Saint-Colomban gives a new life to a house that has known many

Mackenzie Sanche - Monday, March 7, 2022

Ville de Saint-Colomban (Facebook) | Barn of the Gaffney-Kennedy site

A small white house and an old wooden barn stand proudly in front of La Volière primary school in Saint-Colomban, a city nestled at the edge of the lower Laurentians. Passers-by often spot a groundhog in the overgrown grass, and a light used to shine in the roof dormer. The Gaffney-Kennedy house was left uninhabited for years.

Isabel Lapointe is one of the many people who come across this house daily. She became the district’s municipal councillor in 2017. “When I joined the cultural committee, this was one of my first mandates,” says Lapointe sitting across the table, next to the mayor. “That house, that barn… they are beautiful and I wanted to protect them.”

It turns out Lapointe wasn’t the only one who wished to protect the house. In fact, it was a citizen who asked for the Gaffney-Kennedy site to be protected six years ago. Lydia Simard grew up in Saint-Colomban and sees the house every morning on her way to work. One day, she noticed the snow was no longer being cleared and there was a broken window upstairs. If the snow started getting inside, she thought, it would only accelerate deterioration.

That’s when Simard decided to contact the history society in Saint-Jérôme to find out how to protect a house. “I knew it would be long and hard and that there were many steps to the process,” Simard says over the phone. But when the previous mayor didn’t seem interested enough, she knew she would have to take matters into her own hands.

“I didn’t think I would be very supported,” admits Simard. “But I had also been communicating with the current mayor, Xavier-Antoine Lalande, who was a municipal councillor at the time. He told me he would take care of the case.”

Saving the Gaffney-Kennedy site

When the new municipal council was elected in 2017, Mayor Lalande held fast to his promise. The site had recently been sold to a real estate developer, along with the forested land behind it. Simard was worried the house would be destroyed to build the new neighbourhood.

Luckily, promoters are required to yield ten per cent’s worth of the grounds for the purpose of parks, either in land or in money, according to Lapointe. This is how the city managed to negotiate to retrieve 55,000 square metres of the Gaffney-Kennedy site.

“The Gaffney-Kennedy house will be at the entrance [of the neighbourhood], so we had the idea to make a huge, beautiful multisports park while also protecting the house,” says Lapointe.

“Which doesn’t currently exist here,” points out Mayor Lalande, sitting beside her. With the rapid growth of the area, he says they are in need of a place for larger-scale installations for sports and recreation.

Both Mayor Lalande and Lapointe speak of the Gaffney-Kennedy site’s future with shining eyes. The biggest project for the site is currently the construction of a baseball field in collaboration with Baseball Québec. There is a lack of sports facilities, explains the mayor, a baseball fan himself. According to him, the Gaffney-Kennedy site is promising for this project. It would make baseball a much easier sport to access, considering the closest fields are at least a 20-minute drive away.

Although the other installations for this site remain unofficial, Lapointe mentions there is talk of a municipal pool, a basketball court and a dek hockey court. However, all that is confirmed for now is the surrounding neighbourhoods are expected to have access to the brand-new baseball field as soon as October 2022.

After the new city council was elected, Simard had distanced herself from the project, dealing with personal health issues. She was overjoyed when Mayor Lalande told her all about the new project for the site when she saw him at the mailbox a while later.

“He told me: ‘We’re going to build a multisports centre,’” recalls Simard, breathing in slowly. “It brought tears to my eyes, because I was touched that I was not alone in this and someone else cared about it.”

The mayor explains that this initiative answers to a certain sensibility. “It’s a citizen who started this, but from what I hear, this house meant a lot to many people,” he acknowledges, gesturing to Lapointe.

Remembering the story

While the municipal council reflects on the park’s prospects, they still intend to rejuvenate the small house and make it functional for the park’s users without losing its patrimonial value. The house is estimated to be about 150 years old. “It’s one of the first houses of Saint-Colomban,” says Lapointe.

Most of the historical knowledge the citizens have is based on a book by Claude Bourguignon, a local ethnologist who spent over 25 years researching and writing Saint-Colomban: Une épopée au piémont des Laurentides. He gathered the remaining pieces of this city’s history and archives, his work referenced by Lapointe and the mayor.

Mayor Lalande recounts how hostile the territory was. Granite, forest and humid soil are quite unsuited for agriculture. “The Irish came, built the first roads and made sure that others could live here,” he says. “There are people who worked to develop Saint-Colomban and we have the duty to recognize it out of respect for our territory.”

