Between 1973 and 1986, the Golden State Killer terrorized Californians.
He scoped out the homes he would enter.Police would find cigarettes under a tree, by a window.So he was frequently there, at the window, in the backyard, in the dark.
I'm Kathleen Goltar, and this week on Crime Story, why it took police more than 40 years to identify the Golden State Killer.Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast.
Hi, I'm Thomas LeBlanc.I'm a Montreal-based broadcaster and cultural commentator.You might also know me as a Céline Dion expert and the co-host of the CBC Podcast Chosen Family.I want to tell you about my brand new podcast.
It's called Céline Understood. Celine Dion is having a moment, but it's not her first, and millions of fans are hoping it won't be her last.While Celine's international stardom seems obvious now, it was all so unlikely.
In this four-part series, I explore the cultural, political, and business alchemy that created one of the most enduring superstars the planet has ever seen.Now, here's the first episode of Celine Understood. It was close to midnight in Paris.
And millions of people like me around the world were glued to the Olympic opening ceremonies on TV.It was a spectacle, with colored smoke and dancers swinging from scaffolding around Notre-Dame Cathedral. Oh, I think she's... Oh, Céline is coming.
I think Céline is coming.Oh, no.OK.I'd been watching for hours.They're zooming in on the logo.Is Céline there?Wondering if the rumors were true.Well, Céline performed.That's what everybody's asking.
In 2022, Céline had been diagnosed with a rare neurological condition, and there were doubts about whether she could ever sing again.Oh, Céline will be at the Louvre? And they're getting to Concorde?Where is this?
They're giving us the whole damn tour.Oh, maybe she'll sing at the Arc de Triomphe, though.Then, through heavy drops of rain, the cameras pan to the Eiffel Tower.Holy shit.Celine Dion.
At first she seemed so small, this tiny figure up on the glistening deck of the Tour Eiffel.But she looked so confident in her white beaded gown and sounded so strong.This is incredible.It was surprisingly emotional.
It had been years since we'd seen her like this.Her illness had kept her from the stage and her absence felt like such a huge loss.
This is a star whose career has spanned more than 40 years, in French and English, and reaches nearly every corner of the globe.And yet, as a culture writer, I'm always struck by just how unlikely, how singular her path to superstardom really was.
I'm Thomas LeBlanc, and this season of Understood, I want to piece together the cultural, political and economic circumstances that helped manufacture Céline Dion, the pop icon.
No kidding.It was not by accident that things just sort of fell into place.
As ubiquitous as Céline's glamorous success and popularity was, was this backlash and contempt for her.
You're going to be Americanized, you're going to be Anglicized.
Well, I'm always going to stay a Francophone Quebecer all my life.
Could it happen again?Could Celine Dion happen again?But to understand all that, we'll have to go back to the beginning, because it all started very far away from the sparkling lights of Paris. This is Céline Understood, Episode 1, Conquering Quebec.
I believe we are actually on Boulevard Céline Dion.I believe we are.I believe we're on Boulevard Céline Dion in Chalemagne.It's a hot Thursday morning in June.I'm driving around the town of Chalemagne, Quebec with my producer, Christel Duhaime.
On Céline Dion Boulevard, you can see a Dollarama, the famous Quebec chicken rotisserie, Saint-Hubert.That's Quebec culture.Chalemagne is about 30 minutes outside of Montreal. like older houses.
Yeah, nice little porches.
It's where Céline grew up.She has talked about and sang about walking on the side of the street in Chalamagne when she was a kid.So we can actually, we're on Saint-Denis here.I'm going to show you, Christel.This is not Graceland.
Growing up in Montreal in the 90s, Céline was just always around.I never knew a world without her. It all started when I was six years old.That year, for Christmas, my grandmother gave me a tape player.It came with two cassettes.
One was of Céline's French album, Dion Chante Plemondon, and the other one was Unison, her first album in English. So in my family's living room, I'd dance to her pop tracks in English.
