Although most of his career was spent in France, Garou never left Quebec to settle in Paris. But why has the 53-year-old singer never taken this step?
Garou, who is a guest on the prime of the Star Academy this January 24, is preparing to leave his native Quebec for several months to tour the stages of France, Belgium and Switzerland as part of his tour which begins at the end of January in Paris. The singer may have a successful career in Europe, but it is in Canada that he lives year-round. But why did he never settle in France?
Why did Garou never want to live in France?
“Many people here think that I left Quebec to live in Paris, when that was never the case“, Garou had fun in an interview with the Canadian media 7 Days. Since his beginnings in the 90s, the native of the city of Sherbrooke has built most of his career as an artist in France. But his personal life is in Canada: “Europe has always been my work life, while here it was home, with family, friends and my habits“.
The former interpreter of Quasimodo in the cult musical Notre-Dame-de-Paris is particularly attached to his native province and he does not intend to leave it one day. “There is no other place in the world where I would like to live than Quebec. I am proud to be Quebecois and to live here, even if my office was sometimes elsewhere“, he assured.
But for Garou, there is still a “big flat“to this geographical separation between public and private life.”It’s that I was often less generous with television and the Quebec public, but it’s such a small market that I didn’t feel too bad about leaving more room for others.“, explained the man who was still director of the Star AcademyCanadian version of telehook, in 2024.
Garou, his two houses and his life in the forest “thanks to money” from Notre-Dame-de-Paris
When he’s not in the spotlight in Europe, the hit singer Alone And Downwind spends peaceful days in Sherbrooke, his hometown, where he has two houses, one of which is in the forest. “I bought a 60 hectare plot of land (…) I have two houses there, five minutes from each other. I named the first one ‘Notre-Dame de Paris’, after having bought it with the money I earned from this musical! It is located on the edge of a lake“, he detailed to the Parisian Weekend.
And when he’s not singing, Emelie’s father (his 24-year-old daughter) grows his own maple syrup: “This activity has no commercial dimension, I offer the production to my loved ones. Going into nature to see if the sap is flowing, starting a fire and monitoring the chemical process, that does me a lot of good“. A simple pleasure that he only finds in his beloved province.
