Review — White Rapids

Notwithstanding some jejune symbolism involving a fish named The General, Pascal Blanchet’s new graphic novel is a beautiful and intelligent account of the rise and fall of a small Quebec town founded in 1934 on the Saint Maurice River. It is the first English-language release for the young Blanchet, whose work recently appeared in the New Yorker, and the elegance of its aesthetic is sure to propel him to the forefront of cartooning culture.

The (true) story of Rapide Blanc begins in the Montreal offices of Shawinigan Water & Power, where plans are being made to build a hydroelectric dam 230 kilometres north of Trois Rivières. Unsurprisingly, nothing much is happening north of Trois Rivières in the late 1920s, so an entire village has to be built to house the dam workers and their families. White Rapids moves from the village’s early days to 1969, when the recently amalgamated Hydro-Québec decides to automate the dam, sounding the death knell for what in Blanchet’s version is a swinging place of jazz and small-town conviviality.

Blanchet refuses to divide his story into smaller panels, and frequently stretches his large-scale art across consecutive pages, pushing the narrative along with an energy that echoes the vigour with which the village itself is constructed. He uses text sparingly, and when he does it’s often incorporated into elements of the images. His narrative is written out on an office building address plate, a plank of wood, or a movie screen — a technique that cleverly suggests the ingrained inevitability of not only this particular story but the age-old cycle of optimistic greed of which it is a part.

Unlike many who work in a nostalgic mode, Blanchet is not interested in minutiae. Instead, White Rapids trades in archetypes. There are no traditional characters here, only the power company and the hamlet it creates. But they’re rich enough for the work being done, and in reaching for the universal Blanchet’s hand is steady.