And then, I'd sway along to her tender French ballads like Ziggy, Un Garçon Pas Comme Les Autres, A Boy Not Like the Others.To me, as a francophone kid, there was nothing weird about this.I loved English Céline as much as I loved French Céline.
Why do you say sometimes Céline and sometimes Céline?
I think in English I just pronounce it the American way, Céline.So there's Céline and Céline.But in French, we would say a hard D. Now, all these years with her in my life, I consider myself something of a Céline scholar.
This is where Celine's family home was located.Yeah, that would be it.That would be the building where she went to school.Crossing Danielle Street.She has a brother named Daniel.Can you imagine?
This is your elementary school and Celine Dion came here.And you can really tell they don't have extra budget, even if Celine came here.The fence is broken.These people have probably nothing to do with Celine Dion and we're right by their window.
Is it kind of creepy that we're just sitting here?
It's absolutely creepy. Looking around Chalamang, I wonder if Celine, this bilingual superstar, really came to her identity so easily.After all, she comes from a place that's so idiosyncratic.
Somehow, Quebec is the place that gave birth to Leonard Cohen and Cirque du Soleil. There are so many layers here, so many tensions.
Colonial histories, the grip of the Catholic Church, clashes between French and English, a powerful independence movement.And if you look hard enough, you can see how all these layers shape Céline. Shall we go to Starbucks?
What does Starbucks have to do with it?
In a way, you can't escape Starbucks in the same way that you cannot escape silly deal.So.
This is Céline singing with her family in a Radio-Canada segment from 1983.She would have been about 15. When Céline came to the world, I was my doll.
Giseline Dion is one of Céline's big sisters.She goes by Gigi for short.She says when Céline was born, she was like Gigi's poupée, her doll.
Before Céline came along, there was Denise, Clément, then Claudette, Liette, Michel, Louise, Jacques, Daniel, Gigi, Linda, Manon, and twins, Paul and Pauline. At the head of this family, there was Adémar, the patriarch, and Thérèse, her mamandion.
It wasn't uncommon in the 40s, 50s, and 60s for French-Canadian families to have a dozen or so kids.My own dad was one of 11. Back then, the Catholic Church ran pretty much everything in Quebec, from education to health care.
And priests mandated, or at least heavily encouraged, people to have large families.Still, after 13 kids, Maman Dion felt she'd had enough.
At one point, she even went to her priest to ask if she might be permitted to stop having children, essentially to go on birth control.But the priest said no.It would go against God's will.
Knowing now who Celine would become, it's hard to imagine that she was an accident.But when she was born in 1968, she was just one more mouth to feed in the Dion home.
You know, I mean, in the traditionalist French-Canadian narrative of who French-Canadians are, all in quotes, right?There's a sense of them being né pour un petit pain, right?
Born for something very small, for the small roll, for the little bread, that they're not going to go very far, and that's fine.
This is Erin Hurley.She's a professor at McGill University in Montreal, and she spent a lot of time thinking about the phenomenon of Céline Dion and how her story fits within Quebec's larger history.
This was part of the Catholic narrative.Just stay in your home with your many children, and that is enough.Just stay where you are, and God will take care of you.
Gigi says her family was poor, but the kids were fed, and their mom kept them dressed by sewing clothes for them.At times, kids were four to a room.The house was so packed that as a baby, Celine slept in the drawer of a dresser.
The Dion's didn't have much money, but they did, of course, have music.
They all play instruments and they routinely sang and made music together as a family.
Their dad played the accordion.One of the brothers would dance a jig or la claquette.
And so it's no wonder that the youngest of this large family turns to music at a very young age.
In the 70s, the musical traditions in the Dion home carry over into a little piano bar that their dad buys.Le Vieux Barry.What are you looking for?Le Vieux Barry.Or the old barrel.This is the equivalent of the bar where the Beatles started.
This is the birthplace.It's at Le Vieux Barry that Céline, at the age of 8 or 9, first starts to sing publicly.
She's standing on the tables, singing to the customers.
People start calling up Maman Dion to find out when La Petite Céline will be singing next.
