AND BABY MAKES THREE
Couple settle in to Westmount townhouse
Lauren Guay and Peter Riddell are both in their 30s and they’ve just become first-time parents of a baby girl. Guay, whose background is in advertising and marketing, grew up in Westmount.
Prior to the birth, she was involved in her father’s duty-free business, but now she’s preparing to spend some time being a stay-at-home mom.
Riddell is from the West Island. A partner in a major Montreal law firm, he has a downtown office but he’s also able to work some of the time from home — something that will help when it comes to the many tasks associated with being a new parent.
The couple, who met around 10 years ago, lived for a while in New York City (Riddell was transferred for work), then had a house on Nuns’ Island.
They enjoyed living there, but according to Guay, they eventually got “really fed up” with the noise and mess of the construction associated with the new Champlain Bridge and the revamp of the Bonaventure Expressway. At that point, they were thinking of starting a family anyway. So in November 2016, they moved to Westmount, back to Guay’s old stomping ground.
The couple’s 5,000-square-foot townhouse is close to several parks and it has a sizable backyard — ideal for their child and also their two dogs.
There are five bedrooms (one has a fireplace and serves as a combined den and home office), three full bathrooms (plus a powder room), a semi-finished basement and a separate dining room, living room and kitchen.
The interior of their home is decorated in mellow tones of pale grey and oatmeal with black and white accents.
Q You were explaining that one of the things that drew you to the house was the fenced-in backyard? Lauren: It was, but I’m afraid that’s a sad story.
Q How come?
L: Well, last fall, we totally renovated it. The yard was gorgeous. It had a fire pit, a big seating area, a vegetable garden ... and then a couple of weeks ago, during a big storm, our neighbour’s massive tree fell down, destroying everything in its path.
(She leads me to a window, to show me.)
Q Oh dear. What a mess! That must have been disheartening ?
L: It was, but hopefully we’ll fix it up again. We’re just waiting for the insurance claim to be settled.
Q Apart from the yard, did you renovate anything else when you bought the house?
Peter: It was pretty much in walk-in condition. The building is old. It dates to around 1910, but the real-estate agent told us that somebody had bought this house to flip it, so everything had been upgraded and modernized. The only thing we did was put in some electrical outlets. Old homes never have enough.
Q I guess nowadays we run far more gadgets than in the past.
L: We also added some light fixtures.
Q Did you bring your furniture from your previous place on Nuns’ Island?
L: We brought the dining table from there. The glass display case in the corner came from my aunt. The mirror on the sideboard is also from my family. Some of our furniture came from Ethan Allen and we bought the light fixture at Ambiente.
Q I see you have an old-fashioned column radiator.
P: We have a few of those and they work very well. Just don’t touch them. They get piping hot! (From the dining room, we move to the living room. Decorated in shades of white and ivory, the bay window casts a soft light on the hardwood floor. Along one wall is a fireplace trimmed with dentil moulding.)
Q Does your fireplace work?
L: We’ve had it inspected, but so far we haven’t used it. There’s another one upstairs in the home office and we’ll probably get that one going at some point.
Q Is any of this furniture from your Nuns’ Island home?
L: The sofa and chairs came with us, but the console table and the bookshelf we bought specifically for this house.
(Before we head to the bedrooms on the second floor, a large painting at the foot of the stairs catches my eye. It shows an elderly Chinese gentleman sitting under a tree beside a young girl. Around their feet are little birds, pecking at the ground.)
Q What a lovely picture. Where did that come from?
L: Actually, it belonged to my parents. It’s painted on rice paper and it came with one of the homes they lived in. When they bought the house, they asked the seller if they could have the painting as well.
When I moved into my first apartment, before Peter and I were married, my parents gave the picture to me.