The naked face of Canadian unity: Erotic TV channel launches in Quebec

The first homegrown Canadian adult-oriented entertainment TV channel went on the air Thursday at 10 p.m. The Montreal-based cable network, called Vanessa, went live first with its French channel, with an English counterpart to follow next year. Its focus is not hardcore, but rather the softer and more erotic side of sex. The channel will only show triple-X films after 11 p.m. “There is nothing like this in Canada,” says Vanessa's content manager Pierre Thibeault. “It's the first time Canadians will be able to see themselves as much as they will.” This will be the case not only in the films they put on air, Thibeault says, but in programs that “talk about sex” — reality series, for instance, or sitcoms. Anne-Marie Losique, known as Quebec's “Queen of soft porn,” and also head of the production company Image Diffusion International, is the woman behind Vanessa. She promises that the new network will show at least 40 per cent homegrown content — double the amount than its carriage licence requires.