You can’t miss it. The old Lawrenceville General Store is at the center of the village, concerns and debates.
In all honesty and at the risk of hurting its ardent defenders, it must be recognized that the cubic two-storey building, adorned with white plastic clapboard, reveals very little of its almost bicentenary charm to the traveler who sees it standing in the end of road 243.
But beware, like everything about the small Estrie town of 640 inhabitants, we are talking about soul and heart here. Look beyond appearances and PVC coating.
“It’s almost 170 years old. The wooden floors do not creak, it is solid as it is not possible”, notes Pierre-Emmanuel Tessier, one of the warmest supporters of its renovation, while browsing the floor.
The building is in a way the symbol of the challenges of the village.
Lawrenceville was founded in 1836 by the Lawrence family, who gave it its name and its first business, a sawmill strategically located on a bulge in the local river, the toponym of which is uncertain. Google Maps has appropriately named it Trempe River, while local usage hesitates between Black River and Red River. Erastus Lawrence built a general store around 1850, an attractive building with double arched windows, which has lost many of its original attributes over time.
Its last owner definitively closed the business around 2010, less for lack of customers than for a buyer.
It was just the first in a series of announced commercial deaths.
“It looks like we had a wave where all business owners were at retirement age,” observes Dominique Millette, who will guide us through the day.
Host of the local monthly, Moulin Express, and member of the Millette clan, rooted in the village for 150 years, it was she who invited La Presse to visit her village.
“I’ll give you the example of the convenience store,” she continues. François had been the owner since 1987. He was approaching his sixties. He also had a butcher’s shop. It had been many hours and he wanted to reduce. He put his business up for sale. It was not easy to find someone for a small convenience store in an environment like ours. There were one or two unsuccessful attempts, and he decided to close. »
On the morning of April 18, she greeted us at the general store.
Behind the entrance door which cuts a bevel on the corner of the building, a large room opens, where are piled up chairs, a few tables, a refrigerated counter (empty), an old glazed wooden counter, two fridges, two stoves. For five years, social and musical events have been held there during the summer months.
A sweet smell wafts: on wheeled shelves that an employee has just pushed there, a batch of bread cools in the breeze from two large fans. Baker Yannick Mayrand, new owner of the Lawrenceville Artisan Bakery, occupies a small room set up for him at the back.
These initiatives fell from the CIEL.
It was to breathe new life into the community that the Cooperative of entrepreneurial initiatives of Lawrenceville (CIEL) was created in 2009.
“It all started with a garage meeting, which took place at Dominique Millette and her husband Pierre Tessier’s,” says its first president, Michel Carbonneau. “There must have been a good dozen of us meeting on the initiative of two or three people who said they were unhappy about what seemed to be the end of a village spirit. There were no more restaurants, businesses were threatened. »
Michel Carbonneau himself is a fine example of the commitment that Lawrenceville can inspire in its citizens. For 30 years a professor at the University of Montreal, he acquired a second home in Lawrenceville around 1970. First a municipal councilor, he was mayor from 2010 to 2017.
Area of the municipality
Number of Private Dwellings in Lawrenceville (2021)
Population change between 2016 and 2021
In 2010, the small industrial complex there was largely occupied by the moulder IPL, which made motor vehicle covers for BRP. The company, which employed a hundred people in Lawrenceville, had plans to expand to double its production capacity.
CIEL, which the municipality had given responsibility for the industrial motel, saw as an opportunity to set up a café-bistro in the disused former general store, which would have served as a cafeteria for IPL.
Unfortunately, the new owners of IPL, sold in the meantime, abandoned the project, which was already well under way.
“Despite this glitch, the cooperative decided to go ahead and buy the general store,” says Michel Carbonneau.
A new tile fell: the lending institution demanded an analysis of the soil, which was found to be contaminated by the old gas pumps.
“We were presented with two options. There were citizens who felt that there was no interest in saving this building, ”continues Michel Carbonneau.
Deprived of funding, the small coop did not have the means to undertake the decontamination work. And his fundraising activities in the general store could not be held without prior decontamination, it was believed. We were going around in circles.
