A father from Morin-Heights, in the Laurentians, has converted the cockpit of a dismantled plane into a game module for his children, turning heads in the village. The municipality did not appreciate.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
“They just want me to take it off,” sighs Michel Pépin, who is himself a pilot. He offered to move it, so that it would be less visible, but “there is nothing to do, it has to go”. A city inspector told him that he would receive an email “which will officially confirm everything” and that he will then have “seven days to dispose of it”.
Mr. Pépin, however, says he has the agreement of the owner of 71, chemin du Village, where he is currently a tenant with his two sons, 5 and 7 years old. The cockpit has been there since September or October, according to him, but the City only intervened at the end of April.
The aircraft part would have also spent a decade on this same land before, and would have been in Morin-Heights for more than 20 years without any other problem, an assertion that the municipality disputes.
PHOTO PHILIPPE BOIVIN, THE PRESS
Michel Pépin, who converted the cockpit of a dismantled plane into a game module for his children.
“It’s in violation of the zoning bylaw,” said Hugo Lépine, general manager of Morin-Heights, in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
It is considered an accessory building or outdoor storage. The owner claims it’s a playground for his kids, but we don’t agree.
Hugo Lépine, general manager of Morin-Heights
Mr. Lépine was not able to point to a specific provision, but “there is a series of articles for which the owner is in contravention”, he assured that day about the cockpit.
The Morin-Heights zoning by-law provides that “outdoor storage is prohibited”, except for recreational vehicles, household trailers and firewood. Multiple provisions regulate “accessory constructions”.
Change of opinion
But on Thursday, the City Manager’s speech changed completely, so that there “is no infraction notice in sight.” But will there be one? “As of now, there is none. We have other elements on which we must work with the owner, it is not necessarily the highest priority for the moment, ”concludes Mr. Lépine without further details.
The situation is all the more strange since the cockpit has been in Morin-Heights for more than 20 years, according to Mr. Pépin and Gilles Beauregard, its former owner. The latter previously owned 71, chemin du Village, where the cockpit spent a decade before Mr. Beauregard moved in 2009, he says. He then settled elsewhere in Morin-Heights, on the edge of Bouleaux Park, where the piece of Dash 8 type aircraft remained until Mr. Pépin bought it, about two years ago.
PHOTO PHILIPPE BOIVIN, THE PRESS
The cockpit on the grounds of 71, chemin du Village, in Morin-Heights
Mr. Beauregard, who worked in the recycling of aircraft parts and kept some for himself over the years, said he never had a problem with the City on this subject.
But the general manager of Morin-Heights is categorical: according to him, it is impossible for the cockpit to have dragged on there for so long. “Look, we still keep data, and the property in question is still located on the main axis of the municipality, which is Village Road,” he explains. If there had been anything prior to 2009, I can tell you one thing: we would know, but I very much doubt that. »
Be that as it may, Mr. Pépin has still not received a written notice from the City. His boys can still dream of taking to the controls of the decommissioned Dash 8, for now.