Grande-Allée is both a public setting in Québec City and the site of the D’Anjou family home. The avenue connects Loïc’s uneasy proximity to the family’s political world with the domestic history of the household, where Clémentine’s long service helped shape the lives of Georges D’Anjou’s children.

Public Life and Political Proximity

During a spring when Loïc was working for the sovereigntist party in Québec, he worried that Régis might discover his political employment and that Georges D’Anjou or another relative might recognize him. The risk seemed heightened by Loïc’s frequent visits to the terraces of Grande-Allée, close to the judge’s home. Yet he had been away from the Québec D’Anjous for nearly twenty years, and they had seen him only rarely in newspaper photographs. The avenue thus places him near the family from whom he keeps his distance, while the passage also emphasizes how tenuous recognition has become.

Grande-Allée’s terraces are also presented as informal political and social space. During a period of mounting difficulty for the sovereigntist government, some ministers and members of the legislature gathered there and mocked René Lévesque and his drinking. The public setting exposes a contrast between political authority and private conduct: the terraces become a place where the government’s weakening standing is discussed beyond formal parliamentary proceedings.

The D’Anjou Household

The D’Anjou residence on Grande-Allée was the family home in which Clémentine served for decades. She entered the household in 1947, after the previous servant became seriously ill, and remained in service from then on. Her attachment to the family extended beyond domestic work: she cared for Georges’s children day and night, while their mother, Lucille Lemire, was largely absent from their upbringing. Most of the children left home early; Isabelle alone stayed, since Lucille had been a mother to her in a way she had not been to the others.

The household’s earlier history is also anchored at this address. When Clémentine arrived, Georges and his sister Georgia were still living with their parents. Georges married Lucille the following year, and she came to live on Grande-Allée; Georgia later left to study art in Montreal. The house therefore gathers several stages of family life, from the young adult children’s residence to the next generation’s upbringing.

Religious and Domestic Continuity

Clémentine’s life on Grande-Allée joined the routines of the household to her own religious practice. She regularly attended services at Saint-Dominique Church on the avenue, including Sunday Mass and additional weekday services during Advent and the weeks before Easter. Her persistent devotion stood apart from the surrounding period’s rejection of religion and the sacred. At the same time, her taste for television serials placed her in contact with values at odds with her own, a contrast that makes her devotion part of a changing domestic world rather than a sign that the household itself remained unchanged.

After Isabelle’s overdose, her parents brought her back to their house on Grande-Allée so they could watch over her. She remained depressed and withdrawn, and her father hesitated to press her to disclose her part in Roger Bolduc’s disappearance. The family home thus served both as the setting of long-established care, much of it provided by Clémentine, and as a place of return during Isabelle’s crisis.

Narrative Significance

Grande-Allée links the novel’s private family history to the public life of Québec City. Its terraces offer Loïc proximity without reunion and give political discontent a social setting; its D’Anjou residence holds the history of marriage, child-rearing, departure, and return. Across these uses, the avenue is less a backdrop than a point of contact between public power and family intimacy.