‘THERE ISN’T A STONE LEFT’

QUEBEC HISTORY BUFFS UP IN ARMS OVER DECISION TO RAZE AND BUILD REPLICA OF CENTURIES-OLD HOUSE

When Ray Ostiguy moved to Chambly, Que., in 2004, after living for five decades in Ontario, it was a homecoming of sorts: One of his ancestors had settled in the village near Montreal all the way back in the 1750s. The return to his family’s roots befitted a man who finds the past endlessly fascinating, and who, during a previous visit, had made the acquaintance of the president of the area historical society — the woman he soon went on to marry.

Last Saturday night, angered by the demolition of a home that had stood for two centuries at the intersection of Chambly’s oldest streets, Ostiguy and his wife, Louise Chevrier, walked over to the hole in the ground to which the house had been reduced to make their discontent known. Surrounded by hundreds of like-minded locals, Ostiguy tied turquoise ribbons to a fence that had been installed around the property.

The house — the Maison Boileau — “has a long, long history,” Ostiguy said. It had been painted turquoise, and now it was gone.

By Monday morning, so were the ribbons.

History buffs all over Chambly, a 29,000-person suburb of Montreal, are troubled by their city’s decision to raze and build a replica of Maison Boileau, the former home of a rebel organizer, Rene Boileau, who participated in the Patriotes uprising of 1837-38. British troops managed to squelch the insurrection, but the conflict elevated Boileau’s residence into a cherished symbol of Chambly’s heritage.

In recent years, Maison Boileau fell into disrepair, to the point that insurance agents informed the home’s last private owners that it was no longer sturdy enough to insure. Those owners sold Maison Boileau in 2016 to the city, and municipal officials determined that they had two options: renovate the house or tear it down to construct a carbon copy.

Earlier this month, Chambly general manager Michel Larose reported to councillors that the house had deteriorated beyond redemption, interim mayor Jean Roy said in an interview. Roy said experts contracted by the city advised Larose that Maison Boileau’s structure had turned “rotten to the core” and was “basically threatening to collapse,” either onto the sidewalk or a neighbouring home.

“As soon as you know you’ve got a security issue, if something happens and you didn’t do anything about it, you could be sued,” Roy said. So the city sent a demolition crew to destroy Maison Boileau last Thursday.

“It’s out of sadness that we had to do this,” Roy said. “It certainly wasn’t the preferred option. If we could have salvaged it, we would have done it.”

Roy’s explanation hasn’t pacified Ostiguy and other residents who thought the public should have been told about the demolition ahead of time — Ostiguy said it began unannounced at 7 a.m. — and who are upset workers didn’t save any of the house’s centuries-old materials.

“Everything was broken up, put into the back of dump trucks and put into the dump,” Ostiguy said. “There were incredible materials there that if you’re in the restoration business you’d give your life to get,” such as Maison Boileau’s original ceiling and floorboards.

“They destroyed all of that,” Ostiguy said. “There isn’t a stone left.”

By building a replica of Maison Boileau, the city is hoping to preserve the edifice’s history as best as possible, Roy said. Ostiguy, meanwhile, derisively likened the idea to the creation of Disney World: “It’s really not appropriate.”

Dinu Bumbaru, the policy director of Heritage Montreal, told The Canadian Press that Chambly’s plan is “disastrous and costly for heritage and the dignity of the town.”

Ostiguy and Chevrier were two of several Chambly residents to speak at a public vigil for the house last weekend, the event where Ostiguy and others tied ribbons to the fence. Another speaker, the celebrity chef Ricardo Larrivée, reflected on the years he spent as a tenant of Maison Boileau, the home where he proposed to his wife, Brigitte.

“For a guy who lived in the house and has seen it destroyed, he was pretty emotional,” Ostiguy said, predicting that a friend of his — a woman who’d advocated for Maison Boileau to be saved — would react in much the same way. The woman is touring Europe with a local choir, and Ostiguy didn’t think she’d heard the news.

“She’ll be just devastated when she gets back,” he said.

JOHN MAHONEY / POSTMEDIA NEWS FILES Maison Boileau in Chambly, south of Montreal, was demolished last Thursday — and none of the original building materials were used to construct its replica replacement.