Nick Fonda

Photo courtesy

By Nick Fonda

Local Journalism Initiative

Somehow, the term pastry chef doesn’t quite have the same ring as pâtissier, just as the word pastries doesn’t necessarily evoke the image of the delectable petits gâteaux traditionally found at a salon de thé.  The pastries available at Chez Ludovic are unmistakably in the latter category.

“I’m a traditionalist,” says Ludovic Meunier who owns and operates a small pâtisserie on the corner of Heriot and Loring Streets in downtown Drummondville.  “There is a new wave in the world of pastries, but the recipes I use all have a long history.  Some I’ve tweaked a little bit, but the cakes and pastries I make are essentially the same as those you might have eaten a century ago.”

Born in the town of Mortain, Normandy, Ludovic grew up near Paris.  At the age of 17 he started a two-year program where he learned to make pastries, chocolates, and ice cream.

“It was a hands-on education,” he says.  “We would spend one week in the classroom, and then three weeks working as apprentices in one type of shop or another.  It was learning by doing.”

There were no family antecedents with a similar interest in baking, but Ludovic knew from early on that it was what he wanted to do.  He was happy to find that there was a demand for his skills.

“It’s not difficult to find work if you’re a pastry chef,” he says.  “It’s also a trade that lets you travel the world.  French pastries have been introduced pretty well around the globe.  There were lots of openings when I graduated and, if I’d wanted to, I could have worked as far afield as Scotland or Brazil.”

That Ludovic ended up in Canada had much to do with a family vacation he took in January of 1991.

“I came with my parents,” he recalls.  “I remember standing on the Plains of Abraham on a day when the thermometer was at minus 15 C and there was a bit of a wind to top it off.  It was brisk.  Yet, the cold here in Quebec is a dry cold.  In France, the air is damp and the cold is more penetrating.”

Two years after that trip, in March 1993, young and single, Ludovic came to Canada as a landed immigrant.  He found a job in Three Rivers.  There he met Line Vaillancourt, a native of Danville.  The couple moved to Sherbrooke, where they stayed for a year and a half before moving downriver to Drummondville in 1996 to open their own French pastry shop.

“We found a place on Brock Street, just a few blocks away,” Ludovic says.  “It took two of us to run the place.  I worked in the kitchen in the back and Line served our customers in the front of the shop.  When we started, we had a few tables and we served coffee, but the café part of the business never really took off.  I no longer even have a coffeemaker.” 

In 2000, Ludovic changed location and settled into one of Drummondville’s oldest, and most historically significant houses, built in 1881, by William John Watts whose family played an important role in the city’s early history.

Ludovic Meunier starts his day early.

“I’m up at 3:30 in the morning and here by 4 ,” he explains.  “I turn on my ovens, take the croissants out of the cold room to let them rise, and I start my day.  Everything sold here is made from scratch.  I work alone in my kitchen and I generally have two or three things on the go at the same time.  With breads and pastries, there’s always a wait time between steps, and during that time I work on something else:  prepare a quiche, whip up a cream, or doing whatever is next on my to-do list.  My day in the kitchen is planned and structured.  I like things to be precise.”

Croissants are in a perpetual state of fabrication.  Made of flour, butter, sugar, yeast, and a dash of salt, the dough has to be repeatedly rolled out and folded over on itself, and then given time to rest. 

“Because of the butter, the trick to croissants is to work on a cool surface,” Ludovic explains.  “A wood surface is much better than a metal surface for that reason.  The actual work time on a batch of croissants—rolling the dough, slicing it into squares, and folding them into their crescent shape—is probably an hour and a half.  If it takes a long time to make them, it’s because they need time to rest, and later, to rise.

Making pastries like the Pavé Royal similarly requires wait times of varying length between the multiple steps.

“The bottom layer of the Pavé Royal is a praline, a mixture of almonds, hazelnuts, sugar, and a specialty biscuit,” he explains.  “Over that is a layer of chocolate cake, then a layer of mousse made of whipped cream and chocolate, topped with a blanket of cocoa powder.”

“This is one of the recipes that I’ve tweaked,” he continues.  “I’ve made the bottom layer thicker, and I’ve made the pastry a little less sweet.  I prefer it like that, and my customers do too.  I make close to 20 different pastries and cakes, including éclairs and fruit tarts.  Some, like Yule logs and galette des rois, which I make at Christmas time, are seasonal.”

