The soyer of Québec

Its scientific name is Asclepias syriaca, or milkweed for most people.A plant essential for the survival of the monarch butterfly. Already, the first nations used it as food as well as in the design of clothing. King Louis XV would also have used this silk for his warm clothes. Baptized at the time "the silk of America". Its use disappeared with the British conquest, when the Colonial Empire was teeming with silk and cotton.More recently, a textile engineer from Granby, in the Eastern Townships, found a way to exploit this fiber of the future industrially.