottawa, Ontario |
| Genre: | folk rock |
| Occupation: | singer-songwriter |
| Years Active: | 1979–2016 |
Paul Demers (March 9, 1956 – October 29, 2016) was a Canadian singer-songwriter.[1] He was best known for writing the song "Notre Place", which came to be recognized as an anthem of the Franco-Ontarian community.[2]
Born in Gatineau, Quebec,[1] his family moved to Ottawa, Ontario when he was 16.[1] He began performing as a musician in adulthood, touring music festivals across Ontario and forming the band Purlaine in 1979.[1] Following a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in the early 1980s, however, he took several years off from music to undergo cancer treatment.[1]
He came out of retirement in 1986 to write the lyrics to "Notre place", which was originally commissioned for a gala to celebrate the passage of Ontario's 1986 French Language Services Act.[1] The song came to be adopted as the Franco-Ontarian community's unofficial anthem,[2] and was formally designated as the community's official anthem by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 2017.[3] [4]
Following "Notre place", Demers returned to touring, both as a solo artist and with musicians Robert Paquette and Marcel Aymar in the group Paquette-Aymar-Demers,[5] released three albums, and worked as a theatre producer and director.[6] A biography of him, by writer Pierre Albert, was published by Éditions Interligne in 1992.[7]
Demers was diagnosed with mesothelioma in January 2016.[2] He gave a retrospective interview from his hospital bed to the Ici Radio-Canada Première program Grands Lacs Café in the fall, prior to his death on October 29.[2]