Les Filles de Caleb


Les Filles de Caleb is a Quebec TV series of 20 one-hour episodes, created by Jean Beaudin, based on the eponymous novel of Arlette Cousture, broadcast in 1990 on Radio-Canada and repeated in 2006 on Prise 2. An English-language version was also produced and broadcast in English Canada on CBC Television under the name Emilie.

Plot

The series is set in the rural Mauricie region in the Province of Quebec at the end of the 19th century and through the beginning of the 20th century. Émilie, daughter of Caleb Bordeleau, decides to pursue her education. She faces great opposition from her small-minded entourage, but succeeds at becoming a school teacher. She falls in love with one of her students, the adventurer Ovila Pronovost, and is torn between her vocation and her love for him. The Bordeleau and Pronovost families worry about the alliance of these two lovers of such difficult to reconcile passions. After their marriage, they move to the town of Shawinigan and have many children. Ovila, restless and always attracted by wide open spaces, leaves the family to go up North to the Abitibi region, recently opened to colonisation, for opportunities to hunt and lumberjack. Émilie chooses to stay and bring up their family on her own.

Cast