“We dragged this ball and chain for seven or eight years, until young people did not let themselves be imprisoned by this soil to be decontaminated. They said, “We liven up the place, we’ll see later.” »
One of these leaders was Pierre-Emmanuel Tessier, son of Dominique Millette.
After a four-year stay in Port-Cartier, he returned to Lawrenceville in 2016 to work in the family business, Millette et Fils.
Pierre-Emmanuel Tessier and Guillaume Roberge, sons of the owner of the hardware store in the village, realized with their spouses that “it would take a place to have a beer in the village, to be able to socialize,” says Pierre-Emmanuel.
“There was no more meeting place. The steps of the church played this role before. »
With a cohort of volunteers, they launched a major clean-up of the old general store and applied for the necessary permits to hold short-term events there.
“We called it Lawmuse-Gueule,” he said. “The purpose of the activity was to foster encounters. »
And also to attract recalcitrants to the scene of the dispute, a question of dangling their potential.
They thought they could gather between 30 and 60 people for their first event, held during the summer of 2018. “The first evening, we had more than a hundred. We ran out of beer in an hour. »
This success gave confidence to a group of private investors, who granted them an interest-free loan for 15 years. “It allowed us to renovate the section for the bakery. »
The rent from it helped to replenish the fund of the organization, which was able to redo the fenestration of the ground floor of the building in 2022.
CIEL wants to find a tenant for the ground floor, to then fit out professional offices upstairs thanks to the additional rent. But it is difficult to attract candidates before the building is renovated.
In the meantime, to raise funds, the CIEL relies on Lawmuse-Gueule.
“I am organizing the sixth edition for this summer, says Pierre-Emmanuel Tessier. It responds very well. »
The coop plans to sell the building when its profitability is assured. “And maybe then go for another building,” he said. There are other businesses here that will need a replacement. »
“CIEL has a job for a long time!” »
A guided tour allows you to better understand the challenges of the small community… and to meet amazing characters.
A tantalizing smell wafted through the general store. “Tuesdays always smell good,” says baker Yannick Mayrand.
Tuesday is cinnamon twist day.
“I bought three years ago,” he says, as the oven bell rings. “The bakery was 30 years old. The owner wanted to retire and I wanted to change my life. »
He had worked in IT for 20 years.
He lives in Bromont. For eight months, he commuted to Montreal North to take a baking course. He intended to open his own business, but realized that financial institutions were cautious about bread ovens.
On October 2, 2020, he bought the equipment from the former Lawrenceville baker, who worked in an extension of his house. A month later, Yannick Mayrand moved into the premises set up for him by CIEL.
“It was all run down. They did a miracle here. The entire rear part has been redone. »
For now, its business model is based on distribution in local delicatessens. But soon, he intends to serve the local population directly, in the general store.
The Saint-Laurent school, built in 1959, has two classes and a kindergarten which welcomes around thirty students this year. It is periodically endangered.
“You have to have good ideas to keep it,” says Dominique Millette. “For at least a decade, the municipality has been involved. She has an agreement with the school board for exterior maintenance, mowing the lawn, opening the yard in winter. »
In her class, teacher Joëlle Bergeron gives a lesson on the growth cycle of vegetables on a large interactive screen. Apart from a sick child, all her students are there: two boys and seven girls in 3rd and 4th years are seated in a circle on the floor.
Joëlle Bergeron has been teaching in Lawrenceville for fifteen years.
The school principal, Benoit Berthelot, shares his time with the Bonsecours school. The smallness of the premises requires some creative compromises. “In my executive room, I have a teepee,” he announces. Indeed, in a corner of his management office, a small conical tent is erected, equipped with a mattress and a stuffed animal. “Every morning there is a student who starts their day in the teepee for their routine. »
Due to lack of a buyer, the Lawrenceville convenience store closed its doors in 2019. The existence of the post office it housed depended on its survival.
“For us, it was a concern,” says Dominique Millette. Were we going to keep our post office? »
Marie-Josée Roy had worked for 16 years in the convenience store, before leaving the business in 2015 to devote herself to landscaping. It rebuilt inventory, renewed permits and reopened business in November 2020.