Typically, on an annual basis, Ludovic will use 1200 pounds of butter, 600 kilos of two different types of flour, and 200 kilos of sugar.  

“I’m in the kitchen all day,” he says.  “On the days that the shop is open—Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning till 12—I leave about half an hour after the shop closes at 5:30.”

Not only does Ludovic put in a long day, he also puts in a long week.  Although the shop is only open three and a half days a week, his weekend consists of Sunday afternoon.  He does, however, give himself an annual holiday, about four weeks in the summer that he and Line spend with family in Normandy, in the area around Mont St. Michel.

Ludovic is a specialty shop, at the far end of the spectrum from big box stores.  It appeals to a limited, but faithful clientele.

“I’ve been here 28 years,” Ludovic Meunier says, “long enough that clients who first walked in the door with their parents when they were 10 or 12- years-old are now coming in with young children of their own.  Over that time some people have passed on and new ones have started coming, but overall, my clientele is very stable.  Almost all are regular customers.  With many of them, if I see them come in, I can usually predict what they’re likely to choose.”

“My busiest days are Friday and Saturday,” he continues.  “Lots of people will call in the morning and ask for something in particular.  It does occasionally happen that at the end of the day I have half a dozen loaves of bread left, and it also happens that a customer comes in at 2 p.m. to buy a loaf of bread for supper and everything I’ve baked is already sold.  But usually, I’m fairly good at estimating how much I should prepare.  Business in the summer is slower than in the winter, and the busiest time of year runs from mid-October to Christmas.”

“If you count the hours, I’m probably working for much less than minimum wage,” Ludovic Meunier says, “but I love what I do.  The pleasure I see in people’s faces is worth more than money.”

French pastries have been described as being very attractive and as expensive as they are small.  They are very much a specialty item, but there are several French pastry shops in the Townships, including two in Drummondville.

Ludovic’s eponymously named shop, according to more than one afficionado of petits gâteaux, offers among the best pâtisseries.

For more information Ludovic can be reached at 819 477-7131.

Photo by Nick Fonda

By Nick Fonda

Local Journalism Initiative

After beating out five other candidates and garnering 50.7 per cent of the vote, Kevin Stoddard is the new town councillor for Richmond’s District 5.      

Voter turnout, as is generally the case in municipal elections, was low.  Of the 455 eligible voters in the district, only 136 cast their ballots, a turnout rate of 29.89 per cent.

In a few ways, this byelection was rather unusual. 

Although it also happened in neighbouring Melbourne Township, it’s unusual to have several candidates contesting a seat in a municipal byelection.  Often, candidates are elected by acclamation.  As CBC reported, several towns of under 2,000 in population will likely take advantage of recent provincial legislation which, starting after 2025, will permit them to function with four councillors rather than six, which is now the norm. 

It was also a byelection in which one issue was very fresh in the minds of the electorate:  water.  A broken water pump caused tap water in a significant number of households in Richmond to run brown for several weeks earlier in the summer. 

Compared to the election campaign being waged south of the border, campaign spending in the District 5 byelection was very modest.  Unlike in the neighbouring republic, where billions of dollars are being spent on election ads, Quebec law imposes limits on the sums spent on municipal elections.  For the election of a municipal councillor in towns of over 5,000, the maximum base amount for election expenses is $1,890. This amount is increased by $0.30 per person entered on the electoral list of the district in which that person is a candidate. 

Ironically, but understandably, there are no spending limits in towns of under 5,000, and the District 5 candidates—had they been backed by someone like Elon Musk—could have spent like drunken sailors, or presidential candidates. 

As it was, only one candidate went to the trouble and expense of printing election posters and pasting them on telephone poles and improvised billboards.  A couple of the candidates took the time to type up a page-long handout that they gave to homeowners as they walked door-to-door to meet voters. 

In the end, the campaign posters failed almost completely to sway the citizens of District 5.  Raymond De Martin, who has lived in Richmond for six years, although not in District 5, got only two votes, despite his poster campaign.

Nicolas Isabelle, the only one of the six candidates who, by his own choice, was not interviewed by the Record prior to the election, was second-to-last with four votes.

