La Vie et la Mort (et L'Au-delà) de Lucie Lafleur

This story is adapted from an original article from May 5, 2026 in URBANIA, an online magazine based in Quebec focused on pop culture and society.

"There's a lot of Lucie in me, and a lot of me in Lucie," says the woman sitting across from me at a Verdun café.

Her name is Francine Poirier, and she's very much alive. You'd never know it from the black-and-white photos that appeared on social media recently—Francine clutching a jumbo Pepsi, pogo in hand, Lafleur cap on her head—announcing her passing.

Not her death, exactly. The death of Lucie Lafleur, the character she'd played for four years and became nothing short of a TikTok sensation.

"As some of you may have noticed, Lucie has been less present on this account lately," the Lafleur restaurant chain wrote on Instagram. "It is with immense sadness that we announce her passing." The post went on to say she'd been with the company for over 30 years, and that her absence "leaves a great void."

Then, in the next slide, plot twist: Lucie never actually worked at Lafleur. Behind the uniform was Francine Poirier, a relatively unknown actress.

The campaign, run by Montreal agency Dreww, had racked up impressive numbers by any measure. The videos starring the irrepressible Lucie clocked 50 million views and brought 100,000 new followers to the chain's social accounts.

Great marketing? Maybe. But the internet wasn't exactly charmed by the reveal.

The problem with fake funerals

People rarely read past the first slide. That's just a fact. So, a significant portion of viewers took the announcement at face value—a real woman, a real death. The staging didn't help: the post included a plausible date of birth and death (1956–2026), instead of the campaign's run dates (2022–2026).

The backlash was swift and loud. Outrage in the comments. Calls to boycott the chain, which currently operates 17 locations and has plans to double that.

Lucie Lafleur had been central to Lafleur's efforts to revamp its image, particularly with younger audiences. Whether this send-off served that goal is another question.

In the flesh

I'll admit I fell for it too. Although I was fairly sure Lucie was a character, the announcement had me genuinely wondering. In the age of AI and fake news, you can't be too careful.

So I asked Francine to meet me at a café. To confirm, you know, that she existed.

She arrived in excellent spirits.

"Are you alive?" I asked.

"Touch my arm and find out."

I did. She's alive and well.

Francine tells me the death of her character was handled with her full consent. And despite the reach of the campaign, she still moves through the world largely unrecognized—including, at this moment, in a packed café in Verdun.

A retirement gift

Before becoming the face of a fast-food chain, Francine had just wrapped up a career that defies easy summary. She estimates she's held upwards of 56,000 jobs—"everything except selling myself on the corner," she says, laughing—most of them in customer service. For years, she worked as a greeter at TVA back when it was still called Télé-Métropole, welcoming studio audiences to De bonne humeur, Michel Louvain's variety show.

Since 2017, she'd been picking up occasional extra work and scanning casting sites. One day, she spotted a call for a woman in her sixties to appear in a restaurant ad campaign. She sent in a demo reel, made the short list, and got the job. The Lucie Lafleur contract turned out to be one of the best things retirement handed her.