More than two years before the monastery of the Dominican women of Berthierville was sold to a developer ready to demolish it, the Quebec government had asked the municipality to warn it if such a scenario took shape, learned The Press.
“The Minister of Culture and Communications would like to be informed when a building of heritage interest located within the limits of your territory, which has no legal status, is put up for sale or is likely to be destroyed” , wrote the regional directorate of the Ministry of Culture and Communications (MCC) to the director general of the City of Berthierville, on November 3, 2016.
The minister himself had sent a virtually identical letter a week earlier. “I would be grateful if you would inform the ministry when a building of heritage interest located within the limits of your territory, which does not have legal status, is put up for sale or is likely to be destroyed”, a writes Luc Fortin, Minister of Culture and Communications in the Liberal government of Philippe Couillard, to the then mayor of Berthierville, Suzanne Nantel.
PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Entrepreneur André St-Martin in front of the Berthierville monastery, in April 2019.
At the end of March 2019, the nuns sold their monastery built in 1933 to a contractor from Berthierville, André St-Martin, who obtained his demolition permit from the City a few days later. On April 4, 2019, Culture Minister Nathalie Roy issued an emergency order to prevent the building from being razed.
Heritage classification
In January 2020, the old monastery was classified as a heritage building, and the grounds of more than 7 square kilometers on which it stands were classified as a heritage site. Mr. St-Martin had proposed, as early as the previous year, that Quebec buy the whole thing from him, but Minister Roy had let it be known that there was “no question of it at all”.
The company 9263-7552 Québec inc., of which Mr. St-Martin is a shareholder according to the Registraire des entreprises, is today suing Québec in Superior Court for disguised expropriation. The parties ended their pleas last Friday at the Joliette courthouse.
If the City had followed up on the Minister’s request, we would not be here with you today.
The government prosecutor, speaking on Friday to Judge David E. Roberge
If Berthierville had warned Quebec, the Ministry of Culture would have carried out a heritage assessment, and the minister would have announced her intention to classify the premises, argued Ms.e Francis Durocher. Thus, “Mr. St-Martin would never have bought the monastery” or, if he had decided to buy it all the same, it would have been “in full knowledge of the facts, knowing that there would be classification” , argued M.e Of the rock.
“I don’t want to comment,” Mr. St-Martin replied to The Press Monday.
A letter addressed to all municipalities
The Dominicans left their monastery, which had become too big for their needs and means, in 2012, and searched for a buyer for years. An inventory of the built heritage carried out for the MRC d’Autray in 2013 had attributed an “exceptional” heritage value to the building, but it was not protected.
Why not inform Quebec that this imposing monastery had been “put up for sale” or was “likely to be destroyed” after 2016? The municipality says they don’t know.
“This letter was brought to my attention when I appeared in court on November 16,” said the current general manager of Berthierville, Sylvie Dubois, in a telephone interview on Monday. In the fall of 2016, “I did not have the processing of all the files, far from it”, says the one who was then deputy director general of the municipality.
The same letter was sent “to all the mayors and to all the mayors” of the province, indicated Quebec at the beginning of its missive of three pages. The request to be informed “in the same spirit of cooperation” was in the penultimate paragraph.
At the time of this writing, the Ministry of Culture and Communications had not responded to our requests for clarification sent on Monday.
The former monastery of the Dominicans of Berthierville escaped demolition in the spring of 2019, but then suffered the outrages of vandalism, fire and bad weather, and was the subject of urgent work ordered by Quebec.
In January 2020, the Berthierville city council had declared, by unanimous resolution, that it had no intention “to invest public funds, nor to take charge of the former monastery and the site”, and that he didn’t want to be responsible for it. This orientation is still in effect, the City told us on Monday.
Learn more
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- $40 million
- Estimated value, in January 2020, of the residential project which cannot be carried out on the monastery site due to its heritage classification.
Source: Minutes of the regular meeting of the City of Berthierville council held on January 13, 2020