Yves Lupien, a lifetime resident of Richmond who had first-hand experience with brown tap water last summer, garnered six votes, while Pierre Bédard, who lives in District 5, but has only been in Richmond for four years, won seven votes.

The runner-up in the byelection was Benoit Saint-Pierre, who got 48 votes, which is 35 per cent of the votes cast.

At the age of 32, Kevin Stoddard, who lives in District 5, was the youngest of the candidates.  At least four of the other candidates are either retired or of retirement age.  In addition to his full-time job as a mechanic, he is also a member of Richmond’s volunteer fire department.

At least four of the candidates, including Kevin Stoddard, had CVs which listed varying degrees of volunteer work in the community.  Serving on council represents a small financial step forward as town councillors are not, strictly speaking, volunteers since they are paid about $6,000 per annum.

Interestingly, seen in the context of different democratic electoral systems, although Kevin Stoddard won under the first-past-the-post system, with just over 50 per cent of the vote, he would also have won the byelection if it had been held under rank voting or any other proportional representation system.

“I was pleasantly surprised by the results of the election,” he says.  “I expected to be in the running but it wasn’t until the votes were being tabulated that I realized I might win.”

Kevin is likely to be kept busy as a councillor.  Even in the weeks before the election, he was being approached by citizens who had particular problems and concerns.

Photo by Nick Fonda
Louis Robert, Herman Herbers, Martin Lessard, and Pascal Goux spoke at a press conference in Cleveland Monday morning on a government proposal to regulate the use of sludge on agricultural land.

By Nick Fonda

Local Journalism Initiative

Waste—human waste—is a problem. 

The problem was addressed at a Monday morning press conference at the Municipality of Cleveland Town Hall when the director general, Martin Lessard, made public the municipality’s recommendations to the provincial government which is preparing legislation to regulate the storing and spreading of sewage sludge, also referred to as biosolids and as fertilizing residual material (FRM).

In addition to Martin Lessard, three other people spoke:  Herman Herbers, mayor of Cleveland, Pascal Goux, a retired engineer and Cleveland resident, and Louis Robert, a retired agronomist and author of Pour le bien de la terre, a book that outlines the harm being done to agricultural land by the overuse of fertilizers and pesticides.

All towns and cities on the St. Francis River now have water filtration plants.  Municipal waste water from the town’s sewer system flows to the filtration plant.  There the water is aerated in ponds where the solids sink to the bottom and the water—now clean—is pumped back into the river.

Over time, the sediment in the settling ponds accumulates.  Periodically, the pond is drained and the sediment dries into sludge which is transported to farms where it is spread over the fields like fertilizer.

Human waste is not very different to the waste produced by livestock, and it has been used the same way since the advent of agriculture.

More recently, that simple, natural cycle has become more complicated.  As well as waste from residential neighbourhoods, filtration plants also have waste from commercial and industrial concerns.  Inevitably, the process of fabricating household or other goods creates waste.  Often, to varying degrees, the waste is toxic.

On a number of occasions, including in Cleveland in 2020, the dumping of toxic waste on agricultural land has resulted in people being poisoned, livestock stricken, and wells contaminated. 

So far, the Quebec government has had guidelines to try to control where municipal and industrial sludge is spread.  To prepare laws, rather than just guidelines, to regulate the sludge market, the government released a management code for fertilizing residual matter and gave interested parties a relatively small window of time to offer feedback and input into the drafting of the legislation.

Martin Lessard headed a group that prepared a detailed commentary focussed on the environmental impact of the management code, a text that is 91 pages long and was published in the Gazette Officielle du Québec on July 24, 2024.

High on the list of concerns were the timing and time-line set out by the government’s consultation process.  Those wishing to suggest changes had 45 days to make their proposals.  Worse, the government issued their request at a time when many are on vacation, and likely to miss the government’s announcement.

The proposed changes presented by Cleveland ran to 14 legal-sized pages.  What follows are selected highlights.

There is already considerable literature from the United States on the link between public health and the indiscriminate spreading of sludge.  Cleveland proposes a moratorium on the use of sludge on agricultural land until there are more conclusive studies available and until public hearings by the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environment (BAPE) or similar public hearings can be held.

