Roberval-born comedian Jeff Boudreault describes his first meeting with his wife-to-be as very special. When he first saw her, he was in high school and asked her to marry him. Next March they will celebrate their 30th anniversary as a couple.
Catherine and Jeff have never lost their originality. They had planned to adopt a child after their first child. After the birth of Victor, they adopted a beautiful and dynamic Haitian woman, Marie, and then Emmanuel was born.
Your father was strict.
My father Russell was the authority at home. How many times did my mother Nicole say to my sisters Martine, Maryse and me: “Wait until your father gets home”.
Your father worked a lot.
He worked in the upkeep of the Ursuline College and was a plasterer in the evenings. He barely made $24,000 a year, but we weren’t short of anything.
You didn’t touch the steps of the Continental store.
I had a seizure in the toy department. My father grabbed my arm and I never touched the stairs on the way up.
You were 13 when your parents divorced.
I told my mother that I didn’t know what would happen to me if I lived with her, so I chose a man I met.
Hunting and fishing were unforgettable moments with your father.
My time spent hunting and fishing with my father will always stay in my heart especially the time we got lost in the forest.
You got lost in the woods for a day.
We were fishing when my father, uncle and I got lost. I was so tired that my father carried me in his arms despite his 130 pounds.
You didn’t have a compass.
We spun in circles in the woods without realizing it. Suddenly the sound of a car noise! Eagerly we made our way to where we had heard the noise.
How far were you from the place?
It’s embarrassing to admit, but we were only 500 feet from the road.
You had friends who weren’t necessarily good.
Honestly, if I hadn’t changed my friends, I could have ended up dead or in jail.
You didn’t like going to school.
I believe I am part of a future-oriented school system. In elementary school, I often didn’t get the required grades, but the teachers passed me. Everything changed in high school because they forced me to repeat my freshman year. I found out a few years later that I was a child with ADHD.
You were a comedian in high school without even knowing it.
I sat at the back of the class and cracked jokes that my friends repeated.
Your teacher has changed your professional direction.
He visits me after class to find out if I was the instigator of those jokes. He asked me if I wasn’t tired of others acknowledging my sense of humor.
From secondary level 2 you wrote the bye the end of the year.
Yes, my teacher commissioned me to write the bye bye at the end of the year and it took until my cegep.
You weren’t the last one picked for a team anymore.
The success I had with my plays at school gave me confidence and from that moment I became an important person in the eyes of the students.
You were a peddler.
During the weekdays I delivered the newspapers to the other vendors in the Hyundai Colt with Mrs. Morin before heading out. However, I also handed out flyers and decided to deliver the Sunday newspaper as I didn’t like going to Mass.
You have worked in several other places.
I worked at Canadian Tire in the steel mill, but the turning point in my career trucking chickens was when I found myself in the hospital doing my Gros Bill laundry after injuring my elbow in a schoolyard. I decided that being a machinist wasn’t for me.
“I wouldn’t pay for you to be a clown.”
I wanted to go to humor school, but it was very expensive. My father said to me, “I wouldn’t pay for you to be a clown.”
There was a party at La Traversée Internationale du Lac-Saint-Jean.
The bars were packed, I can still see the bartenders walking the streets with a case of 24 beers on their shoulders. When the race turned into a tour I was at the start at midnight and we partied all night and day until the swimmers came back.
Young people attacked you on the street.
Two young people came out from behind an Acadian car to attack me. I ran, luckily they never caught me. The next day I bought a used Karen Beaulieu folk rabbit without ever having seen it. She didn’t understand why I didn’t want to see the car. It was easy for me, I needed a car so I wouldn’t be attacked walking the streets late at night.
You wrote a summer game.
I had so much fun, especially telling the artists we would share the profits. I was also part of a humorous duo, Les Colons, with François Maranda.
Your wife is your love, your partner and an extraordinary woman.
Catherine is an extraordinary woman who wakes up every morning with her beautiful smile. We are a couple who love each other very much, we respect each other enormously and always want to realize new projects. We never forgot that we were a couple before we became parents. Your smile is the sunshine of the family.
