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LISTEN | How Les Simpson became a part of Quebec culture: The Sunday Magazine23:15Why Quebec fans and actors fought to save their own version of The Simpsons
Growing up in Quebec, Joshua Biasotto fell in love with watching The Simpsons after discovering the version of the show that's dubbed in the French dialect, Québécois.
He says he not only lived for the long-running American animated sitcom’s quirky characters, irreverent humour and satirical take on life, but he also "developed a big love for Quebec dubbing."
"I've done my research," said Biasotto. "I know which actor is doing the voice of which character."
But last August, after 35 years, Corus Entertainment’s Télétoon, which held the Canadian broadcast rights to the show and oversaw its dubbing, decided not to renew those rights for the 36th season.
This put Les Simpson in jeopardy.
Distraught, Biasotto sprang into action, creating an online petition on Change.org called Sauvons le doublage québécois des Simpsons — “Let's save the Quebec dub of The Simpsons.”
“I was like, it cannot happen,” said Biasotto. “It’s a part of our identity that we lose.”
The Quebec version, he says, was adapted to incorporate local expressions and cultural references that made it feel uniquely theirs.
For example, the characters spoke in regional Quebec accents, including joual, the colloquial dialect associated with working-class Montreal, while U.S. people and places were swapped out for local references.
In one episode, a sketch involving upstate New York — including the cities of Utica and Albany — is replaced in the Québécois version with the Lac-Saint-Jean region and the towns of Jonquière and Alma.
Ian Lafrenière, Quebec’s deputy premier and a longtime Simpsons fan, even wrote in a Facebook post that the Quebec version must be saved, describing the cultural and geographical references in the show as "sublime."
And the public outcry to save Les Simpson tapped into something bigger than just nostalgia.
Dubbing is part of a long tradition in Quebec to adapt entertainment from around the world to reflect the province’s language, humour and culture.
Dubbing as Quebec identity
In Quebec, watching American and other English-language shows and films in French has long been part of the culture, says Daniel Béland, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University in Montreal.
A dubbing industry emerged in the province after the Second World War, he says, allowing audiences to experience international entertainment in their own language, along with voices, expressions and cultural references that felt familiar.
Although French-language content from France was readily available, Quebec’s distinct culture and language meant that those productions could often feel foreign to local audiences.
“For people to shift from the Quebec version to the French version from France would be really a culture shock,” said Béland.
Dubbing, he says, is also about more than translating dialogue word for word, particularly when it comes to humour. Some jokes simply don’t land when translated directly, so they have to be tweaked or replaced with references that local audiences can relate to.
"It will not be the same experience," he said. "“Humour, like poetry, is really hard to translate."
Quebec, is home to the vast majority of Canada's French speakers, with 84.1 per cent of the province's population speaking French, according to Statistics Canada’s census in 2021.
Keeping the dubbing industry, says Béland, is also a way of preserving the province’s mother tongue.
“There's a sense that Quebec is a French island surrounded by an anglophone sea, so there's this sense of a vulnerability of the French language.”
For the voice actors, it was personal
The possibility that Les Simpson might not return spurred a reaction in Quebec that seemed like “an earthquake,” says Thiéry Dubé, who has voiced Québécois Homer Simpson, the famously bumbling patriarch of the family, since 2017.
“Because for [Quebecers], it's something like poutine, you know? It's so part of our culture and cultural identity here.”
The news had also come during a particularly difficult year for the Quebec dubbing team, says Dubé.
Béatrice Picard, who voiced Homer’s wife, Marge, died in December at 96.
A few months later, in April, Benoît Rousseau, who voiced several prominent characters, including Grampa Simpson, Mr. Burns and Duffman, and served as the show’s main adapter, also died.
Dubé says the uncertainty over the show’s future made an already difficult period even harder.
“We were living day-to-day and waiting, and it was crazy for me, because one day couldn't pass without having somebody just stopping me in the street and saying, ‘Are you guys going to come back?’”
It was the fans’ fierce loyalty that offered some solace.
“[They said] I don't want it to be in French from France, and it was very touching, having all the people cheering for it.”
Bringing Les Simpson back
The campaign worked.
Biasotto’s petition drew more than 35,000 signatures, and Les Simpson was revived in May after Bell Media struck a deal with Disney Entertainment to broadcast the show. The new season is set to premiere Sept. 9 on Noovo.
“It had a bigger impact than I could imagine,” said Biasotto.
The return was also welcome news for difuze, the largest French dubbing facility in Canada, which has studios in Montreal and Toronto, and dubs Les Simpson.
Elizabeth Pélissier, vice-president of dubbing at difuze, says the studio is happy to be a part of bringing back the show in the language Quebec audiences know and love.
“We're just proud to make sure that we can call back all the actors and be part of the art process,” she said.
Les Simpson is returning at a time when Quebec’s dubbing industry is busier than ever.
difuze, founded in 2018, has seen the volume of content it dubs increase, says Pélissier. As streaming platforms such as Disney, Netflix, Amazon and Crave release more television series, the French studio has taken on more work than it once did with films alone.
The studio’s credits include Stranger Things, Moana and Toy Story 5. But the growth, she says, has also brought new challenges. There is more work to dub, but production timelines have become tighter, causing teams to “work really hard on overtime.”
Joey Galimi, president of the National Association of Professional Dubbers, which has represented dubbing professionals across Canada for 50 years, says the industry is “very healthy.”
But he says he’s concerned about the effect AI-generated dubbing could have on human voice actors.
In an emailed statement to CBC, Walt Disney Studios Canada says that under its new agreement, the broadcasting and dubbing of Les Simpson "will continue to be dubbed in Quebec by the local talent."
For Galimi, the revival of Les Simpson is more than a testament to the show’s popularity: it showcases the power of its fans.
“The fact that it was cancelled and it's coming back is also good because it's going to attract more people — new people.”
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