Do you like to stop in front of impressive houses to wonder who built them and with what incredible fortune, pardieu? Me too. And it turns out that two young women have just turned this popular hobby into a profession… Welcome to Heredes.
Sophie Lamarche and Véronique Lapointe met while they were both studying at UQAM, at the DESS in modern architecture and heritage. The friends became planning and heritage consultants – Sophie for the federal government and Véronique for an architectural firm. Then, a year ago, they went into business. A little in spite of themselves.
They are both full-time employees and managers of a young company called Heredes. I am a freelance writer. We therefore meet in videoconference on a bank holiday Monday, when it is not quite 9 a.m. We all three wear a hoodie and this lack of decorum makes us smile. I already love them. I must say that I loved them the second I discovered their heritage coloring book, but we’ll come back to that …
Sophie first takes the floor to explain the genesis of Heredes to me.
During the confinement, I walked a lot and I was fascinated by the architecture of Westmount… I wondered: “Who built these houses? What job did you need to have to be able to afford such homes? ” So I started doing little research and talking about it with Véronique …
Sophie Lamarche
It has become a game.
Sophie and Véronique began to dig through the history of Westmount homes in public records, such as BAnQ and Ancestry.com. Without being able to leave their homes, this is how they spent their evenings and weekends. To better share information, they wrote short texts about each house… Once there, why not draw them?
“It happened so naturally that we never realized we were starting a business! », Reveals Véronique laughing. But one thing leading to another, they had accumulated enough to make a collection. It remained to be found who to use it for.
So what did the first owners of Westmount mansions do for a living? Sophie gets carried away: “They were characters larger than life! Eminent bankers, railway company presidents, almost lords ! It didn’t exist here, but you see the genre? Now, there are still a lot of business people, but they are not of the same caliber as at the time… ”
Véronique adds a notable difference between the owners of the past and those of today: “They often had 11 children, which justified the size of the houses! ”
***
How do you go from a pandemic game to an entrepreneurial project? The girls think for a moment.
Sophie finally tries to answer: “In the news, the stories we see about heritage are often sad, for example:” Such an important building will be destroyed. ” We wondered how to do something positive, happy and attractive… We started to think about an activity dedicated to young people, a game so that the admiration of heritage becomes a shared value among generations and cultures. ”
PHOTO PHILIPPE BOIVIN, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Westmount, a history and coloring book
Thus was born the history and coloring book Westmount. Its 99 pages offer detailed illustrations of 35 buildings in the district, in addition to a bilingual description of their first occupants and their journey “often worthy of a film”, explains Sophie. Beautiful for the little ones, but also the big ones.
In fact, the reception was immediately positive. Sophie tells me that she felt like a little girl who sells chocolate bars by going door to door; and every door that the co-founders of Heredes knocked on opened wide. Their book can be found today in many boutiques, at the Canadian Center for Architecture (a consecration!) And under the Archambault – Renaud-Bray banner.
PHOTO FROM HEREDES FACEBOOK PAGE
The Westmount history and coloring book, the first project of the young Heredes company
Véronique explains to me that they could not help but think of a business model. Whether they planned it or not, they became entrepreneurs. A few months later, the project is now clear: the duo wants to offer its services to municipalities across the province to produce fun and educational books, in addition to working on guided tours and workshops in schools.
“In Quebec, heritage conservation is not a key value,” says Sophie, weighing her words carefully. Without going into the politico-historical, we are a very progressive nation that has experienced a break with its past. ”
What we want with Heredes is to create a love story between Quebecers and their heritage. We want to try to reconnect people with their built environment and open their eyes to its relationship with our history, our identity. The buildings around us can teach us as much as a grandma or a grandpa!
Sophie Lamarche
***
If you have read my previous columns, you start to guess that I have a lot of affection for people who want us to live in the city differently. Needless to say, I was immediately under the spell of Sophie Lamarche and Véronique Lapointe. However, it was at the very end of our call that they scored the most points.
I asked them what they meant by the slogan of their company: “The heirs of the heritage”.
“Heredes means ‘heir’ in Latin,” Sophie replied. Then, heritage can refer to private property, but it is also public. As a nation, we have a responsibility to preserve it because it is our common ancestors who built it. We are in a very individualistic society, but if we focus on history, we realize that it is not an owner who must fight for the preservation of his building, but all of us. ”
“We are the heirs of the past, but we also have an obligation to pass on our heritage to future generations,” concluded Véronique.
Good news: the confinement will have given us at least two new inspired entrepreneurs …
Visit the Heredes website