The owner’s tour | A jewel of Saguenay history is looking for a buyer

Saved from ruins in the early 1970s, an important piece of Saguenay’s built heritage, the Père-Honorat mill, is looking for new owners.

Located on the banks of the Rivière du Moulin, in the heart of the village of the borough of Laterrière in Saguenay, this former mill transformed into a private residence has been on the resale market intermittently for a few years. Its owner, Marie Gendron, put it up for sale again in mid-January, in the hope of finally finding someone who will want to “adopt” it.

This is the word used by the former owner, journalist Hélène Vincent, from whom Ms.^me Gendron and her husband bought this extraordinary residence in 2005.

an adoption

“I remember very well, we were in the living room and she told us: ‘I’m not selling, it’s an adoption,’ remembers Marie Gendron. I didn’t really understand at the time, but once installed, I really understood that when you live in a heritage house, it belongs to you in part, but you feel so responsible. It’s a great responsibility to say to yourself: “It’s history and I have to take care of it.” »

Built in 1846, the mill is a remnant of the region’s colonial period. Having arrived in Saguenay two years earlier, Oblate Father Jean-Baptiste Honorat was determined to found a free agricultural colony at Grand-Brûlé (now Laterrière). A colony that would not depend on any external authority. He was in fact trying to free the settlers from the yoke of the English industrialist William Price, a duel incidentally recounted in the book Battle of titans in the heart of a Kingdomby Raoul Lapointe, published by the Société historique du Saguenay.

It was with this in mind that he had this watermill built, intended to saw wood, then grind grain. However, debts piled up and Jean-Baptiste Honorat was forced to leave the region in 1849. The Oblates sold the mill to a settler, Jules Gauthier. His family remained the owner until Hélène Vincent acquired it in 1969. The building was then in poor condition. M^me Vincent and his sons restored and modified it to make it habitable. In 1973, it was classified as a heritage building and benefits from a protected area.

“The cradle of our colonization”

Marie Gendron says that Ms.^gr Victor Tremblay, a friend of Hélène Vincent, said to her then: “It is not ruins that you have just bought, it is the cradle of our colonization where a great forgotten work slumbers. It is our first free colony in North America. On his death, the man bequeathed to him his impressive library which contains many books dating from the 17th century.^eXVIII^e and XIX^e centuries. Even today, these are kept in a space, under the attic of the mill, and will be bequeathed to future owners.

According to the Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communications, the Père-Honorat mill is of heritage interest both for its historical value and its architectural value “linked to its representativeness as a watermill”.

Water is omnipresent there, by the way.

Traces of the building’s past are still clearly visible, mainly in the family room in the basement, where the imposing gear wheel sits, as well as in the wine cellar, very contemporary this one, where you can see turbines. The exterior walls, in rubble, which replaced the original wood in 1863, have been preserved.

The locations have changed little since M^me Gendron and her husband, now deceased, bought it. The portrait of Father Jean-Baptiste Honorat still stands in the corridor, surrounded by antiques.

The couple redid the septic tank and the purification field in 2008, then the roof three years later, in cedar shingles. Rounded drip caps, like the original ones, have been reinstalled. Arranged on two and a half floors, in addition to the basement, the residence has retained its charm of yesteryear: exposed wooden beams, wide plank floors, casement windows. Any modification must be subject to the approval of the Ministry, which represents a brake for certain buyers, admits M^me Gendron. In return, the renovations are eligible for subsidies.

“Sometimes people ask me, ‘Don’t you feel like you’re living in a museum?’ No way. It’s as if the house was lent to me in the name of the story. She and her husband dreamed of it for a long time when they had a house built on the other side of the river in the 1980s. at the mill”, but it was a dream. »

Today, life leads him to want to close this chapter and pass this gem on to the next. She cherishes the wish that the place become a public space, with its 344,000 sq.^⁠2 of land by the river, to which she devoted a great deal of energy. “It would be great if it became the people’s house, with exhibitions, conferences, a place for writers. But what matters most to him is finding people who will know how to adopt him.