The one who stays in Las Vegas…

Photo: Getty Images Le rêve américain et quelques cauchemars éveillés d’une circassienne installée pour de bon à Las Vegas.

The presidential election in the United States in a few weeks will be played out in a handful of pivotal states, including Nevada and Arizona, where Republican and Democratic candidates remain neck and neck. The series offers a political journey through these areas of fierce competition. First case: Las Vegas, the city of an American-Quebecer.

For Caroline Lauzon, originally from Lanaudière, a circus artist who has lived in Las Vegas for two decades, the American dream is now a reality confirmed even in her sleep.

“A while ago, I woke up and said to myself: “Ayoye, I was speaking English in my dream!” ” says the Quebecer, naturalized American since 2013, in French. “This is it. When you think about it, I stayed in Canada for twenty years and I’ve been here for twenty years. I’m fifty-fifty, half and half, and, like it or not, even if I’m still very good at French and I don’t want to lose it, my life is spent here. And I dream in English now.”

“Here,” meaning Las Vegas, Nevada. Caroline Lauzon had set the meeting at Rosalie’s, “the French café,” according to the establishment with a terrace overlooking a parking lot and expressways, surrounded by the usual generic shopping mall businesses, including a waffle restaurant. The owner of Rosalie, himself originally from France, sells quite good pastries, even better coffee and even Quebec beer from Unibroue.

The long interview, spread over three hours, allowed us to understand that the top-level performer embodies quite well the American dream of prosperity obtained through work and determination. At the same time, certain more or less nightmarish sociopolitical failings of her host society, constantly revealed by the current election campaign, worry and sadden her.

Artists lean left, it is well known, and circus performers are no exception. “The circus is a very multicultural environment, open to diversity,” summarizes Ms. Lauzon. She will vote for all the Democratic candidates, she makes no secret of it. All the more so for the presidency, now that Kamala Harris has replaced Joe Biden at the top of the list.

“As soon as you step outside of this artistic circle, the ambient conservatism becomes obvious. Religion is everywhere. Abortion is a divisive subject. There is a lot of hypocrisy and contradictions. Conservatives defend individual freedom, but want to decide what a woman does with her body. They are ready to shoot someone who walks on their lawn. Election ads are fierce. Candidates lie all the time. Some media too. We are really far from Quebec here. I admit, it gets a bit heavy sometimes.”

The transformation of his adopted society over two decades adds to the desolation. “Sometimes I sit back and think that we had a black president a decade ago. We felt so much hope. The landing we’ve taken since then… We realize that, ultimately, people are much more racist than we thought, much more right-wing, much more rigid about their religious principles. Donald Trump gives them the right to take responsibility for themselves. It’s “Yes, we can”, but on the other side, the redneck side,” she says, quoting Barack Obama’s 2009 campaign slogan.

The lack of embarrassment with which insulting remarks about immigrants are uttered saddens the immigrant, perhaps more than anything else. “I was raised in Quebec with free school and free hospital. I’ve never had an ounce of misery or anxiety in this life. I’ve been very lucky. I was born in the right place. People born on the other side of the border haven’t been so lucky. They just want a better place in the sun.”

Photo: Provided by Caroline Lauzon For Caroline Lauzon, originally from Lanaudière and a circus artist who has lived in Las Vegas for two decades, the American dream is now a reality that is confirmed even in her sleep.

Maudit hiver

Caroline Lauzon landed in this world full of contradictions, both wonderful and tormenting, for the love of athletic and aesthetic performances. She comes from a family of athletes and began very early to be passionate about gymnastics, then diving. A “loss of figures” problem (like the one that affected supergymnast Simone Biles) caused the Canadian champion to miss the Olympic trials at the Athens Games in 2004. She then retrained as an aerialist and joined the Cirque du Soleil (CDS) show O in 2005. The aquatic extravaganza created in 1998 is still playing at the Bellagio casino.

“I took a break from O for two years to work in Los Angeles on the CDS show Iris. The show was beautiful, but it was not a success. Then I went back to Montreal for six months in the winter, which convinced me that I wanted to live in the sun and near the desert. I came back to Nevada and I was very lucky to be able to continue performing there for so long without getting injured. It’s very demanding work. This year, I’m going to do something like 478 shows. »

The trapeze artist has just signed up for another year of performance, and she will see what happens next. The veteran in her early forties holds on to this job because she loves her show and because the CDS offers her and her daughter, Maïa, good health coverage in a country without a universal public health system.

Photo: Provided by Caroline Lauzon Caroline Lauzon landed in this world full of contradictions, both wonderful and tormenting, out of love for athletic and aesthetic performances. She comes from a family of athletes and developed a passion for gymnastics and then diving at a very young age.

Moving to real estate

Ms. Lauzon actually works two full-time jobs. She took advantage of her maternity leave in 2016-2017 to train as a real estate agent and get her license. Initially, she thought she would just invest in real estate herself and avoid brokerage fees. The pandemic convinced her to take the plunge professionally.

Her adopted city, deprived of tourists, collapsed for a few months in 2020, but the real estate market quickly bubbled up with falling interest rates and the influx of remote workers, mostly from California. The average price of a home there has increased by about 35% since the beginning of the decade and has become a social and electoral issue in Nevada, as in many other states where the dream of owning a home is being shattered for young people.

“Even today, 50% of our clients in Las Vegas are Californians,” says the real estate agent. “For the price of a condo in Los Angeles, you can have a big house here, with an office, land and a pool. Nevada does not tax companies, which has caused a lot of headquarters to move here. Property taxes are very low.” »

She takes out her phone and finds a concrete example: a house worth around $475,000 US, with annual municipal taxes of $1,300 US, or about $1,800 CA. That’s half as much as in Montreal. Plus, it’s possible to negotiate 30-year fixed-term mortgages there.

Her efforts are paying off. She sells about twenty homes a year, some of them luxurious and costing over a million. She now owns two in Las Vegas, in addition to a condo she bought for a few tens of thousands of dollars ten years ago in Utah, at the foot of a ski slope. In short, the American dream is working quite well for someone who arrived and stayed in Las Vegas, a dreamlike and sometimes slightly nightmarish city…

This report was funded with support from the Transat International Journalism Fund-Le Devoir.