In Abitibi, in 1948, Richard Bombardier, a miner, dies tragically on Saint-Valentine’s Day night.

The entire mining community believes it was Mathilde his wife, who killed him, which is not true. To avenge herself, Mathilde seduces Robert Sincennes and Roch Devos, the town’s union leaders and husbands of Anita and Marguerite, who started the rumour. She becomes pregnant, not knowing if it was Roch or Robert who is the father!

This vengeance does not help Mathilde who obliterates herself with alcohol. Anita does not forgive Robert, who exiles himself in the foreign legion to please his son Louis, who dreams of becoming a soldier like his childhood hero, Simon le Légionnaire. Robert brings Roch with him after Marguerite Devos throws herself at the mining boss, Iram Walker, whom she marries without love and lives a life of luxury and decadence with her artist friends. Anita lives alone and works as the night operator for the telephone company and where she follows the conversations between Maurice Duplessis and his moral advisor, Monseigneur Madore.

Liam Hennessy is a political exile from Ireland who sells Irish lottery tickets in Northern Quebec. His best buyer is Mathilde’s father, Amedee Marechal, who often loses at poker. To keep an eye on him, Liam establishes himself in Sullidor where he teaches Nemesis, Mathilde’s 9 year old daughter, Gaelic. Having refused all her life to speak a single word out loud, she willingly adopts Liam’s native tongue.

The film is narrated by 14 year old Louis Sincennes, in 1958. Louis goes to Ireland with his possible half-sister, Nemesis and falls in love with Ellen, a beautiful Irish girl his own age. As for Nemesis, she meets others who speak Gaelic within the gaeltacht.