Workman Street: Wretched Lives in A Land of Plenty

Although highlighted by a premeditated murder this is nevertheless the story of a people living a life without expectations during the Thirties, Forties and Fifties in urban ghettos of Montreal, condemned by circumstances to live a life of misery without history and future. Observed by a boy, caught up in the same poverty trap and wounded intellectually for a few years with a massive indoctrination program of servile obedience and enforced acceptance without question to a dogmatic belief system - in this case the French-Canadian medieval version of Roman Catholicism of olden days. In the end, it brings out a ray of hope by suggesting that, similar to the first group of entrepreneurs of the Beauce region - those original and inspiring 'can do' people of Quebec - a generalized underground movement has at last begun an original creativity and economic development, bypassing the previous limits of language, stifling religion, and the ideological self-imposed traditional barriers to entrepreneurship and business.