Michel Paquette, 12 years old, afflicted with polio, skips Sunday mass to read poetry at Saint-Amour and Daughter publishers. His old companion, Archange Saint-Amour, suffering from Parkinson's, needs Michel to help him print 'Long Live Secular Quebec,' an anti-clerical pamphlet in the Quebec of the Great Darkness. The pamphlet scandalizes the clergy. The Church's vengeance is nothing compared to the one brewing in Michel and his friends. The youngsters cause all sorts of trouble by defying the clerical order and risk everything in their quest for a secular and equal Quebec.