After he retired his children took over the business empire, which soon fell apart, with the component companies sold to larger Canadian or American firms.

[1] His father was an employee of the Canadian National Railway, and lived in turn in Assametquaghan, Petit-Métis and Saint-Octave de Métis before settling in Le Bic, his home town.

The local priest in Amqui arranged for him to get a job with the electricity company of the Vallée de la Matapédia.

[2] In 1920 Brillant took a job as manager of the Hochelaga Bank in Rimouski, and moved to that town, which was very poorly supplied with electricity at the time.

Brillant came up with a project to provide electricity to the different parts of Bas-Saint-Laurent, using a power plant at the Métis River Falls.

He managed to get twenty people to each pay $20,000 to meet the price demanded by the owner, Elsie Reford, and obtained a purchase option in 1922.

[5] It became the largest power supplier in the region with a network of transmission lines serving Matane, Mont-Joli, Rimouski and beyond.

[3] In 1926 Brillant ran into financial difficulties and lost control of the company to the Central Public Service Corporation of Chicago.

Its high rates were denounced by the newspapers in 1937, and the company struggled to meet demand in the 1940s despite adding diesel generators and submarine cables.

[1] Brillant was an organizer of the Liberal Party for Eastern Quebec, and these activities contributed to the success of his businesses, as he admitted himself when he said, "faire de la politique, ça aide beaucoup pour les affaires" (involvement in politics helps a lot in business).

[9] Brillant managed to get the government to support creation of an elementary marine engineering school in 1943, and looked after its organization.

[7] In 1947 Brillant inaugurated CJBR-FM, one of the first private FM radio stations in Quebec, then in 1954 he founded CJBR-TV as a Radio-Canada affiliate.