The government management code effectively allows sludge merchants to ship or store their product without prior permission.  Cleveland’s proposal—if a moratorium is not imposed—is to adopt strict controls and to ensure that if there are problems that there be rapid follow-up.

Chemical analysis of the sludge at the point of source should be recorded by the municipality or industry producing it, however Cleveland would like those records to be publicly available to ensure full transparency.

Depending on its source, sludge contains a range of concentrations of pathogens—bacteria, viruses, moulds, and parasites.  These concentrations should be minimal in the case of the sludge spread on fields.  There should be no mixtures of biosolids to create misleading average readings.

The government paper is unclear as to certain roles.  Cleveland feels that the sludge merchant should not be the one to carry out the chemical analysis of the sludge.

While owners of woodlots have to authorize the spreading of sludge on their land, this is not the case for owners of agricultural land.  Cleveland would like to see a system whereby landowners have to give their approval to the spreading of sludge, even if they themselves are not the ones exploiting the land in question.

Not only humans, but livestock as well should be protected from the odours of stockpiled sludge.  There should be a minimum of 165 meters between a pile of sludge and any buildings, a distance recommended in 2016 by Quebec Public Health.  In addition to being unpleasant, odours also indicate that bioaerosol dispersal is occurring:  potentially noxious agents are being spread through the air.

The management code would permit sludge to be dumped 60 meters away from any waterway or 100 meters from a well.  Cleveland’s bylaws already stipulate these distances as 150 meters.  Furthermore, the municipality’s bylaws state that, in the case of a slope of more than 3 per cent, sludge should be piled more than 200 meters from the well or waterway.

Agronomists should be bound by their code of ethics and not be put into positions where they face a conflict of interest.  An agronomist being paid by a promoter selling sludge should not simultaneously be advising farmers on the use of FRMs.  Agronomists should similarly not be acting contrary to the public good.

Cleveland suggests that when sludge is to be delivered to a rural property, neighbouring residents should be informed 10 days prior, not seven days as proposed by the code.  This allows property owners time to test their water before the sludge is delivered.  If water tested after a delivery of sludge proves to be contaminated, the source of contamination won’t be in dispute.

The new code wants to give municipalities two days notice of sludge deliveries.  Cleveland feels that the notice given should be 30 days to allow the municipality to properly manage its territory.

The government proposes that sludge merchants be allowed to deliver a quantity of less than 2,000 metric tons of certain classes of biosolids without notifying the municipality beforehand.   Cleveland feels that municipalities should always be informed about sludge being delivered to their territory, regardless how small the quantity is or its category.  Transparency is essential to the proper functioning of the municipality.

The management code would change the categories of FRMs that have to be accompanied by a small sign indicating what kind of sludge has been dumped on an agricultural field.  Cleveland would want to maintain the practice of installing a sign with relevant information.  The cost of this is minimal and it provides transparency.

This summary is superficial at best.  Sludge is as complicated as it is malodourous.  For one thing, it is not uniform but, depending on where it comes from, will have a chemical composition that places it in one of dozens of different categories—C2, P1, O3, E2, I1 etc.—which defy simple explanations.  As our technologies grow more sophisticated, the number of potential new contaminants also grows.  The newest sludge category (listed under “I”) includes what are called forever chemicals that take a very long time to break down.  While there are dozens, if not hundreds, of chemicals in this category, the government is only asking that testing be carried out for a few of them.

Sadly, what does seem apparent is that the government management code is industry-friendly.  It gives sludge merchants loopholes that facilitate the disposal of biosolids and that leaves municipalities and rural property owners ill-informed and vulnerable to toxic poisons that should be incinerated at high temperature rather than spread on green pastures.

Waste—human and industrial—is a problem most of us would just as soon leave unmentioned.  Yet, the longer it goes ignored, the more serious the consequences we face.

As Martin Lessard pointed out, we don’t want to wake up in 20 years time and realize that this is the moment when we should have acted to protect our environment, and that includes our agricultural lands.

By Nick Fonda

Local Journalism Initiative

The title would have caught my attention any time, all the more so in election season.  To the south of us, the Excited States have been in election frenzy since the Republican candidate announced he was running almost two years ago.  (The early announcement has been successful in stalling and deferring almost all of the legal cases facing the former president.)  Here in Canada, we might find ourselves in election season at any moment between now and October 2025.  Our election season is thankfully much shorter, mandated by law to be from 36 to 50 days.

