What if light could change everything? For Guillaume, our Director of Destination Development, it gently awakened a sense of belonging… until it made Abitibi-Témiscamingue his anchor point. In this tender, intimate, and poetic piece, he shares how the Témiscabitibian light captured not only his gaze, but also his heart.
I travelled a lot before I landed here, a little randomly. I saw mountains, deserts, jungles and cities. And throughout these experiences, there is one thing I would always look for, without even realizing it: the light.
I don’t speak of heat. To me, temperature is secondary. What I would seek over, and over again, it’s the light.
And it’s in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, on a winter morning, that I found my most beautiful light.
It was a very cold morning. The kind of cold that bites your face as soon as you step outside and where the air seems suspended. What little humidity there was would freeze and make the light surreal. A light that would not go through the air, but that would hang onto it, reflecting on each and every invisible particle.
A light both raw and delicate.
In the Summer too, the light would be splendid there. It becomes liquid, sliding onto lakes, sneaking around in between the spruces and reflecting on the canoes. There are days where, on one of the few 20 000 lakes, the sky and the earth respond to each other, like mirrors. Thus, the light envelops us completely.
An element not only adds to this light, I believe, but sublimates it. It’s the silence. A true silence, like the one we can only find where humans are not in excess. A natural silence, alive, giving space to senses and to sense. And when the light meets that very silence, something happens. We let go. We breathe differently.
If this Témiscabitibian light speaks to you as much as it won over Guillaume, click here to get ready to capture it yourself!