She called it the Coin du dep, rather than the Dépanneur du coin, as her children suggested. “Corner store, could have been anywhere. This corner was unique.
Two small tables and chairs occupy the front of the convenience store.
The dynamic grandmother, whose portraits of grandchildren dot the wall of the trade, until recently devoted more than 80 hours a week to her trade. “Now I take Sunday. And it feels good ! »
His laughter still echoed when we walked out.
“She is always smiling, always ready to help,” says Dominique Millette. “It’s a pearl. And for us, that’s what saves both the convenience store and the post office. »
“I have very deep roots,” says Dominique Millette. My family has been here for 150 years this year. I was born here. »
It is linked to the main industry of the small locality. “It was my great-grandfather who founded Millette et Fils with his brother. »
Almost 135 years later, it is still owned by the founders’ family.
“My dad was third generation. »
In the mid-1960s, the arrival of plastic stripped them of several of their contracts.
“It affected them a lot. My father offered his cousins to buy everything back. He became sole proprietor. He was very lucky. He was in Valcourt one day and he met a guy: “Eille, you, Millette, you work with wood? At Bombardier, we need something to ship our snowmobiles.” »
The manufacture of wooden crates for BRP has become the main activity of the company, which currently employs about sixty people in Lawrenceville.
On this momentum, Millette et Fils has become, on its own scale, an international company. When BRP opened two plants in Mexico, Millette et Fils did the same to supply it with its boxes.
Alexis and Pierre-Emmanuel Tessier constitute the fifth generation of what one could call a dynasty, if it were not that the word has an aristocratic connotation totally foreign to the friendly family.
The main businesses line up in front of the church like in a Colocs song. Their disappearance would have left a gaping hole in the heart of the village.
Pierre Tessier, who joined his wife Dominique to complete the tour, leads us to the hardware store BMR Materials Lawrenceville. It was founded in 1988 by 12 shareholders. There are three left, including Gilles Roberge and his son Guillaume.
It has four full-time employees. One of them, Daniel, is 63 years old. Another, Alain, has worked for him for 32 years. A youth, this one: he is 54 years old.
Over the expansions constrained by its small plot, the store seems to have grown haphazardly. In the upstairs and basement rooms, all the shelves are full to the brim.
“We are looking for shareholders, announces Gilles Roberge. I want to moderate, but not let go completely. Because it’s not easy, take it all back. »
Anyone interested?
“We have a meeting tomorrow night. We’ll see that. I would like a merger with a big guy. We are small. We deliver to Saint-Hyacinthe. When I have two guys leaving in a truck, sometimes I pick myself up.
“I would like to finish work on Friday noon this year, then Thursday noon next year. But I don’t want to stop, I’m going to be bored at home. »
Garage Serge Lussier is located right next to the hardware store.
Its owner does general mechanics – that is, absolutely everything. When we arrived, a middle-aged woman was collecting her car. Another (car) is waiting for repair in the garage. New tires ready to be installed pile up in reception.
“I’d like to sit down,” says Serge Lussier, his hands black with oil, after Pierre Tessier’s introduction. “I bought when I was 28, and I’m 64. »
Due to lack of staff, he now works alone, from 6:30 a.m. “There is no problem. He comes home every morning! he says of himself. A deadpan laugh.
“That’s such a good service!” “Intervenes Dominique Millette. “The number of times Serge helped me out, for my lawn tractor, my snowblower! Big shoes to put on! »
Looking to sell?
“In principle, it’s done,” he replies, looking at Pierre Tessier.
Ah good ?
“You’re pretty much the first to know that,” this one confirms.
The mechanic, true to his trade, makes a point: “There is one who was interested, but he separated, and it was his wife who had the money. »
Pierre Tessier and his brother-in-law Stéphane Millette, co-owners of Millette et Fils, want to buy the garage.
“The accountant called yesterday,” says Pierre Tessier. “We found young people. The talks are done. They want to see how much it would cost them. We rent at cost, to give them a chance, so they can take over the garage. We, all we want is to keep the service. »
A rental with a promise to purchase, in a way.
A promise made in Lawrenceville.