The story of the founding Irish families is one of resilience and strength, something the municipality hopes to honour. “We have to be proud of our heritage,” says Linda Rivest over Zoom. She is the director of Histoire et Archives Laurentides and a fellow citizen of Saint-Colomban. In her opinion, the current city council is very sensitive to the interest of preserving heritage sites.

Rivest says that in 1823, there was a house on the lot, but not exactly the one that stands today. Irish immigrants started settling in Saint-Colomban in the early 1800s, but the first Gaffney is thought to have arrived around 1875 with his wife. They acquired the house soon after and cultivated oats and potatoes.

The Gaffney-Kennedy family quietly inhabited the house for years, but became more involved in town activities in the 1960s. Rivest says the last Ms. Kennedy was involved in the inauguration of the very first municipal library of Saint-Colomban and participated in the Catholic Women’s League.

When Lapointe went to clean out the barn last fall, she happened upon some old pictures as well as a letter intended for a certain Mary Kennedy that dates back to 1961. They were buried in sand and grime, but still well-conserved witnesses of the past. In the post scriptum of the letter, the sender writes: “Heard the shocking news that Pres. Reagan was shot. Wonder what will happen now. We saw it on the news. How horrible.”

Simard and her parents had known the last of the family that lived in the little house. She describes the last couple who owned it as being reserved, respectful and well-dressed anglophones. She remembers they often decorated the windowsills with flowers and had built a small wooden fort for their two children to play in. At the time, there was even a small chapel in front of the barn. “I thought it was a mythical place,” says Simard, fond of the memories.

Lapointe says it’s important to remember the traces of the past. As Mayor Lalande poetically put it, “To know where we’re going, we must know where we come from.”

Honouring those before us

“This house is interesting because there really aren’t many left on the territory of Saint-Colomban,” explains Rivest. According to her, the Gaffney-Kennedy house could be the first in Saint-Colomban to be recognized by Quebec’s law on cultural heritage.

Mayor Lalande grew up and still lives in an old Irish-built house, which has developed his respect for the city’s founders and the landmarks that are left of them. “People who move here and buy a lot think they’re the first ones to tread it,” he says. “The truth is, this territory was logged two, three times here. And maybe there was something else there before.”

He and Lapointe glance toward a wooden sculpture in the entrance of the town hall building. It is a bustier of the very first mayor of Saint-Colomban, Michael Phelan. It was created a few years ago by a local artist using the trunk of an old apple tree that had long been in the park in front of the town hall. It had to be taken down due to sickness and safety risks for the children. Still, Lapointe’s cultural committee decided to use it to commemorate this important historical character.

Simard says the importance of conserving these historical landmarks is tightly linked to a sense of identity. “Even the most damaged house, the most crooked, deserves to be picked up because there is a story behind it,” she affirms.

On her part, Rivest explains these reminders of our history are anchored in our landscapes. She is happy to see the municipality’s willingness to preserve them: “Transforming [the Gaffney-Kennedy site] into a park where people can meet up and reusing the house is a victory.”

Rivest agrees with this project, as it fulfills the need to create a space that brings people together, especially in a city with many young families.

Building to gather

In 2021, the federal and provincial governments announced they would invest in 21 sports and recreational projects in the Laurentians. The baseball field project at the Gaffney-Kennedy site was deposited and accepted, earning Saint-Colomban financial support of just over $295,000.

Mayor Lalande emphasizes that the city is changing the way projects are conceived. “What is certain is that we want to develop this park with the help of subsidies,” he says, matter-of-fact. He wants to cover most construction costs this way to avoid debts that would ultimately fall into citizen taxes.

The city council also aims to cater to a wider age range with this park. Although they do not yet have a full plan of the future installations, Lapointe explains this allows them to be more flexible and to adapt on the way. For example, she says they only learned recently that they could possibly gain subsidies for projects that would benefit the elderly. “We know we need a park for children, adolescents and young adults, but that doesn’t mean we’re abandoning our elderly,” adds the mayor.

Lapointe says she also dreams of making space for music shows and parties on this historical site so people can gather and share during cultural activities. This would allow the inhabitants of the southern part of Saint-Colomban to access and enjoy municipal events more easily.

Growing up in Saint-Colomban has made the mayor familiar with the city’s needs. “We know what it missed, we know what it’s missing and we know what it will miss,” he says.

This project makes Simard hopeful for the future. “There are probably other houses like this one that are abandoned,” she says. “If we set the example for others, maybe they’ll realize something must be done. It’s our history, it’s our heritage.”