The intriguing title of the video was Why Democracy is Mathematically Impossible. 

The opening line of the video softens the title somewhat by rephrasing it as, “Democracy might be mathematically impossible.”  If democracy might be impossible, surely that leaves some room to hope that democracy might also be possible.

Certainly, democracy as its practiced in Canada and in the country next door is in grave need of reform.  In both countries, political power irregularly but inevitably swings between only two parties.  Both countries use the first-past-the-post (FPP) system and in both countries the party garnering the greatest number of votes is by no means assured of winning the election.  Both countries have experienced requests (so far unheeded) on the part of some of the populace for electoral reform. 

In 2015, Justin Trudeau was well aware that many of his fellow Canadians would welcome electoral reform.  After all, for both the NDP and the Green Party, a change to proportional representation was a key plank to their electoral platforms.  Trudeau borrowed the plank and promised that the 2015 election would be the last one contested under FPP.  Like many democracies around the world, he said, Canada would adopt some form of proportional representation.

For many—but not all—Canadians, the idea of having our representatives in Parliament correspond proportionally to the popular vote is appealing.  It reflects an innate desire for fairness.  If Party X gets 40% of the Vote and Party Y gets 20%, then Party X should have 40% of the seats in Parliament and Party Y should have 20%.

Might that be mathematically possible?

The video begins by stating that the methods we use to elect our leaders is irrational, before delving into the history of democracy and the math involved in democratic elections.

The simplest form of a democratic election is to list the names of all the candidates on a ballot and ask the voter to indicate their preferred candidate.  This electoral system dates back to antiquity.  It has been used to elect members to Parliament in England since the 14^th century.  There are 44 countries around the world—including 30 former British colonies—that use some form of this system.  It came to be known as FPP probably because of the horseracing metaphor often used to describe elections.

Even though it is still used by almost one quarter of the countries in the world, it is a flawed system on a couple of levels.  Because we have political parties, and because of disparities in the size of federal ridings (from about 25 000 voters to 120 000 voters), a majority of votes won’t guarantee electoral victory.  In the last century, England has had 21 majority governments, but only twice did those majority governments garner a majority of the votes. 

Another problem with FPP is the spoiler effect.  Parties with similar platforms split the vote, and a less popular party ends up winning.  In 2000, Ralph Nadar was a third-party candidate in a race that was only ever between Bush and Gore.  In the key state of Florida, Nadar took some 100 000 votes.  If about 600 of those votes had gone to Gore, George W. Bush would never have become president.

There are alternatives to FPP. 

In 1784, Jean Charles de Bordas of the French Royal Society of Science proposed an electoral system that ranked candidates.  The following year, a fellow-nobleman and fellow member of the Society, the Marquis de Condorcet dismissed Bordas’ idea and proposed a somewhat different ranked-ballot system by which voters rank the candidates in their order of preference.  Condorcet came to be known as the grandfather of a branch of mathematics called Social Choice Theory.  He also gave his name to the Condorcet Paradox.  While his ranked-ballot system could work quite well, it could also result in a Mexican standoff in which no clear winner could be determined.

Curiously, Condorcet’s system had been proposed almost five centuries earlier by Ramon Llull, a philosopher, theologian, poet, and prolific writer.  For over three centuries, the Catholic Church elected its pope using Llull’s ranked-ballot system.  Condorcet was unaware of Llull’s electoral ideas because his Ars Eleccionis (The Art of Elections) went lost and wasn’t discovered until 2001.  A philosopher and social economist who was a proponent of education and women’s rights, Condorcet also drafted a constitution for the newly-born French Republic.  Sadly, this effort landed him in jail where he died at the age of 50.

When voters rank the candidates, they essentially have a second chance to express their wishes.  If a voter’s candidate is eliminated (by placing last), the voter’s second choice is given his vote.  A candidate who places second on multiple ballots can see himself emerge as the winner by virtue of picking up the votes of eliminated candidates.

