APARTMENT WITH CHARACTER
Quirky objets d’art fill home
John Hislop could be described as a typical Montrealer. The son of a francophone mother from the Acadian shore of New Brunswick and a father from Paisley in the west of Scotland, the bilingual resident of Ville-Marie grew up in Châteauguay.
At university, Hislop earned a degree in accounting. Nowadays, he has what he describes as “two professions.” He produces and organizes corporate events and trade shows for Fortune 1000 companies in Canada and the United States and is part owner of Epazote & Haricot, a Mexican restaurant in Dorval. His business partner at the resto is chef Berenice Reyna, who hails from Mexico City.
Hislop lived for a number of years in the east end of the city and then in Plateau Mont-Royal, but in 2010 he moved to his present abode — a large, rambling apartment on the fourth floor of a handsome old building that dates back to the 1920s or ’30s, a stone’s throw from Sherbrooke St. W and the western end of Ste Catherine St.
The apartment has two bedrooms, a laundry room (a former maid’s quarters), a small kitchen with lots of cupboard space and a separate living room and dining room. There are two full bathrooms. Hislop shares his space with roommate Ben, a personal trainer.
Q How did you end up in this part of town? I gather you were pretty happy living in the Plateau? A I’d had my eye on this place for ages. The apartment has so much character! I just loved the space. It really spoke to me. Friends of mine lived here for close to 15 years and when I visited, I always used to say to them, “If you ever decide to move, please let me know.” Well, that day came, and here I am! (The apartment’s “character” he refers to is the interior. Rather than leading straight through the apartment, the hallway has interesting angles, highlighted by two-tone, neutral walls with a white baseboard and white wood trim one-third of the way up. The floors are burnished hardwood. The dining room has multi-paned french doors and a built-in glassfronted display cabinet. There is a little anteroom off the kitchen. Barely larger than a cupboard, it might have been a butler’s pantry in days gone by. (The tour of the apartment starts in the dining room. A large table covered with tempered glass is the focal point. On the wall hangs a reproduction of a 16th-century painting of two nude sisters. The original is in the Louvre in Paris. In one corner is the statue of a human head
with the top cut off! Hislop uses it as a planter. Above the statue is a clock whose mechanism is exposed.)
Q I must say you have quite the quirky selection of objets d’art!
A I’ve always been interested in the visual arts. My hobby is sculpting and painting. The head — it’s plaster — is something I made myself. It wasn’t done from a mould. I picked up the clock in New York. (Hislop’s bedroom doubles as his studio. On the table — a repurposed base for a Singer sewing machine — is another plaster head. Propped against the wall is a large half-finished painting of a Paris street scene. Behind his bed is a small window, flanked by two angled walls with much larger windows.) During the day, there’s a lot of light in this room. It’s amazing! As a studio, this room is very functional. (We walk to the living room through the hallway, past a white roll-top desk and several more interesting pieces of art, illuminated by track lights. The living room has a gas fireplace. Above the mantelpiece leans a striking picture of the back view of a young woman, shrugging her arms out of a dress — a self-portrait painted by of one of Hislop’s friends. To the right of the fireplace stands an old-fashioned pump organ popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has an ornately carved casing and ivory keys, but its blackened wood surface is blistered.)
Q What happened to the organ? A It was in a fire. My aunt — she’s now in her 90s — rescued it from a burning church in New Brunswick. It plays — horribly — but it still works!