Old clip of singing, dancing Quebecois boy goes viral

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The cause of Quebec sovereignty might have just been set back another 20 years, thanks to a clip of a singing and dancing Quebecois boy that has gone viral.

An old 1981 clip from La Soirée canadienne, a Quebec TV show that aired from 1960 to 1983, shows young Serge Veilleux in a stylish, two-piece suit busting out some smooth dance moves while singing Le Docteur Guerit Tout (Doctor Cure-All) a light-hearted folksy song in Quebecois joual about a quack doctor who likes to cut off patients’ body parts. The song becomes sillier the longer it gets.

The clip hit it big after it was highlighted on X account @UCCAvalier, who posted it with the caption, “POV: You told a rude Québécois kid who gave you grief for daring to speak English that fries are better with ketchup than as poutine, so now he’s folk-dancing to defend the village’s honour.”

World hits ‘like’ button on Quebec culture

Evidently, people can’t get enough. As of early afternoon on Monday, the clip had 5.7 million views, from Canada and beyond.

Canadian pollster David Coletto posted: “I have seen this video at least 35 times today 🙂 Thankful.”

New York City-based Jeff Sunday (@TheDegenWeekly) posts: “Big problem in my household right now. It started with playing this video a few times. Then playing it a lot of times. Now I’m signing it. I don’t even know what I’m signing. Starting to do the dance like him too. My wife is asking me to stop. I want to but I physically can’t.”

Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney weighed in with an extensive X post.

“Everyone seems to be talking about these fun Quebec chansons à réponses from Soirée Canadienne in the 70s,” Kenney wrote. “To Québecers: English Canadians are not mocking this tradition, but admiring it. I think the fascination is that in our fractured, atomized society, we can see a beautiful expression of real community. Everyone, from kids to grandparents, knows the words and sings them together. The joyfulness of the tradition is also a wonderful antidote to our hyper cynical age. And the authenticity of the music itself is a beautiful contrast to the auto tuned and hyper engineered noise that passes for a lot of today’s popular music. It’s obvious these songs were passed on from generation to generation, and represent a sense of shared culture and love of home. They make us nostalgic for a simpler time of shared meaning and identity.

Another clip

Apparently the online appetite for rustic Quebecois music is growing. Another musical clip under Kenney’s post has more than 259,000 and counting.

@UCCavalier got lightheartedly political with it, posting again: ” POV: After a long day skiing at Mont-Tremblant, you’re having a beer and ask the Québécois next to you, “Does Quebec really need all those equalization payments?” He doesn’t answer … he just sets his beer down, stands up, and breaks into this song.”

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