By Ruby Pratka
Local Journalism Initiative
A Quebec Superior Court judge has ordered the town of Sutton to grant a permit for a rehabilitation facility for women recovering from addiction to move into the Villa Châteauneuf in Sutton.
At the Jan. 28 hearing, Judge Gaétan Dumas ordered the municipality to emit the permit within two weeks. Élaine Francis, a lawyer for the town, told the court the town would respect the order.
The Villa Châteauneuf, a former convent and school, was built in 1911 on land donated by local philanthropist Eugene Dyer, who stipulated that it should be used for the education of the francophone and anglophone population of Sutton. In 1971, it was transferred from the Soeurs de la Présentation de Marie religious order to the Foyers de la Charité, a network of religious retreat centres-slash-utopian communities affiliated with the Catholic Church. In June 2023, amid declining religious participation and the impact of COVID restrictions, the papal delegate of the Foyers de la Charité decreed the closure of the entire network; the last six permanent residents of the Sutton centre, elderly laypeople who shared all their goods in common, moved out in September of that year.
Since then, the complex of eight buildings, worth an estimated $15 million in 2023, has sat empty, overseen by a nonprofit board. The board initially planned to donate the complex to Le Chaînon, an organization for domestic violence survivors, before deciding to rent it out to La Passerelle, Quebec’s only residential rehab facility exclusively for women. The court order allowing La Passerelle to move in “allows us to have an occupant that will pay the fees, keep the building insurable, and maintain it,” said board chairperson Victor Marchand.
Amélie Lemieux, the director of La Passerelle, said the organization’s current facility in Saint-Simon-de-Bagot is bursting at the seams. “At the moment, we have 24 beds in nine rooms, people are sleeping two to four to a room and we are refusing two people a day,” she said. “At the Villa, we would have 40 private rooms.” She emphasized that women participating in the rehab program would be there voluntarily and would not be able to leave the property unsupervised. Moving to the larger facility, she added, would allow La Passerelle to hire several local staff members and potentially offer bilingual programs.
“It would have been nice if they had come to see us”
However, the legal dispute over the Villa’s fate is far from over. In court filings, both the Diocese of Saint-Hyacinthe and Ann and Diana Dyer, heirs of Eugene Dyer and administrators of the Dyer family trust, have raised concerns about the legitimacy of the nonprofit board as stewards of the property; the diocese had sought an injunction to keep the town from granting the occupancy permit. If a judge finds in favour of either party, the property could revert to the diocese or to the Dyer family trust. The Town of Sutton has also invoked its right of pre-emption to match any offer made on the property; after initially proposing to move the town’s community centre there, Mayor Robert Benoit has more recently floated the idea of using the villa, which has dozens of small, private bedrooms, to house temporary foreign workers and serve as a community hub along the lines of the former Maison Mère convent in Baie-Saint-Paul. He was adamant that the city had no plans to pursue for-profit residential development on the site.
The permit issued to La Passerelle is temporary, valid until such time as the other legal challenges are resolved – which, according to Benoit Chabot, a lawyer representing the nonprofit board, could take two years or more.
“If another judge decides the diocese has a right to decide what will happen to the building, then we’ll have to leave,” Lemieux said. “We know that’s hanging over our head, but we’re moving forward and we have confidence in the project.”
Benoit said he had not spoken with Lemieux or Marchand about La Passerelle. “We have zero information about La Passerelle – is it a halfway house? Will there be security measures? Are the [participants] going to be able to leave the property? Are citizens going to be able to come onto the property and mix with them? It would have been nice if La Passerelle had come to see us.”
Lemieux said La Passerelle would “definitely develop information sessions to allow people [from the community] to come and ask their questions” if the move – still conditional on approval from the CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS – goes ahead.
“Just the first inning”
The mayor said the legal dispute over the Villa’s long-term fate is “just in the first inning.”
“What I really regret is how this has divided Sutton,” he said. “It is polarizing, and there are people who are for and against it for all sorts of reasons. There’s no space to find a compromise that will be acceptable to everyone. We’re trying to defuse the situation … in a context where there’s a lot of misinformation.”
Benoit said the town plans to hold information sessions on its own project for the Villa over the next few weeks.
The BCN contacted lawyers for the Dyer family and the Diocese of Saint-Hyacinthe but had not received a response by press time.