Article content Music and the colour yellow punctuated the national funeral of singer Jean-Pierre Ferland on Saturday in Montreal, where families, friends and public figures paid him a final tribute. The guests’ clothes as well as yellow flowers coloured the Mary Queen of the World Cathedral, in reference to the album Jaune, released in 1970, featuring Le Petit Roi. The singer’s urn, also sun-coloured, was brought to the altar to the sound of Je Reviens Chez Nous around 11 a.
m. “In my eyes, my father was a firework. High, tall, and dazzling,” said the deceased’s daughter, Julie Ferland, alongside her brother, Bruno Ferland.
“At the end of his life, Dad was peaceful and happy. He left peacefully, and he smiled his superb, flirtatious smile until the last moment.” His partner of the last 16 years, Julie Anne Saumur, also delivered a touching speech to “the man of her life”.
“You put music in my life. You took me a little higher, a little further. When I saw your face, it lit up like the sun, you told me in the hollow of my ear: you are beautiful.
And I knew that you were my love, and I was your mistress,” said Saumur, recounting the day they met, Aug. 22, 2008, the evening when Ferland sang a duet on the Plains of Abraham with Céline Dion and Ginette Reno. “What a beautiful journey of life we have taken together.
I will always be grateful to have had this chance to have been able to share part of my life with you. Thank you for these 16 beautiful.