So in this very musical, traditional, large Quebec family, she is nonetheless identified as the one who's going places musically, as the one with a particularly special gift.
This is the first song Céline ever recorded.Ce n'était qu'un rêve. The lyrics are by Maman Dion, and the music by Céline and her brother Jacques.She's around 12 here, but she doesn't sound like it.
Céline sings about an enchanted garden with angels smiling down from heaven.The chorus goes, It was only a dream.It was only a dream.But so beautiful that it was real. It's crazy to me.I goosebumps every time.It's wild to me.This song is wild.
It's one of the wildest moments of her life.Really?Yeah.It's like a premonition of everything.
So they write this song and they bring it to René Angélil, who's a producer in Montreal.
René was kind of a big deal.He'd been the manager of two major Quebec music stars.The demo cassette gets them an invite to René's office.
And he hands her a pencil in the meeting and says, pretend this is your microphone and sing something for me.And she does.She belts it out and he signs her on the spot.So that's where the commercial musical story begins, is in René's office.
René, who's 39 at the time, starts dedicating all of his energy to 12-year-old Céline Dion.He has big plans for her.Plans that could only work in Quebec. In the 60s, when Céline was born, a societal shift had started taking place in Quebec.
It was called La Révolution Tranquille, or the Quiet Revolution, because it wasn't a big, loud, American-style revolution.It was more gradual and, well, quiet.Quebecers wanted to shrug off the Catholic Church.
Like, for example, they didn't want priests sticking their nose into women's reproductive choices. And La Révolution Tranquille was also about standing up for French culture.
While English is the majority language of Canada, French is very firmly the majority language in Quebec.This may seem obvious now, but back then it wasn't so simple.
There's a long history of the imposition of English as a public language, especially in Quebec, on French-speaking people.
Erin Hurley again, the prof from Miguel.
Because the language of class power, of economic power, was English.So the power of English led to the need for a quiet revolution that Frenchifies, that was a Franciser, right?
That Frenchifies Quebec and anchors the right of speaking French to allow people to fully thrive in their mother tongue of French.
And this collective project of Frenchifying meant creating cultural infrastructures.
And so what this means is that Quebec at the provincial level invests heavily in culture.So, for example, radio stations, TV stations and movies and musical production, again in French, on Radio-Canada, for example, right?
on TV, on various television stations.So it's a it's a space in which there are mechanisms for generating and then disseminating Quebecois French-language voices.
And this space grows into an extensive network of local Quebecois talent and bolsters a small but thriving celebrity scene.
The Quebec star system, or Védéterien, as we say in French,
The Quebec star system.And it's this niche cultural setting that nurtures Céline's emergence.
There are some really early moments in which we see how Céline Dion's career trajectory is really supported by these French-language infrastructures.She comes out with her first album, La Voix du Bon Dieu, The Voice of the Good Lord.
It starts to play on the radio. And then at the age of 13, on June 19th, 1981, Céline makes her first television appearance.
She goes on Michel Jasmin's TV show.It's a talk show.It's a major cultural event.Everyone watches the Michel Jasmin show.
She came onto the scene, you know, this tall, thin type girl with this long hair and the thick eyebrows and wearing these outfits that, you know, it wasn't haute couture, let's just say.And she wasn't cool.
That's Sonia Benezra.Sonia is a music journalist and talk show host.Renée Angélil once called her the Oprah of Quebec.
You know, nobody really wants to be famous during those adolescent years, you know, when you're 13 and everything.If I show you pictures of me, it's like they're scary.I mean, you're changing.Your face is changing.
The features are sort of like weird.
She has long, frizzy hair in the 80s, right?Like everyone else did. She has some crisscrossed teeth.There's some awkwardness, especially in those early moments when she's learning the trade.
There are lots of points of familiarity or resemblance between a young Céline Dion and everyone's cousin, right?Or everyone's younger sister.She gets adopted almost by Quebec society as
Well, as I say, as a kind of cousin or a little sister who's enormously talented.
