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Then I set about writing in my diary what happened each day, describing this country that was at once so strange and so familiar. But I didn't succeed in finding words to express what I was feeling, or even to describe what I was seeing. The phrases were all knocking about in my head. It was all happening too fast. Faster, farther away, and at a higher altitude than those little movies I used to film in my head when I was in school.

Now I no longer had the time or the inclination to make my home movies. What I was living was as exciting as what I'd dreamed of for such a long time.

Arriving back in Quebec was unforgettable. At the Montreal airport, a crowd was waiting for me with flowers, teddy bears, and velvet frogs. TV cameras were pointed at me and microphones were thrust toward me. My brother Paul had brought us the newspapers. All of them were talking about the grand prize I'd won in Tokyo.

"On TV too," he told me. "They're talking about you everywhere." Reporters had come to our house in Pointe-aux-Trembles, where we had just moved, and interviewed my father. They'd asked for photos of me. They wanted to know how old I was, if I had a boy­friend, what color my eyes were. The prime minister of Quebec, Rene Levesque, asked to meet me and congratulated me in the name of all Quebecois. I was also invited to join a dozen artists who were part of a mega-show at the Montreal Forum. When I climbed onstage, even before I began to sing, the ten thousand people filling the auditorium stood up to applaud me.

That day I made a strange discovery. Most of the people applauding me hadn't even seen me sing onstage. A lot of them probably hadn't even known my name ten days before. They gave me their applause and ovations not because my singing had

impressed them, but because I'd achieved something on the other side of the world.

This made me feel, in a way, like I owed them something. As if I'd been paid in advance. Their applause and shouts stimulated me. And for that reason, I sang with my heart, with incredible pleasure. The next day my photo appeared in all the Montreal papers.

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