Nearly a million dollars were spent this fall by the Quebec state to curb the accelerated degradation of the monastery of the Moniales de Berthierville.
The owner, under the legal person of a numbered company, argues before the courts that he is the subject of a disguised expropriation. He therefore considers, this week at the Joliette courthouse, to have suffered “damage”.
The promoter André St-Martin intends in the same breath to cancel the heritage classification of the building. The outcome of the trial could set an important precedent.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Culture and Communications has granted $833,251 to 3 companies to see to the urgent preservation of the building, learned The duty. This work was carried out despite the objections of the owner, who is suing Berthierville and the Ministry.
Urgent work
Since its sale to a private company in 2019, the sprawling 1934 building has been the subject of litigation in the courts.
Faced with the deterioration of the premises, the Ministry of Culture obtained a safeguard order. According to the indications given in the contracts granted to various firms, the religious building suffered a very rapid disintegration. The State therefore decided to intervene urgently to preserve the premises and avoid the worst.
It is the firm of architects BGLA of Quebec which was hired to “ensure the proper execution of the urgent interventions provided for in the safeguard order”, reveal the documents consulted by The duty.
A general contractor from Terrebonne, Sur-Mesur, won the bulk of the contracts awarded to ensure the preservation of the building. The firm was entrusted with the task of “carrying out various cleaning, decontamination, sealing and securing work on the building”, particularly with regard to the roof, for the sum of $738,371.
Quebec also granted $39,500 to the firm Garda to provide surveillance of the premises.
Other contracts have also been awarded by the ministry for expertise in security and building structure, learned The duty. The total bill for the emergency work is therefore close to one million dollars.
The neo-Romanesque convent building that is the subject of these emergency measures was designed in the 1930s by a professor from the École des beaux-arts de Montréal.
The promoter, André Saint-Martin, purchaser of the complex, wanted to demolish it. He wanted to use the land to build a vast real estate project.
There was no question for him of integrating the historic building into his plans, as he had explained in an interview with To have to.
An intervention in extremis
Berthierville had initially acquiesced in its request for demolition. In the absence of a preservation regulation, the municipality had therefore issued a permit so that everything could be razed, to the satisfaction of the new owner.
The project aroused indignation, especially since the MRC de D’Autray recommended preserving this vast building. The places and their last occupants, Dominican nuns, were the subject of a documentary entitled loversfruit of the work of director Louise Sigouin.
The building is one of the few surviving monasteries of contemplative nuns built outside major urban centers.
It is the intervention in extremis of the Quebec Ministry of Culture, which had enabled the building to be saved. It was classified at the start of 2020. The owner could thus benefit from support from the ministry and financial assistance of up to 40% of the cost of the restoration work.
It was ultimately the ministry that had to undertake the work, since the premises continued to deteriorate, we note in the documents that we were able to consult.
The building escaped a fire on May 23. An officer from the Sûreté du Québec then confirmed to the To have to that it was the result of a criminal act. Several other such incidents have been reported, police reported.