Quebec journalist remembers his friend, Charlie Hebdo editor

A Quebec journalist whose longtime friend was killed in the Paris terrorist attack Wednesday remembered the Charlie Hebdo editor as a courageous journalist.

Jean-Francois Nadeau of the Montreal-based Le Devoir newspaper said Stephane Charbonnier liked to push the envelope in his provocative publication. 

“I wasn't always happy with what Charb was saying, sometime he was going too far for me,” Nadeau told CTV News Channel. “But clearly, I could understand he wanted to go that far and I'm in favour of that.”

Charbonnier was one of 12 people gunned down at the Paris offices of weekly satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. He and the newspaper had been threatened before for caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad.

Nadeau said he has known Charbonnier for many years and described him as a “really quiet,” shy and funny guy.

He said Charbonnier was “a really good,” edgy writer and a “fantastic” columnist who expressed his views on almost everything, including different religions.  

Nadeau said Charb, as Charbonnier was known, pushed freedom of expression to the limit.

“Today, all the press group are linked together, there's a shrinkage of everything so we need some independent papers, we need some independent thinkers and there's a price for that and they're paying a lot today, with their lives,” he said.

Nadeau and other cartoonists say they can’t allow themselves to be intimidated by threats.

During his prolific career as a Montreal Gazette cartoonist, Terry Mosher said he courted controversy by producing a cartoon that was critical of radical Islamists.

“The reaction to that was quite stunning,” he remembered in an interview with CTV Montreal.

But he said cartoonists must forge ahead.

“Satire is poking fun and questioning hopefully all of our institutions and our attitudes. Nothing is ever 100 percent right,” he said. 

“So the whole purpose of satire is to test your system and see if we can poke fun at these things and question them -- so obviously I believe in that very strongly.”

Cartoonists around the world have shown their support for victims of Wednesday’s attack by drawing poignant reactions to the bloodshed.

With a report from CTV Montreal’s Cindy Sherwin

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  Jean-Francois Nadeau of the Montreal-based Le Devoir newspaper speaks to CTV News about his friend Stephane Charbonnier who died in a Paris attack, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2014.

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  A drawing depicting cartoonist Jean Cabut, left, Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier, centre, and cartoonist Georges Wolinski, all three of whom were killed when masked gunmen stormed the Paris offices of a weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo and reading in French, "Victims of their success, R.I.P", is placed outside the French Embassy as people gather to express solidarity with victims of the attack in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015. (AP / Michael Sohn)