She had a certain innocence and joy in singing, kind of lovely, almost naivete about the goodness in people and the joy in song and what music can do and how it connects us to something bigger.
The Michel Jasmy appearance is a total hit.
it reaches a whole new public and really solidifies the fact that she is becoming a Quebec star.
Soon, Renée's got her touring the province, singing at amusement parks.She's on TV, on the radio.She sings the national anthem at an Expos baseball game. She drops out of high school to focus on singing full time.
My dream is to be an international star.
There was negative press about her looks, but also about her ambition.
It's not just ambition, it's the dream.I mean, this is a girl dreaming, not sure that it's going to happen, but daring to say it out loud.But somehow that just didn't... She's like Teflon.All of those comments sort of just almost pushed her further.
She puts out seven albums within four years. She's getting awards at home and in France, where at the age of 15, she's the first Canadian to get a gold record.
When did she sing for the Pope?What year was that?Okay, so 1984, when Céline gets to sing for the Pope, I think the entire world somehow hears her name, and she awakens everybody here in Quebec.
I mean, obviously there are those that have already seen her on Michel Jasmin a few years ago, and you knew that this was an extraordinary talent, but as soon as the Pope comes into it, then all the English press starts to cover it as well.
This is part of her sort of juvenile period, right, the tweens and teens, in which she is almost exclusively clothed in white.There is this sense of innocence and purity, which has to do with gender and Catholicism.
And so she then becomes this kind of tribute to the Pope.
Céline is singing Une Colombe.A colombe is a dove.And as Céline sings, the field at Montreal's Olympic Stadium fills with hundreds of dancers all in white.
It awakened my interest in this girl as well, who performed without looking nervous, with such assurance that it was really quite mind-boggling.I mean, everybody commented on the majestic performance of this young girl who came out of nowhere.
I mean, I don't care if you're religious or not.The Pope is so symbolic.It's a big deal.It symbolizes something bigger than us.
The performance for the Pope anoints Céline as a bright light in the Quebec star system.And Céline's dreams just keep getting bigger.
Céline is taking a crash course in English with a private tutor because she wants to record in English.
What language does he speak at home?At home, Mr. Duval speaks French.
She's already mastered several key phrases.
Hello, how are you?Nice to meet you.
With the help of Renée, she's about to cross over onto an even larger stage outside Quebec's borders.
Don't be angry.I'm sorry, sir, my manager is not here now.
But first, she'll need a makeover.
Hi, everyone.It's Michael Collori, director of consumer tech and culture at Wired.Here with my colleagues, senior writer Lauren Good.Hello.And Wired contributor Zoe Schiffer.
We're here to tell you about our new podcast, Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley.
Every week, we get together to talk about how technology and culture from the Valley is influencing our everyday lives.
We dig into questions like, will we ever get our privacy back?And how are Silicon Valley billionaires impacting US elections?
The first episode of Uncanny Valley comes out on October 31st.Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
I remember her walking into the studio with René Angélil and she was completely changed because they had kept her out of the spotlight for a couple of years because they really wanted to work the image and bring her back as a young, sexy singer.
Sonia Benezra.She's talking about the late 80s when she worked as a VJ at Musique Plus.It's where Sonia first met 19-year-old Céline.
And she walked in with, I believe it was a mini skirt with her new little short haircut and the perfect teeth smile.
Gone are the virginal white dresses.And she's gotten dental surgery to correct the snaggled teeth that earned her the nickname Canine Dion or Canine Dion.Céline's makeover lined up with the release of her album Incognito in 87.
Out of this record came her dance pop single Lolita.It was a different musical style for Céline, a bit more like what Madonna was doing at the time. The song is about a teenage crush on an older man.
Something we'll later learn Selene is all too familiar with.You say I'm too young to live with a man.I say I don't care.I don't care.I don't care.I love you.Oh, my God.This will require so much autotune.
Back in 87, Celine's new album, The Makeover, it was all part of a broader attempt to shift her identity, taking her from child star to adult songstress and soon into a whole new market.
