Geneviève Garon, une communicatrice chevronnée face à l’imprévu

Geneviève Garon passe through the revolving doors of Maison de Radio-Canada around 3 o’clock in the morning to be on the air at 6 o’clock when she hosts D’abord l’info weekend on ICI RDI. On Saturday, October 7th, already late at night, the host and her team anticipated that they would have to follow a last-minute international news: rocket fire from Gaza into Israel.

However, around 5 o’clock, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that his country was at war with Hamas, when the reports of hostages and deaths began to pour in at a regular pace, Geneviève Garon and her team understood that the entire weekend, and possibly even the following ones, would be devoted to these events that shook the entire planet.

“Everything we had prepared, 90% of it, was set aside. Every five minutes, it was evolving very quickly. Everyone mobilized,” recalls the 35-year-old journalist, still impressed by the resources allocated by her employer to find the best experts in geopolitics capable of explaining the conflict as it unfolded.

“It was very intense. We had to keep in mind that, in such a context, if viewers have the reflex to turn on the TV, it’s because they want to understand, not to hear gibberish from people talking amongst themselves. A sentence often comes to me in moments like these: we’re experiencing it together.”

Building Her Confidence

If, when taking over as host of D’abord l’info weekend in mid-September, replacing Caroline Lacroix, Geneviève Garon had made a list of the most stressful unforeseen events that could occur during her show, a resurgence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would certainly have been in her Top 3.

But the communicator did not panic. Better yet, she describes this thrilling morning as a “great experience”. “Once you’ve done it, it allows you to build your confidence, and the next time, you are stronger and better prepared,” analyzes the woman who began her career at Radio-Canada in 2011 in Saskatchewan, then in Ottawa.

In 2016, this public broadcaster that she has tattooed on her heart called her back to Montreal to cover legal affairs. The “palais” (courthouse), she says, was her office for seven years. Her Twitter followers have seen her tweet faster than her shadow, among other things, the trials of Tony Accurso, Gilbert Rozon, Éric Salvail, as well as those of Harvey Weinstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in New York, before being offered to host D’abord l’info weekend.

« I still love legal affairs, which provide access to incredible human stories that represent social problems. It brings humanity, an understanding of the human being,” says Geneviève Garon about her first loves.