Can you spot the differences? The portal of Montreal’s oldest building, the Vieux Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice, now appears transfigured compared to the one Montrealers have known for centuries. “It’s one of the top 10 buildings in Montreal,” says Dinu Bumbaru of Héritage Montréal about this building erected between 1684 and 1687. Located just a stone’s throw from Notre-Dame Church, its portal immediately catches the eye. Under the pretext of a restoration, the coat of arms on the pediment, with the monogram of the priests of Saint-Sulpice, have reappeared in a garish guise, in an altered ensemble. “This portal is not an accessory. It’s so important. We’re not talking about decorating a bungalow. There have to be scientific explanations to arrive at something like this,” says Dinu Bumbaru.
Architect Gérald McNichols Tétreault, former curator of the site, speaks of a “scandalous mutilation of the arms of the Saint-Sulpice portal.” He worked on site from 2005 to 2016, surrounded by experts and scientists. “We would never have dared to intervene so brutally on such a vestige, by separating the elements and smearing the support and components and thus literally disfiguring the portal of the Seminary.”
The garish colours used seem foreign to the original ensemble. “I’ve never seen a red like this,” Dinu Bumbaru points out. The two lions are now gold, whereas one was previously silver. The friezes under their feet have been repositioned elsewhere. For Auguste Vachon, former head of heraldic collections at the National Archives of Canada, this symbol on the pediment of the seminary is a tracing of the coat of arms of Great Britain. So why is it that everything is now gold, whereas a silvery white was once present? Furthermore, the finesse of the sculptures of the big royal felines appears to have faded. Have the originals been replaced by fakes?
Among the priests of Saint-Sulpice, Anne-Élisabeth Vallée, art historian and archivist, transmitted to the Duty the official statement of the Sulpicians, formulated by Mr. Joël Gauthier, attached to finances. Mr. Gauthier affirms that “the coat of arms adorning the pediment of the portal have not been modified”. According to this spokesperson for the Sulpicians, they have rather “been the subject of maintenance due to their poor state of conservation”. Mr. Gauthier affirms that The Duty can himself “see that they have already been put back in place”.
For Dinu Bumbaru, the Sulpicians should say something other than “everything is normal.” “It is not an accessory. This building, with its gardens, constitutes a whole. The word “scientific” should appear somewhere to justify such a matter.”
A questionable decoration effort
For Gérald McNichols Tétreault, it is very difficult to consider that the current coat of arms, atrophied compared to the previous ones, are up to what Montrealers have been able to see for more than two hundred years. “The intervention that appeared last week seems like an effort at decoration that clashes with everything around it,” says the architect. Gérald McNichols Tétreault is adamant: one of the best-known symbols of Old Montreal has been mutilated. He points out that the pediment of the entrance to the Old Seminary “constitutes a recognizable figure on the famous iconographic survey commissioned by Jacques Viger around 1826.”
“Whatever the intention of this intervention, it should have been submitted to a competent scientific committee” and discussed, observes the architect. According to him, “given the importance of the element in the public space of Old Montreal, an explanatory panel should have documented the purpose and intention of the intervention.”
The original pediment, he recalls, had been tampered with in the 19th century.e century in order to please the British regime. He considered this architectural element of Old Montreal to be as important “as Nelson’s Column, financed mainly by the Sulpicians, for the same purpose.”
For the former chief curator of real estate at the Vieux Séminaire des Sulpiciens, the deterioration of the current façade “testifies to a challenge by Sulpician managers with regard to the authority of the Ministry of Culture over a building of Quebec’s cultural heritage.” He believes that this intervention testifies to “the disastrous times in terms of heritage that we are going through.”
The Old Seminary of Saint-Sulpice is a convent building erected from 1684. There is a beautiful and vast garden hidden from public view. The building is at the origin of the city of Montreal. All the buildings of the seminary and its exterior surroundings are in principle placed under the protection of the State.