Profile Story: Francine Plante

Written February, 2002

            The first thing that strikes you when you walk into the duplex on Connaught near St. Jacques in NDG, is how pink everything is.  Solid pink wallpaper covers all the walls and gives the place a bright, but artificial look.
            “I’m in the kitchen” Francine Plante calls from down the hall.  As I walk down, I notice Curtis, her ten year old son, sitting in the living room playing with a toy truck.  While almost every room in the house is pink, the kitchen is covered completely in blue.   Blue wallpaper and blue tiles cover the entire kitchen.  Plante is standing behind the counter wearing a large blue sweater and plain white pants.  Her blond hair hanging about shoulder length but half tied up in a pony tail.
            “Would you like some coffee?” she asks with a smile.  I kindly decline the offer. 
            “How about some water?” I thank her and tell her I’m fine. 
            “How about some Diet Coke?  I only drink diet, so I hope it’s ok” She says.  I smile and tell her that I had just eaten. 
            “Do you mind if I get some of my cooking done while we talk?” she asks as she removes a muffin tin, a large bowl, a whisk and a box of wax paper from various drawers.  I tell her that I have no problem with that at all and sit down at the kitchen table.
            Before I even have a chance to ask a single question, Plante launches into a story, as if we were returning to a conversation we had been having the day before.  She tells me that she used to be Catholic but recently joined the Philadelphia Church of God.  “Catholics don’t practice the Christianity [sic] ways,” she says matter-of-factly.  She explains that the Catholics don’t read or study Christian documents and that they are “cold” people.  As she speaks, she begins taping wax paper to the kitchen table to keep it in place and then sprinkles flour over it.  “Satan said he would create his own church, and I believe it’s the Catholic church.”
            Plante, who has been living in Montreal for a number of years now, is unmarried and has three children.  About three years ago she became very religious when she discovered the book Age of Mysteries and found a magazine from the Philadelphia Church of God.  Since then, she has stopped working and devoted her life to the Bible and her children, believing that a mother’s place is in the home, not at work.  “[The Bible]’s like a calling.  You know, something [like a] burning desire in me,” she explains. She then places some dough on the wax paper and begins flattening it with a rolling pin.
            Suddenly, there is a loud yell from the other room.  Curtis runs screaming and laughing into the kitchen.  Plante’s next door neighbour, who is keeping Curtis company during the interview, walks in and leads Curtis out.  Plante, who pauses only for a second while Curtis is yelling, appears to be doing so more to collect her thoughts than because of the noise. 
            When she begins again, she confesses that a lot of people have a hard time accepting her religious lifestyle.  She says her children aren’t happy that they can’t celebrate their birthdays anymore.  Plante believes that birthdays are a form of self-worship, and that celebrating them is akin to idle worship.  “Jesus never said ‘one day, let’s stop and celebrate your birth,’” she says as she takes a smaller bowl from the counter and places it upside down on the dough to cut large circles  in it.  She admits that most of her family and friends think she has been brainwashed. 
            As Plante begins taking the circles of dough and placing each one in the muffin tin, her 11 year-old daughter Bianca walks through the door.  Plante stops for a moment to talk with her.  A moment later, Bianca heads off to her room and closes the door.  When Plante returns, she begins talking about the problems with the school system, as if we’ve been on that topic all along.  Annoyed that today’s schools teach “selfishness”, Plante thinks children should be taught the same things that they used to be taught.  “Girls and boys were brought up that a man was in charge and a woman was supposed to do her duty, and that’s how God intended us.  I agree with that 100 per cent.” She says proudly, “A woman should stay home.”  She then pauses, and offers me some banana bread which she had made earlier.  I accept some and she returns to complaining about the current state of things in the world, only now she has moved on to parenting and how today’s parents don’t discipline their children.
            “God says in the Bible, if you spank your children, you save your child’s life,” she says, emphasizing each word.  “A good spanking does not hurt anyone.”  As she places the last piece of dough into the muffin tin, she explains that when she was a child and was misbehaving, her father would “smack [her] across the face”, and she turned out fine.  Not only that, be she learned when to behave.
            Despite these current problems with society, Plante still has hope that things will get better. “Scientists today are coming closer to believe that Jesus was a man with a message.  [They] are starting to see more the point of view of what he was teaching.” She says as I get up to leave.  Again, she offers me something to drink and again, I kindly decline.

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