So far in this stories I have given winks to the great poetry and music of Dédé Fortin and Falardeau and Poulin's Elvis Gratton (as Bob with the boat) but here is THE piece of québecois culture that started it all and we all loved to read in high school (because of all the swear words, lol!), Michel Tremblay's ground-breaking play "Les Belles-Soeurs": mid 20th century working-class housewife Germaine Lauzon wins a million Goldstar stamps to win free stuff. Jealousy ensues...

It was in 1968, fifty years ago this year that for the first time, a play was presented depicting working class quebeckers speaking working-class Quebec french on issues like abortion and religion, going against the omnipotent clergy of its time.
A nation got a voice!

Tremblay's angry, jealous, swearing Belles Soeurs (sisters-in-laws) clashed with the angelic, blessed to be a mom vision of motherhood that catholic Quebec had until then and yet Tremblay says the loved the women he based the play on...
...he loved them too much to pretend everything in their lives was roses and Virgin Mary Statues when it clearly was not.

***
J'ai fait hommage à Dédé Fortin et à Elvis Grattion, voici la pièce qui nous a tous mis au monde: Les Belles-Soeurs de Michel Tremblay.

D'accord, en onzième année on aimait ça parce que ça jurait mais ces jurements-là, c'était le cri de naîssance d'un Canada moderne.

Même si ses belles-soeurs, jalouses, malheureuses, amères, clashaient avec la vision angélique de la fée du logis catholique de l'époque, Tremblay aimait les femmes qui l'ont inspiré...il les aimait trop pour leur faire dire que tout est beau, tout est ok à une époque ou c'était clairement pas le cas.