Jean-Claude Germain’s second volume of Montreal memoirs chronicles his coming of age: his draconian Jesuit education on the fringes of the city’s Red Light District, followed by his liberating discovery of the city’s fevered bohemian community in the dying days of the Duplessis regime and Quebec’s “grande noirceur.” Here, on the cusp between two worlds, we meet fire-breathing clerics intent on putting the fear of God into young souls, and writers, painters, theatre directors and performers, determined at all costs, and at great sacrifice, to transform the society in which they live. It is this creative ferment that instils in the young Jean-Claude a passion for and a belief in artistic endeavour that will sustain him through all the years that lie in wait.

Read an excerpt