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But who would get to the play the title role in the story of Brosseau’s life? It is a question she had never considered until we spoke Thursday morning, and a question — and the only question — the now-veteran MP stumbled over as she talked about her remarkable career arc.

“I’ve never thought about a movie being made,” Brosseau says, laughing. “But it has been a crazy four and a half years.”

How’s this for crazy: one minute you are in a bar, scraping by, and the next you are in the House of Commons pulling down $157,733 a year. Brosseau remembers arriving in Ottawa. It was another world. She was nervous. She was — Vegas Girl — but, in a sense, she was ideally=equipped to be a politician. Working at the pub, she regularly talked to patrons. But she also listened, and asked questions. So she listened on Parliament Hill, got paired with a mentor, NDP veteran Jean Crowder, and also latched on with Gerri Lavoie, Jack Layton’s old French tutor, for twice-weekly lessons.

Mostly, she spent time in her riding. Showing up at everything. Picnics and pizza parties, and sitting with her constituents to hear what they had to say while letting them see her from what she is: someone not so different from them.

“We need more people like her in government,” Gerard Jean, mayor of the town of Lanoraie in Brosseau’s riding, told my colleague, Graeme Hamilton, a few months back. “She is someone who, because of where she comes from, is really close to people.”