The first thing that people have to understand, especially if you're, you know, the Anglophone markets and the Francophone markets are like two worlds.You know, we say two solitudes.It's very different.
Celine Dion is the undisputed pop diva in Quebec since she was discovered at the age of 12.
She's only 21, but for years, Celine Dion has been a big star, a sellout in Quebec, a sensation in France.
I have to work hard because, you know, I'm very known here in Quebec and I'm not, I want to be known everywhere in the world, but I have to concentrate myself on Canada because I'm not known at all.
You know, when I go to Toronto, Edmonton, or Calgary, or Vancouver, whatever, you know, I walk on the streets and nobody asks me my autograph.
After some English lessons, some voice lessons, some dance lessons, her Quebec fans think she's ready for the rest of North America.
In 1990, Celine releases her first English language album called Unison.Listening to Unison, I'm brought right back to the cassette I got as a kid.There's synthesizers, basses being slapped, epic guitar solos, even elements of house music.
And this one song on the album, it still holds up. Where Does My Heart Beat Now?It's a slow-stepping emotional ballad with a dramatic build-up and early 90s electric guitar riffs.But it was not just the album's music that was getting noticed.
On the cover of Unison, the French accent on Céline's name is gone.
So when Céline makes this shift to singing in English, there are really mixed responses in Quebec.So in that moment, English Canada is discovering Céline Dion.Quebec has known Céline Dion since she was 12, right?So there's a kind of
possessiveness, which I don't mean in a negative way, but possessiveness and pride in this homegrown girl who pulled herself up by her bootstraps kind of thing, coming from hardscrabble beginnings and really making it.
But there's a concern in Quebec that's expressed about a kind of betrayal, a sense of her getting too big for her britches.Are we not enough?Is it not big enough to be a star here?
The comedy troupe Roquebelles Oreilles puts out a song that seems to be about Céline.I want to pong.Pong is Quebecois slang.It basically means to sell out.I do not want to speak in my tongue.I just want to pong.
There's an expression in Quebec, which means you're born for something small.So if you dare to dream too big, some people thought like, how dare she?Like she comes from Charlemagne.I mean, it's like, you know, why, why her?
That kind of a thing, that mentality.
What is that balance between loyalty, fidelity to one's roots and the desire and the commercial need to expand markets, to expand horizons.
So far as Quebec is concerned, that question has been settled. 1990.
Just after Céline's debut English record drops, when the French accent on her name is struck from her album cover, Quebec is delivered a blow.
A move to revise the Canadian constitution had been in the works.
A revision that would officially recognize Quebec as a culturally distinct society, its own special thing within Canada.But then, it all unraveled.
How are you feeling tonight?Well, I must say I feel betrayed.
Further stoking the already passionate independence movement, the country was at risk of being torn apart and tensions between English and French are flaring.
I'm pretty sad for the country and for Quebec.
That same year, on a Sunday night in October, a 22-year-old Céline finds herself caught up in the middle of these political forces at a gala in Montreal.
I mean, it's huge.You're dressed to the nines, you know, you showed up on the red carpet.I mean, it was like a mini Hollywood version.
The Ediski Gala is one of Quebec's biggest music events of the year, basically Quebec's Grammys.
People watched.If you knew La Disque was on, you were not watching anything else.
Sonia was at La Disque that year.Unison had come out a few months earlier and the album has sold really well.
And she's nominated in Quebec for Best Anglophone Artist.
Anglophone Artist of the Year.
This was a big deal.The fact that she was nominated in that category was also a little bit of a dig.You know, here she goes singing in English, the enemy language, you know, that sort of a thing.
Sonia's maybe making assumptions here, but it's hard to believe that the ADZISC establishment, essentially the gatekeepers of the Quebec music industry, would not have known what they were doing when they put Céline in the Anglophone category.
As Quebec's sovereignty movement is so dialed up at the time, so is the protectiveness around francophone culture.And it felt like Céline was getting put in her place, was being told not to pung.
But Céline and René couldn't just not show up to the biggest event of the year either.
So they did not want to ruffle feathers.You know, you have to play the game.
