Louis Fine: From listening to nature to the Leaf

Everyone gets along with Louis.

Several months before the birth, while examining Huguette Tétreault-Fine's growing belly, the midwife exclaimed, "That little rascal is listening at the door! He's got his ear glued to the exit to hear everything that's being said outside." This explains why, as soon as young Tétreault-Fine's water broke, a beautiful, round, pinkish-red ear appeared in the maternity ward, and Louis Fine needed a little coaxing to be born.

Louis Fine dedicated his entire life to hunting sounds, associating them with their sources, and helping people protect themselves from danger. When men went hunting, they took Louis with them, because he could pinpoint the location of a small hare two kilometers away, down to the centimeter, simply by perceiving the panting breath of the hare as it prepared to become a father for the 523rd time that year.

Before setting out to fish for cod in "the great Bay of Canadas" (the old fishermen of his Rimouski in 1734 still called the Gulf of St. Lawrence that, because that's what Samuel de Champlain had named it almost 100 years earlier), the cod fishermen would ask him to inspect the boats. He would position himself in the center of the wharf, ears pricked, listening for the slightest creak of wood, pffsss of leaks, zliiiialala of tired rigging, and flickaflickaflic of sail mesh. "The mast of the big Jean Comme Devant is complaining of pain at its base… The big one from Tibato is squeaking at the eyelets and threatening to set sail… The port hatch of Douche France is whistling a bit from the east wind, which could form a nice hole in the hull in the middle of a storm… like the one I hear forming off Greenland, wondering whether it wants to go on holiday in the south or on the faces of the Portuguese… And also, there's Lamerquonvoitdanserleongdesgolfesclairs complaining that you put the 12 barrels of loot in the forward clamp, so it's working quite hard to keep the bow out of the water."

A generation that listens

In the region, all of Louis Fine's descendants have distinguished themselves over the centuries by their ability to listen. Besides the numerous ophthalmologists, there was Father Recon Fine, who had a reputation for hearing the true thoughts of his parishioners, and the farmer Alapo Fine, who waited for her vegetables to tell her when they were ready to be harvested.

Today, it's Bénédicte Fine, known as Ben Fine, who carries on the art of keen listening, presenting herself as the "Ear" for all kinds of organizations, much like perfumers call themselves "Nose." Each year, Ben Fine trains hundreds of customer service experts to go beyond the words customers speak. For example, she taught Nissan executives to listen to people's expectations and dreams--those subtle sounds that hiss between every hundred syllables and encapsulate the desired feelings of Nissan supporters. This expertise enabled the engineers to create the Leaf … no small feat!