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All inducted songs
"A song that I’ve loved when I first heard it a long time ago." - Leonard Cohen
La Manic
  • Year Inducted: 2006
  • Written In: 1966
Songwriters
Georges Dor Songwriter
Artists
Bruno Pelletier
Jean-Marie Vivier
La Manic, a song in the form of a letter by a young man telling his girlfriend back home of the loneliness of workers building dams up north on the Manicouagan River, sold more than 150,000 copies at the time of its initial release. It was later released as part of Georges Dor’s debut album, which remains one of the most popular collections ever produced by a Quebec songwriter.

Georges Dor began his career working for a number of private radio stations where he wrote his first radio sketches before joining Radio-Canada in Montreal (1957-1967) as an announcer, news writer and producer. On the prompting of the poet Gaston Miron, Dor turned to songwriting. Initially powered by La Manic, his new career as a popular singer began in 1966. Soon invited on a European tour by the French impresario Jacques Canetti, Dor took his songs to the Trois Baudets in Paris and the Palais des festivals in Cannes. He went to perform at the Comédie Canadienne (1969), Place des Arts’ Port-Royal Theatre, the Butte à Mathieu club in Val-David, north of Montreal, and Centre d’art de Percé in the Gaspé region. Soon after, Dor quit performing while continuing to record songs and beginning to write lyrics on music by the pianist Robert Séguin.

Dor had a profound impact on Quebec popular music in his too short career. His songs paint a mythical portrait of women and of the daily lives of ordinary people. He also wrote a few comedies and two popular television series, “Les Moineau et les Pinson” and “L’âme-soeur“.

In 1972, the Montreal radio station CKAC named La Manic, also known as La Complainte de la Manic, the most popular song of the past 50 years. Who would have thought that a love letter written by an ordinary worker would inspire a song forever engraved in our collective memory?

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La Manic (by Georges Dor) - performed by Marabu
"La Manic", written and composed by Georges Dor, performed by pop duo Marabu at the 2006 CSHF Induction Ceremony.
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