Rimouski enters the novel as the place where Touladi’s political conflict acquires an institutional consequence: Clovis Lacroix is sent to its penitentiary after being arrested on an attempted-murder charge. The city is not developed here through a broad portrait of its streets or residents; its significance lies in the distance between a local struggle over political power and the prison where that struggle alters Clovis’s life.

Rimouski as a Place of Imprisonment

The account locates Clovis’s imprisonment specifically in the penitentiary at Rimouski. The arrest takes place the day after the election in Touladi, when Sheriff Oscar Béland arrives with Gilbert Rougeau, who serves as a local constable. After Clovis is handcuffed and taken away, he is accused of attempted murder and held for several months at Rimouski’s penitentiary. The narrative gives no further description of the institution; Rimouski is named as the destination of the arrest and the setting of Clovis’s confinement.

The Conflict That Leads There

The events behind Clovis’s imprisonment grow out of a hard-fought provincial election. Roland Bolduc and his allies campaign for the Blues, while Clovis, an elementary-school teacher whose mother was a D’Anjou, organizes young supporters of the Reds. The conflict reaches into local institutions: the school-board president, described as a Bolduc dependent, warns Clovis that political involvement could cost him his teaching position. Rather than withdraw, Clovis resigns so that he can take part freely.

On election day, Clovis and the young Liberals barricade themselves inside Roland Bolduc’s garage. Their stated aim is to stop the Blues from getting voters drunk to influence their votes; they plan to cast their own ballots later, after that opportunity has passed. Roland summons his regular enforcers, and a violent incident follows. The next day’s arrest carries the struggle beyond the town’s partisan pressure and into the formal machinery of law, with Rimouski as the place where Clovis is confined.

Consequences for Clovis

Clovis’s months in the Rimouski penitentiary cost him the beginning of the 1952 school year. Although his cousin, a well-regarded attorney, defends him and works to prevent a criminal record from following him throughout his life, Clovis cannot return to teaching despite holding a diploma. He turns instead to other work, first finding employment in Quebec City as a proofreader and bookstore clerk. In the early 1960s he moves to Montreal and becomes involved in beatnik and revolutionary circles close to the Quebec Liberation Front. Rimouski therefore marks a decisive interruption in his professional path, linking Touladi’s election conflict to the later course of his life.