The day after a fire that injured nine people in Old Montreal, three of them seriously, a woman was still missing on Friday. Montreal police and firefighters have not revealed the identity of this person, but two acquaintances, including a former tenant of the premises, claim that Camille Maheux, a retired photographer, is missing.
“I still hope to find her, that’s for sure,” whispered Petunia Alves, a friend of Camille Maheux, in an interview. The septuagenarian had lived for more than 30 years in the building which was burned down on Thursday, said Ms. Alves, who contacted various hospitals and the police on Thursday after trying in vain to find her friend in the metropolis.
Contacted by The duty, spokesperson for the Montreal Police Service Jeanne Drouin indicated that a search could not yet begin in the rubble of the building, “because the structure could have been damaged to the point of representing a risk” for investigators and firefighters. The cause of the fire remains unknown.
Concerned residents
The firefighters having finished extinguishing the blaze, engineers went on site during the day to assess the condition of the structure of this building built in 1890, which is located in the classified heritage site of the place where Montreal was founded. .
The building is however in very poor condition the day after this fire, which ravaged the interior and the roof of it, leaving only the walls still in place. In this context, citizens of Old Montreal are worried about what the future holds for this building, which was originally designed to house the offices of the Ogilvie Milling Company, which then dominated the milling industry in Canada.
“It’s scary, it’s a great loss,” reacted Friday the president of the Association of residents of Old Montreal, Christine Caron. “It was a very nice building that stood out well on the street. It would be desirable if we could keep it, ”she continued, calling on the Ministry of Culture and Communications (MCC) in passing. “We must maintain the character and authenticity of the street and the sector. »
A wish also shared by Mélanie Pitre, who lived in this building twenty years ago. “I stayed in the basement. I lived in the old foundations. The walls were made of stone, the supporting posts of the building were made of stone. It was magnificent, ”said the one who remained for ten years in this building.
Quebec analyzes the file
Concerned about the future of this building, the MCC got in touch on Thursday morning with the inspection service of the borough of Ville-Marie and the heritage division of the City “to follow the evolution of the file”. A first visit to the site of the fire then took place on Friday afternoon by an inspector from the ministry, in the presence of an inspector from the borough, the MCC told the Duty. This visit aims in particular to determine “if short-term interventions are to be recommended” to protect this building, adds the ministry.
The William-Watson-Ogilvie Building is also subject to the Cultural Heritage Act. In this sense, “all restoration, demolition, reconstruction or other work must be authorized” by the ministry, notes the latter. “The Ministry will ensure that the required authorizations will be handled diligently,” concludes the MCC by email.
However, time is running out to act, believes the director of Château Ramzay, André Bélisle. “We still have to be careful, because I imagine that we could demolish this building very easily,” says Mr. Bélisle, who believes that the Quebec government has all the necessary levers to “intervene” and give a second life in this heritage building.
The Pointe-à-Callière archeology museum, inaugurated in 1992, is slowly recovering from the fire that occurred a stone’s throw from its facilities. The flames were contained yesterday to a single building, but the vast cloud of smoke released by this fire resulted in significant deposits of dust in several places in the museum, in particular in the installations of the fort of Ville-Marie.
“There are several works in progress in this building,” said the director of communications for the Pointe-à-Callière museum, Katia Bouchard. “But the archives, the rare books and the media library have been protected,” she adds, relieved. ” We had a narrow escape. »
The Pointe-à-Callière museum will remain closed for a few more days, before opening again next Wednesday. Fort Ville-Marie and the Collecteur de souvenirs installation, located in a heritage sewer, will however remain inaccessible for a longer period.
Many files at the TAL
On Thursday, the Montreal Fire Department confirmed the presence in the burned building of short-term rented accommodation on Airbnb-type platforms. However, a regulation adopted in 2018 by the borough of Ville-Marie limits the areas where tourist residences are permitted on its territory to a section of rue Sainte-Catherine, between rue Saint-Mathieu and rue Atateken. The City also confirms to Duty not having delivered any certificate of occupancy concerning the “tourist residence” use to this address, nor having received complaints to this effect from neighbors in connection with the presence of illegally rented accommodation on Airbnb at this location.
Me Alexandre Bergevin, the lawyer for the owner Emile-Haim Benamor, who has owned this building since 2009, assures us that his client has never rented short-term accommodation on Airbnb. According to the lawyer, it is rather tenants who sometimes sublet their accommodation on Airbnb, “unfortunately”. Asked about the future of this building, “it is too early to talk [d’une] reconstruction, ”wrote Me Bergevin by email.
The owner of this heritage building has had several disputes with tenants in recent years. Emile-Haim Benamora has thus accumulated, since 2020, more than twenty decisions of the Administrative Housing Tribunal concerning tenants in eight of its buildings located in Montreal and Westmount, noted The duty.
In some cases, the landlord was sued by tenants who were asking for reductions in their rent or even moral and punitive damages, in particular for “trouble and inconvenience” or even “harassment”.
Petunia Alves also claims that her friend who is missing, Camille Maheux, has been “harassed” several times by the owner of the building. “The landlord dreamed of kicking her out to raise rents,” said Alves.
Emile-Haim Benamor did not respond to interview requests from the Duty.