Friend #25 - Monsieur Marjollet
My university French prof
I met Monsieur Marjollet for the first time in January 2017 when I was in his French class during my second year of university. It was also in his class that I met some of my closest friends. He created an environment that thrived on intellectualism and language study inevitably has a habit of bringing people together.
I have a specific memory of Monsieur Marjollet that I look back on. One that I’m sure he won’t remember. In my final year of university, I took a second course with him— it was a small group with people whom I knew prior. Monsieur Marjollet asked us a question to which no one responded and he said, “This isn’t cute anymore. You’re not little kids.”
It’s something I’ve thought about—something I repeat to myself when I’m scared to share an opinion, “I’m a grown woman, this isn’t cute anymore.”
Monsieur Marjollet was born in Lyon in the 1950s. His father was in the French resistance during the Second World War and his parents met in the years that followed. “They referred to the war every day. I grew up with the war,” he tells me. “My parents were happy the war was over but the memory was always there.”
His grandparents had lived through both world wars and his grandfather in particular suffered for the rest of his life due to a wound. “He was the opposite of joie de vivre,” says Monsieur Marjollet. “Tristesse de vivre.”
The decades after the war were ones of great change. “There were new innovations like fridges and washing machines. In May of 1968, lots of protests began in France and it was really a revolution. People just wanted to go and study and change the world,” he explains.
Monsieur Marjollet always had plans of leaving Lyon. He spent ninth grade in Scotland and studied in Manchester during university.
In 1975 he arrived in Toronto as an exchange student at the University of Toronto. “My first choice was to go to England or the States and so after a year I was ready to leave,” he says. Three days before his flight, he was contacted about a bilingual administration role that he had applied for through the university. He accepted the job and has been in Canada since.
“I left home because I wanted to start a new life. I wasn’t fleeing war or torture or hunger. It was because I chose to,” he makes clear.
He began teaching in 1977 and didn’t expect to stay past the first semester. “But I don’t like to quit,” he says. “Eventually I got a full-time position and I stayed.”
Monsieur Marjollet retired in July 2020. “I liked working with students because I learn from them. If I don’t learn, there is no point in teaching,” he says.
French society, though at times pessimistic, is less individualistic than North America. This is ultimately made clear by yearly protests including the current civil unrest in regard to the raise in retirement age.
As a student in his classes, it was evident that Monsieur Marjollet inhabited many parts of his Frenchness. He is always well-dressed and admits that Paris is his favorite city because he finds Lyon to be too provincial. “Paris is Paris,” he says.
“In my free time, I like to go to the theatre and the movies—I go to the gym. I like to stay fit,” he says. He is currently looking after a 92-year-old man with Alzheimer’s whom he originally met at the gym but whose kids live in other provinces.
“I’m also learning Danish,” he says.
“I remember you like Denmark. Why is that?” I ask.
“Because I think it’s the perfect mix of Europe and North America.”
I end the conversation by saying that I need to practice my French to which Monsieur Marjollet suggests that I get a group together that he can lead. “Free of charge,” he jokes.
"Nobody has the right to be the judge of what is right for me"
—Charles Aznavour
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