Michel Gagné 

Michel is a favorite name for Roy’s characters. If his parents had not chosen that name Roy, well the name of Michel would have suited him perfectly. The name Michel was used in both French and English versions. Perhaps, because the name is so soft and gentle and finally it fitted him and the characters so well. When you hear the name Michel it is like listening to a light breeze. With the first syllable "Mi" (pronounced me), you feel like grabbing him, because it means me or mine while the next syllable "chel" (pronounced shell) you feel him go away slowly. This is how his character in Scoop will describe his relationship with Stéphanie. An irrepressible attraction followed by a slow but fatal estrangement.

A lawyer, he is the unique ( ?) son of a father who was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces and of a mother who was prematurely ill with the Alzeimer disease. He was born in Chicoutimi, in the Saguenay Region. He is the Le loup du Lac, Wolf of the Lake, although Lac St.Jean is not the Saguenay and I must mention that there is an important difference between the two regions which very proud and has an independentist flavor. Located along the Saguenay River and Lake St.Jean, Bleuets have a strong feeling of independence and it is in their genes. They have build up their country within the country. Being far away from bigger urban centers, like Montreal and Quebec City, they have created their own towns and middle size cities of which they are very proud of. You must go up the Saguenay River to really get this feeling. You have to watch the river flowing down through capes and coves, to become a fjord rushing down the wild forest to finally open on the vast Lake St.Jean to fully understand that their country is as great as the river and the shores where they were born. Standing tall and generous, responsible of their Fate. Michel is a true Bleuet. If Ovila was a rebel and a product of bushland, Michel is more adventurous and terribly proud. A genuine Bleuet. For those who are not too familiar with Quebec language : " Bleuet " is the name given to the people born and raised in the Saguenay-Lake /St.Jean region.

Bleuet is actually the name of the familiar blueberry well known in North America and which is found in abundance in that region. A small round berry topped with a dark blue night crown, which suits well the person born in this Kingdom.

So Michel is a Bleuet. He is also the Lake’s Wolf. When the series starts, upon his arrival in Montreal at the newspaper, he feels like he is in a cage, a prison, in chains, the way he felt in the small truck that took him to Montreal : on the door a big wolf was painted on. Those names fit him well, as his colleagues call him Le Bleuet and his girlfriend : Le Loup "Wolf". Stephanie will have to live with this wild beast, this northern wolf who is a rebel and a lone person, not easy to tame.

Michel is of all the characters played by Roy the most physically defined and less for his oratory talent. For me, Michel was an unfinished character, still in the making, for which Roy’s interpretation had nothing to do with but was rather the author’s choice. Michel is a flesh and bone character and we are missing something. We can feel the empty space, even if, at times, Roy came close or near as he could of the soul of the character. We must mention that the series is not entirely centered on Michel and Stéphanie. Although it is focused on their relationship, the series tries to describe an image of a contemporary Quebec and was dealing with many characters and many plots. To discover the real Michel, more script and screen time had to be devoted to him. Statistically speaking this character represents only 12 hours out of 52 for the entire series and being a strange character to
exploit, more time had to be spent on him. Nevertheless he has left his mark in our TV history, becoming the modern hero of a 20th century Quebec. Michel portrayed by Roy is a fellow that everyone loves. He is easy going but also curious. He loves Nature, speed and women. And to give his character more resemblance, Roy also gave him the accent from the Lake, stretching some syllables ending with an "a" and "an", ending the end of a phrase with a "là".

Michel is not flamboyant or mysterious. No enigmas and no surprises. Seeing Michel alone, it was hard for me to imagine Michael in NIKITA. They are totally different, not even physically alike. If Michael is a more discriminated man and of the feline type, Michel is more down to earth without any of the above qualities. He is more from the Canada family, the wolf of the boreal forest. But he is still alert, strong and courageous or at least he is doing his best at it. And he is definitely open and honest as gold. But he is also impulsive, reckless and fragile even if he tries to ignore it. Many times, life will bring him back to its origin.