And so on the night of the gala, when they announced the winner of Anglophone Artist of the Year. The camera finds Céline sitting in the audience with René.He puts his head down for a moment and Céline looks over at him.
As if to say, oh mon dieu, here we go.It's not the look of someone who has just won an award.Céline pauses before standing up, then walks to the stage. She's wearing a body-hugging black miniskirt and a matching blazer with shoulder pads.
A guy in a suit extends the golden statuette towards her, but she waves it off.And she takes the microphone.
She was defiant.She was not smiling.And then Céline says... I can't accept this trophy.
She can't accept the award.
It's not because I'm not proud of my English record.
It's not because she's not proud of her English album, she says.In fact, she's very proud of her album.She goes on to thank the record company for supporting her pursuits across the world as a Quebecois artist.And then comes the kicker.
And I thank the fans because they understood that I am not an Anglophone artist.
Nobody was going to tell her who she is.You cannot define me.I know who I am.
She could be Céline and Céline.
They just disqualified me of the 45 categories because I sang in English.I was singled out because I sang in English.And I just didn't think it was fair.
Do you ever worry of the fact that at this particular time, when people are very sensitive about anglophone or francophone, that your francophone audience, your original audience who supported you in Quebec and so on, will think that you betrayed them because you're becoming an English-speaking star now and you're going to be Americanized, you're going to be anglicized?
Well, I'm always going to stay a francophone Quebecer all my life.I'm proud of that.But I'm francophone who's able to sing in English today.
The day after the Addisk Awards aired, public reaction is mixed.In one letter to the Montreal Gazette, an English newspaper, a reader accuses Céline of pulling a publicity stunt and says, just one little piece of advice for Céline Dion.
Don't bite the hand that feeds you, or you might find yourself without any English money to feed you in the future.
In the same paper, Jacques Parizeau, the leader of Quebec's Independence Party, he says, I thought it was, for a girl like that, quite something to say.I was impressed and I wrote her a small note to say so.
At the Edisque gala the very next year, the name of the award is changed to Quebec artist most illustrious in a language other than French.
Still, one gets the sense that Céline, as a woman trying to be a star to all of Canada, English and French, was never going to please everyone.
You said, I am Quebecoise.I know.And the problem is, are Quebecers only French speaking?Are they Céline?Are Quebecers only French speaking?No, absolutely not.I'm glad to hear you say that.
There's a small C right here, there's not a capital C, there's not a capital D here.Oh my God, it's terrible.It doesn't change me, it doesn't change my personality.I think it's a great album and it's not because there's not an accent.
But one thing's for sure, people were talking about Céline Dion in two different languages now.
A true Quebecer, he says.With lots of ambition, American ambition.
Celine was ready to cross over into the U.S., but she had a secret about all those love songs she was singing.And her manager, Renee, feared this secret could stop her career in its tracks.
I'll never forget the moment when they had to come out on stage where the album launch was taking place.There was an audience, people standing around, and he was petrified.I had to literally push him, push him on the stage.
That's next time on Celine Understood.The show was produced by Krystal Duhaime and Zoe Tennant, with showrunner Imogen Birchard.Sound design by Krystal Duhaime and Julia Whitman.Roshni Nair is our coordinating producer.
Executive producers are Chris Oak and Nick McCabe-Locos.
In order of appearance, audio from the International Olympic Committee, CBC and Radio-Canada Archives, the YouTube channels of Thumbhead and Powered by Dion, NBC, Super Étoile Saison, TVA, Sony Music Entertainment, Rock et Belles Oreilles Audiogramme, and l'Association Québécoise de l'Industrie du Disque, du Spectacle et de la Vidéo.
Céline Understood is a co-production of CBC Podcasts and CBC News.You can follow Understood and listen to previous seasons on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.That was the first episode of Céline Understood.
You can find and follow for more episodes of Céline, just search for Understood wherever you get your podcasts.And you won't want to miss episode two because we'll be diving into Céline's relationship with her manager, René Angélil.
For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.
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