Château Dubuc can still be saved according to its owner

I have been working for the protection of Château Dubuc for yearssays Michel Saint-Pierre.

In the fall of 2021, Michel Saint-Pierre contacted several ministries to try to benefit from the assistance of subsidy programs. Each time, Château Dubuc was not eligible (archives).

Photo: Radio-Canada / Roxanne Langlois

The president of Lars Canada, the company that owns the heritage building, describes as scandalous the way in which Minister Nathalie Roy summed up the file on Thursday.

Questioned by the member for Gaspé in the National Assembly, Minister Nathalie Roy said that the owner of Château Dubuc had been notified since 2018 that the building had to be moved and that it is now too late to save it.

Mr. Saint-Pierre says he never received a notice to that effect. Instead, he claims to have received a letter from Public Security in 2018 saying that the building’s protection needed to be strengthened.

The owner notably erected a protective wall which did not hold up and, more recently, beams and logs were installed, but are not sufficient to protect the building against storms (archives).

Photo: Radio-Canada / Marguerite Morin

According to him, it is also false to say that the ministry was the only one to commit to paying for the protection of the building, by offering assistance of $40,000 last October, conditional on a contribution from the Town of Chandler which never came.

Mr. Saint-Pierre explains that it then became impossible for him to move the building back about sixty meters, an operation valued at $1.2 million. He also claims to have invested more than $900,000 to renovate and protect Château Dubuc since he bought it in 1995.

” Last year again, I exceeded $60,000 for the studies required of me by the government. I have been communicating with the department for 11 months, before it was with Public Security. It makes everyone aware and I have been looking for help for a long time. »

He argues that it would be possible to move the Château Dubuc to the site of the former Gaspésia factory, which belongs to the government, and thus protect it permanently from bad weather, but Quebec must be ready to invest the necessary sums.

I give him the building! Currently it is still recoverable, except it will cost moreargues Mr. Saint-Pierre.

The government just has to say: ”we take this land and move the building”, but Minister Roy is not interested, she says that the file is closed. She just has to say, ‘we go ahead and save him, period’.

In November 2021, a storm left a huge hole in the floor of one of the main rooms of Château Dubuc, on the ground floor (archives).

Photo: Radio-Canada / Roxanne Langlois

For its part, the office of Minister Nathalie Roy declined our request for an interview, but reiterates that the current government is the only one to have offered financial assistance in this file, while previous governments were also aware of the situation. , as does the Town of Chandler and the MRCRegional County Municipality du Rocher-Percé, who also refused to get involved in the protection of Château Dubuc.

Recently, the president of Patrimoine Gaspésie, Jean-Marie Fallu, had also challenged the Minister of Culture and Communications on this subject, saying that she was the last chance of Château Dubuc.

Built in 1916, Château Dubuc bears witness to the industrial past of the town of Chandler. The building owes its name to Julien-Édouard-Alfred Dubuc, one of the greatest French-speaking industrialists of the 19^and century in Quebec.