Ahunstic’s Downton Abbey
CENTURY-OLD LANDMARk along Gouin Blvd. was mansion home to Eagle Lumber salesman
This year marks 100 years since a distinctive waterfront brick mansion on Gouin Blvd. was completed.
“It is not Downton Abbey but was considered so by many French-Canadians,” Élaine Bock, 72, recalled of her grandparents’ elegant home and the neighbouring properties along Gouin in Ahuntsic. Her grandfather was lumber salesman Joachim Séraphin Bock, of Eagle Lumber.
J.S., as her grandfather was known, bought the property in 1930, when he needed more space for himself, his wife, his six sons, three daughters, his driver, his maid and the niece he’d adopted. The mansion had had several owners up until 1930, including Victor Boudrias, who owned a tea, coffee and spice business in Old Montreal.
The Bocks held the property until the 1970s, when the larger terrain was subdivided and the mansion was sold to French musician and comedian Roger Joubert.
Since 1997, it has been in the hands of Alain Pouliot, who is from Ahuntsic, has six children and works as a mortgage specialist.
Original features of the main floor and second floor have been exceptionally maintained, like elaborate woodwork, glass work, tile work, mouldings, the narrow servants’ staircase at the back of the house, pine cupboards in the small kitchen and a unique shower stall in the second-floor bathroom.
On the main floor, heavy glass and wood pocket doors can separate two ornate living rooms. The smaller side was traditionally the men’s parlour, or boudoir, and the larger was a salon for women.
“The door between the parlour and the living room would be closed, so the women would not be bothered by the smoke,” Bock said. Men would sit and smoke by the fireplace, discussing politics, business and lumber, she said. On the women’s side, there’d be piano-playing, card-playing and talking. “With 18 grandchildren, you talk about children, education ... women’s talk.”
ÉLAINE BOCK, MONTREAL OWNER OF HISTORIC HOME “For all those people on Gouin Blvd., the river was not an asset,”
Each New Year’s Day after high mass, Bock was among those grandchildren when her grandmother hosted an upstairs party with Santa Claus, Canada Dry ginger ale, and port for the adults. “There was a gift for everybody,” she remembered.
That same evening, her grandfather would host a feast that included two turkeys in the large dining room whose historical character remains, including a painted rosette on the ceiling above a central chandelier. Afterward, Bock said, her grandmother played the piano, and people sang and played charades.
The home’s façade has a three-storey-high, semi-octagonal tourelle, or turret, on the west corner that provides bow windows in the women’s salon, the bedroom above, and in the living room of the third floor.
This third floor, with 10-foot ceilings, was originally servants’ quarters. For the past 15 years, it has been a secondary suite occupied by Pouliot’s mother.
In the 1930s, the third floor was where the six Bock sons roomed — including Élaine Bock’s father, Yvon, who became a lawyer, Montreal city councillor and judge, and who bought a house next door in 1952, and later inherited his father’s property.
Now occupying a narrow half-acre of land that backs onto Rivière des Prairies, the home is closer to the road than to the river. Its large front porch and main windows face the street.
“For all those people on Gouin Blvd., the river was not an asset,” Bock explained.
She said her uncles built a tennis court on the riverbank beach behind the house, until that beach was totally flooded by a downstream hydroelectric dam near Île de la Visitation. After that, the water came much closer to the house.
However in the mid-’50s, Bock’s parents made a deal with a quarry business that had tonnes of stone that had been excavated from under Mount Royal, when the rail tunnel was built.
“My parents paid for the transportation, but not for the stone, because (the quarry business) was getting rid of the stone,” Bock said. “We paid the truck drivers. … I was sitting there on the lawn chair counting how many trucks came on a daily basis.”
The stones were used to extend the Bock’s riverfront property and were covered with earth, and then grass. Today, mature maple trees grow on this land, and an embankment about eight feet high prevents easy access to the river.
In recent years, the yard and some aspects of the home have not been meticulously maintained. A prospective buyer might want to invest further to upgrade the plumbing, electricity, landscaping, the three garages, unfinished basement, third-storey suite and the master bedroom, which sits atop the first two garages. It was an addition, looks toward the river, and includes an open concept Jacuzzi, as well as an enclosed laundry and bathroom.
The six-bedroom home also has an attic that current owner Pouliot estimated is 20 by 20 feet and six-feet high. “It’s pretty big, so you could do either a large family room, or have two rooms in it easily,” Pouliot said.
The main floor kitchen — originally intended for servants to cook in — is small for a home of this size, despite being doubled in 2000. At this time of the year when she was young, Bock said, tourtières, mince pies and doughnuts were made there by her cousin, using a big woodburning stove.
The landing of the second floor features a large sunny expanse with big hand-painted floral motif windows. It has an electric fireplace flanked by wooden columns and the doorways to three of the four bedrooms on this level.
In the second-floor bathroom, there’s a circular shower stall made with metal tubes. One can turn a tap to use the “needles” option, and water jets out of tiny holes in the tubing. The bathroom also has a tub, and the toilet is nearby in a water closet.
When Pouliot bought the property in 1997, it cost $365,000, and wasn’t waterfront. In 2005, he bought the waterfront behind the house from Yvon Bock’s estate, for $228,000. Pouliot later sold a triangular portion of his land, to the west; that lot has not been built on.
215 Gouin Boulevard W. is listed for $1,599,000 with Christine Gauthier of ReMax Quebec Inc.