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All inducted songs
“It’s a song that brought families together and contributed greatly to a feeling of togetherness.”
Gens du pays
  • Year Inducted: 2006
  • Written In: 1975
Songwriters
Gilles Vigneault Songwriter
© Photo Credit SOCAN
Gaston Rochon Composer
Artists
Gilles Vigneault, Louise Forestier and Yvon Deschamps famously sang Gens du pays in harmony on June 24, 1975 on Montreal’s Mount Royal. It was Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day and the song’s first public appearance.

Vigneault apparently wrote Gens du pays after the singer Louise Forestier and the comedian Yvon Deschamps challenged him to write a song to supplant Happy Birthday. In rapid order, the new song was part of all family, social and political events in Quebec. When the casket of former Quebec premier René Lévesque was carried out of the church where his funeral had just been held, the crowd waiting outside spontaneously broke into Gens du pays, which is linked to the Quebec sovereignty option and has become a rallying cry. It is Quebec’s unofficial national anthem.

According to René Lévesque, Gens du pays remains “the most beautiful Quebec song in the minds of all Quebecers.”

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