Madame Thérèse Paquet-Sévigny, co-founder and first Secretary General of Orbicom, passed away in Montreal on March 17. Thanks to her determination and dynamism, the Orbicom network was born, and the foundations for its sustainable development were established within the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). The Orbicom website provides key information on the circumstances that led to the creation of the network in 1993-1994, a process in which Thérèse played a decisive role. The website also offers a comprehensive overview of her brilliant professional career, whether in New York within the Secretariat of the United Nations or in Canada as a communications professional and later as a faculty member at UQAM.

Deeply moved by the passing of Madame Thérèse Paquet-Sévigny, I would like to share here a brief anecdote that reflects her remarkable personality. It was 1993, two years after the Seminar on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press, jointly organized in Windhoek (Namibia) by UNESCO and the United Nations. Thérèse had just left her position as Assistant Secretary-General of the UN in New York and had returned to Montreal to take up a professorship at UQAM. UNESCO’s Director-General, Federico Mayor, was immensely grateful to her for the support she had provided in organizing the Windhoek seminar and wished to express his gratitude by offering her the opportunity to integrate her new activities at UQAM within the framework of a UNESCO Chair in Communication. Thérèse was indeed flattered by Federico Mayor’s offer, but she made it clear that she would accept it only under three conditions: first, her chair had to be part of an international network of similar chairs; second, the network itself had to extend beyond academia and be open to cooperation with professional, public, and private communication sectors. Furthermore, for the network to be viable in the medium and long term, it needed to rely on a permanent secretariat. While UNESCO’s Director-General fully agreed in principle with these conditions, he was unable to guarantee the fulfillment of the third, which exceeded the institution’s resources and required a degree of operational freedom that an intergovernmental organization like UNESCO could not provide. Thus, in a memorable meeting with UQAM Rector Claude Corbo, Thérèse set out to convince him both to host the network’s permanent secretariat and to relieve the designated professor (i.e., Thérèse herself) of part of her teaching duties so she could manage it. At this meeting, to which I was personally invited as a representative of UNESCO’s Director-General, Thérèse received unwavering support from her colleague Claude-Yves Charron, a professor of international communication. Shortly afterward, Thérèse informed Federico Mayor that she was deeply honored to accept the UNESCO Chair and that, thanks to her efforts, UQAM was equally honored to host the secretariat of the UNESCO Chairs in Communication network and to oversee its daily operations.

The network was officially established in the spring of 1994 under the name Orbicom, with its international secretariat at UQAM. At the same time, the UNESCO-Bell Chair in Communication and International Development was inaugurated, with Thérèse Paquet-Sévigny as its first holder. Neither would have existed without her total commitment and unwavering determination. Her name will forever be linked to Orbicom.

[Translated from French to English with DEEPL]

OTHER TESTIMONIALS:

A beautiful tribute by Solange Tremblay to Thérèse Paquet-Sévigny. To read on LinkedIn: Click here.

The International Public Relations Association (IPRA) pays tribute to Thérèse Paquet-Sévigny on its website: Click here.