lit a candle 3h ago78 is no age at all when someone still makes you laugh like that. I only know him through Les Boys, watched it with subtitles on a rainy night years ago and couldn't stop laughing at Bob Chicoine. Thinking of his children Gabrielle, Félix and Jeanne tonight.
Their story
Marc Messier (16 August 1947 to 7 July 2026) was a Quebec actor and writer whose piercing blue eyes and deadpan comic timing made him one of the most familiar faces in French-language Canadian culture for more than five decades. He was one of the three original performers of Broue,…
Marc Messier (16 August 1947 to 7 July 2026) was a Quebec actor and writer whose piercing blue eyes and deadpan comic timing made him one of the most familiar faces in French-language Canadian culture for more than five decades. He was one of the three original performers of Broue, the tavern comedy that ran from 1979 to 2017 and earned a Guinness World Record for the most performances by the same cast, and he created some of Quebec television and cinema's most quoted characters: hockey star Marc Gagnon in Lance et compte, the compulsive liar Réjean Pinard in La petite vie, and Bob Chicoine, with his speech on "la dureté du mental", in the Les Boys films.
Messier was born in Granby, Quebec. As a teenager at the Collège Monseigneur-Prince he loved hockey and baseball, but an English class assignment to learn a monologue from Hamlet changed his direction. He later told Le Devoir that, reciting it on his knees before his classmates, he felt he had "caught something": the chance to step outside himself. He studied acting at the Cégep de Saint-Hyacinthe, finishing in 1971, and began with small stage roles, including in Cyrano de Bergerac, before his first screen work in the 1970s.
On 21 March 1979, with Michel Côté and Marcel Gauthier, he opened Broue at the Théâtre des Voyagements, a room of about 80 seats. The play, a series of sketches set in a tavern and written by a group of authors including Claude Meunier, Louis Saia, Francine Ruel, Jean-Pierre Plante and the three actors, became the biggest hit in the history of Quebec theatre. The original trio gave about 3,300 performances to more than 3.3 million spectators before their final show on 22 April 2017. In 2006 they received a Guinness World Record for the longest run of a play with the same cast, and in 2017 the three were awarded the Meritorious Service Cross for it. He also starred in Les voisins by Claude Meunier and Louis Saia, on stage in the early 1980s and in the 1987 television film.
Television stardom came in 1986 with Lance et compte, Réjean Tremblay's series about a professional hockey team, the National de Québec. As Marc Gagnon, the fiery player who later became coach and general manager, Messier became a household name almost overnight, and his line "Sacrament, Suzie!" to Marina Orsini's Suzie Lambert became part of Quebec pop culture. He won Gémeaux awards in 1988 and 1989 for the role and played Gagnon on and off for nearly 30 years, through the 2010 film and the 2015 final season, Lance et compte: La finale. In 1988 he also won a Gémeau for best lead actor for Les voisins.
From 1993 he played Réjean Pinard, the lying, unfaithful son-in-law of Moman and Popa Paré, in Claude Meunier's La petite vie, a comedy that drew record audiences and returned in 2023 for six new episodes. In 1995 he co-wrote and starred in the film Le Sphinx with Louis Saia, and from 1997 he played Bob Chicoine in Les Boys, the hockey comedy franchise that grew to several films and a television series. He also appeared in Denys Arcand's Jésus de Montréal (1989), Omertà II (1997), Grande Ourse (2004) and its sequels, Le grand départ (2008), and many editions of the year-end Bye Bye.
In later years he turned toward drama. He starred in La mort d'un commis voyageur at the Théâtre du Rideau Vert in 2017, won Gémeaux for Boomerang and Terreur 404, and created a solo show, Seul... en scène!, co-written with Louis Saia and Mani Soleymanlou. He appeared in L'arracheuse de temps (2021), Avant le crash (2022), Les hommes de ma mère (2023), the stage play Le père, Bienvenue à Kingston-Falls (2026), Le retour d'Anna Brodeur and Le gouffre lumineux. He received the National Assembly Medal of Honour in 2009 and was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2023.
Messier was famously private. In 1999 he met Lyne Ste-Marie, the mother of two of his three children; they later separated. He is survived by his children Gabrielle, Félix and Jeanne Messier, his sisters, and nieces and nephews.
He died in Montreal on 7 July 2026, aged 78, after what his agency, Agence Goodwin, called a brief illness. La Presse columnist Hugo Dumas reported that he had been receiving treatment for a blood disease that seemed under control, and that a respiratory virus led to complications and a fatal cardiac arrest; the family did not give details. Premier Christine Fréchette, Prime Minister Mark Carney, the Montreal Canadiens and the NHL were among those paying tribute. At his family's wish the funeral was private, held on 25 July 2026, with the National Assembly flag at half-mast, and the family invited memorial gifts to the Fondation des Canadiens pour l'enfance.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (en, fr); Radio-Canada; CBC News; TVA Nouvelles; Le Devoir; La Presse (Hugo Dumas); Journal de Québec; Noovo; Montreal Gazette. Wikipedia ↗
In their own words
“J'avais récité ça devant les gars de la classe, dans un anglais laborieux, une petite récitation très scolaire, mais... j'ai comme perdu mon couvert ! Je m'étais lancé à genoux, j'étais là, en souffrance devant eux. Je suis parti dîner et j'avais l'impression d'avoir pogné quelque chose.”
Recalling reciting Hamlet as a teenager, Le Devoir interview for Seul... en scène!
“Ce n'était pas tant le théâtre que de pouvoir sortir de moi-même, ce qui ne t'arrive pas souvent à 15 ans.”
Le Devoir, on discovering acting
“Sacrament, Suzie!”
Catchphrase of his character Marc Gagnon in Lance et compte
“Je veux juste dire à quel point j'ai aimé cet homme. À quel point je vais l'aimer encore toute ma vie.”
Tribute by Claude Meunier, 7 July 2026
“Mon père a toujours été un homme discret, qui accordait une grande importance à sa vie privée, ce que sa famille souhaite respecter.”
His daughter Gabrielle, statement on the private funeral, July 2026
Photos
2Curtain call of La mort d'un commis voyageur, with Marc Messier and the cast, Théâtre du Rideau Vert, Montreal, 2017
Oct 2017 · by People Forever
Marc Messier in 2023, at the time of his first solo show
Jan 2023 · by People Forever
Les Boys is still the one that gets me too, every time.