Clémence Desrochers is a major figure in Québec’s artistic landscape whose talents as a poet and singer-songwriter remain underrecognized.

Born in Sherbrooke, she moved to Montréal at the age of 17, joining Paul Buissonneau’s theatre troupe La Roulotte before enrolling at the Conservatoire d’art dramatique de Montréal. In the 1960s, she founded a boîte à chanson that helped launch the careers of several songwriters who would go on to shape Québec’s cultural scene.

Her musical Le vol rose du Flamant (1964), the first original musical created in Québec, was staged and later recorded as an album. It opened the door to a new genre that would inspire many artists, including Michel Tremblay. In 1969, she created Les Girls alongside Paule Bayard, Louise Latraverse, Diane Dufresne, and Chantal Renaud.

In 2021, she was awarded the rank of Knight of the National Order of Québec. After giving her first farewell performance in 2008, she received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement in 2009.

Clémence Desrochers’ archival fonds is preserved at the Montréal archives centre of Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. In 2021, her song La vie d’factrie was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.