Remembering Pauline Julien, who sang about Quebec independence and lost love

She was known as Quebec's "la passionara." 

In the 1950s, Pauline Julien lived in Paris and sang to large crowds about love gone wrong. 

In the 1960s, she was back in Montreal, belting it out for the cause of Quebec independence.

In October 1970, Julien sat in a prison cell, one of 497 people detained under the War Measures Act.  

Julien was a wisp of a woman, with her share of personal pain. In 1994, her partner, the poet and PQ politician Gerald Godin died young, of brain cancer. Then she developed aphasia, a growing inability to speak. 

Julien killed herself in October 1998. She was 70 years old.

Just twenty years later, in a little over a week, Quebeckers will go to the polls. Sovereignty has been barely mentioned in the campaign. 

But Julien is not forgotten. Hundreds people came out to a Montreal theatre on September 20 to see a new documentary film about her called Pauline Julien, intime et politique — Pauline Julien, intimate and political. 

It was a celebration of her life and a gathering of the old faithful. And, as it turned out, a chance to reflect on how much has changed since Pauline Julien first took to the political stage.

Click 'listen' above to hear David Gutnick's story.