Montrealers mourn 24-year-old Romane Bonnier, ‘a real light,’ with marching and music

Mourners gather in honour of Romane Bonnier Bonnier's death was the 17th femicide in Quebec this year.

Montreal — For the last two weeks, tens of thousands of Quebecers have been mourning a stranger, 24-year-old Romane Bonnier.

How can you tell?

Bonnier, a singer who dreamed of working on the stage, recorded almost 60 videos on her YouTube channel in the past year and a half—covers of famous or not-so-famous songs, often done playfully and with a guitar or ukelele.

Before her fatal stabbing last week near the McGill campus, none of those videos had more than a couple of hundred views.

Ten days after her death, one of them had 20,000 views, another 16,000. And people weren’t just watching them but using them as a kind of public memorial.

“Keep singing from wherever you are,” one woman wrote.

“We’ll keep listening to you, your voice will stay with us, even if you no longer are.”

“This woman could have been me,” another wrote.

Two events this weekend finally gave people a more public outlet for their grief and anger over Bonnier’s death.

Her family and friends, including her parents, two brothers and twin sister, scheduled a memorial service in the Mile End on Saturday.

The same day, a march through downtown was meant to bring attention to the kind of violence that ended her life.

Bonnier, known as “Romy” to her loved ones, was fatally stabbed last Tuesday by a 36-year-old man who police said had been her roommate at one point, and who may have had a brief relationship with her.

The family’s memorial was closed to media, though open to the public at first, allowing strangers who wanted to express condolences come in and do so.

They were also invited to donate in Bonnier’s name to the choir that she and her twin sister sang in, the Orchestre Philharmonique et Chœur des Mélomanes.

Bonnier would like the thought of more people getting to enjoy music. She was a born singer, said her vocal teacher, Lisa Atkinson.

“She was a beautiful singer, really sang with a lot of heart. And that's something you know, as a teacher, you can’t teach,” said Atkinson, who had Bonnier as a student at Randolph College, one of Canada’s top musical theatre schools, and continued to give her private lessons until her death.

“That sort of musicianship, and that connection with music, is really a natural ability that I think Romy had in spades.”

Though she studied acting, dancing and singing at Randolph, and before that performed onstage at CEGEP, she wanted most to be a singer, Atkinson said.

“She played a lot with a lot of older music, and kind of reinvented melodies and she'd like to play with kind of all areas,” she said.

“I think she excelled at that and kind of making things her own… she'd kind of take whatever genre it was and make it hers. Which I thought was a pretty unique gift.”

She also listened to a huge amount of music, Atkinson said, in both French and English—a fandom that revealed itself through the covers she chose to record, which ranged from Dolly Parton to Billy Joel and her own versions of ABBA hits.

Bonnier posted her first video on March 23, 2020, saying she was inspired to do something from her lockdown.

“I think everybody needs a little bit of joy these days,” she said in the video, explaining she’d recorded a song.

“I changed the lyrics a little bit and I made a video out of it,” she said, smiling. “Just remember, it sucks, but we’ll all be fine.”

Atkinson said Bonnier was loved by her teachers and classmates, winning people over quickly with her outgoing, warm nature.

“She was very open, she was very lovely,” she said. And “very funny, just really, really funny.”

A theatre producer in Toronto, Derrick Chua, said he met Bonnier on a few occasions and her “enthusiasm, her passion for musical theatre” made an impression, as well as her “chutzpah” in setting up a talk with him to discuss working together at some point.

Recently, she was really excited because she’d gotten a contract to perform Shakespeare in schools with a touring company, Atkinson said.

As an artist, “she really like to throw herself into things and challenge herself… she wasn't afraid of making mistakes,” Atkinson said.

“She would laugh if something didn't work out the way she wanted, as opposed to getting angry with herself. She was just very, very positive.”

Faculty at Randolph are “very shaken,” said Atkinson, and she personally is “at a loss for words,” she said last week.

Bonnier also had a circle of very close friends, and was close to her family. Atkinson said she also can’t stop thinking of the people who witnessed the attack, who she feels must be “forever changed” by that experience.

People going to her YouTube videos to remember her acknowledged it felt strange. “The lyrics seem to have a whole new meaning,” some wrote.

But the numbers kept climbing, more than doubling over the subsequent week after her death.

Atkinson said that while she hadn’t been able to bring herself to watch the videos herself yet, in wake of her student’s death, she thinks Bonnier would like the fact that people are enjoying them.

“I think she’d get a kick out of it,” she said.

“The thing with singing is that it's so vulnerable, and it does allow people to show something of themselves that people don't see otherwise,” she added.

“That's something that she did throughout the pandemic that I think gave her a lot of joy.”

Maybe the videos are simply giving people a little glimpse into what it was like to know Romane Bonnier, and it’s no surprise they don’t want to stop watching.

“She was just a real light. And people felt good when they were around her,” Atkinson said.

“I was grateful to have had her in my life.”