This voting system was used in a municipal election in Minneapolis and resulted in an unexpected side-effect.  In 2013, after having been in office by acclamation for several terms, the mayor of Minneapolis announced his retirement.  In all, 35 people from the city of 425 000 stepped forward to fill his shoes.  With that many candidates, it was reasonable to assume that at least one (if not many more) might be aggressive, combative, and generally unpleasant.  Instead, aware that placing second on the ballot might be even better than placing first, the candidates were unfailingly polite, courteous, and friendly.  (A voter’s first choice is likely based on policy, but a second choice could well be based on personality.)  The mayoral debate ended with the 35 candidates, linked arm in arm on the stage, singing Kumbaya.

Following Condorcet, dozens of mathematicians turned their attention to his paradox and finding a mathematically satisfactory system of electing a democratic government.  Among them was Charles Dodgson, little known for teaching Math at Oxford but well known as Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland.

While all of the systems proposed were better than FPP, all of them had particular flaws or weaknesses that, under certain conditions, could be problematic.

Then, in 1951, an American mathematician, Kenneth Arrow, published Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem.  In it he outlines five conditions necessary for a reasonable and logical voting system.  He then proved mathematically that, in an election with three or more candidates, it is impossible to satisfy all five criteria.  In part for his theorem, he was co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1972.   

More recently, and on a more encouraging note, a Scottish economist, Duncan Black, published a paper entitled On the Rationale of Decision Making.  Black’s voting system is based on the work of both de Bordas and Condorcet.  He places voters and candidates on a line between two opposites:  left and right, pro and anti.  Black showed that the preference of the median voter reflects the majority decision.  In Black’s system, the voter indicates the candidate he approves of, or disapproves of and to what extent.  In places where Black’s system has been tried the side effects were all positive:  increased voter turnout, minimal negative campaigning, and the elimination of the spoiler effect.  Approval rating is used to elect the Secretary General of the United Nations.  Kenneth Arrow came to accept the viability of Black’s electoral system.

It there is hope that democracy is mathematically possible, perhaps there is hope that Justin Trudeau will remember his promise of 2015 and introduce electoral reform.

Swinging back and forth between the same two parties is of interest to big-money donors but to no-one else.  While Canada is not yet officially in election season, like autumn, it’s in the air.  We’re at a curious moment in Canada, with a great many citizens dissatisfied with the current Prime Minister, and almost as many already dissatisfied with the Prime Minister in-waiting.  Proportional representation, in any form at all, would be a welcome change from FPP, a form of democracy as flawed as it is antiquated.

For more information, go to: 

Photo courtesy

By Nick Fonda

Local Journalism Initiative

The headline in last Tuesday’s (Sept. 3) paper was at least a little startling:  six candidates had stepped forward to contest the September 29 byelection in Richmond’s District 5.

Of itself, six candidates vying for one post is not particularly remarkable. 

(In a recent federal byelection in Toronto’s St. Paul riding, 84 names were on the ballot.  The great majority of those candidates were trying to send a message to Justin Trudeau, that he should keep his 2015 promise to reform our first-past-the-post electoral system and replace it with some form of proportional representation.  Despite being a long-standing Liberal stronghold, Justin Trudeau’s candidate lost the byelection.  Trudeau did not get the message to keep his promise, or if he did, he opted to ignore it.)

What makes the number of candidates unusual is that Richmond’s municipal elections rarely prompt so many potential politicians to step forward.  The late Marc-André Martel served as Richmond’s mayor for 31 years and only ever contested one election, his first.  His multiple subsequent mandates all came by acclamation.  Similarly, town councillors only rarely find themselves having to campaign for votes.  The folks in District 5, for example, have given their seat by acclamation the last four elections.

Not so this time.  Six people, all men, thought that this byelection was a good time to get involved in municipal politics.  Sitting on town council requires commitment.  A short mandate of just barely over a year is an ideal testing period.  It’s long enough to see if there’s enough time and energy to make good on the commitment.  It’s also long enough also to realize that the chemistry or group dynamic just isn’t there.

On Sunday, Sept. 29, or Sunday, Sept. 22 for those who want to cast their ballot early, the more than 450 eligible voters in Richmond’s District 5 will elect their new councillor.  He will be one of the following:  Pierre Bédard, Raymond De Martin, Nicolas Isabelle, Yves Lupien, Benoit Saint-Pierre, or Kevin Stoddard.

The Record reached out to all six to ask why they’re running for office and what they hope a seat on town council will permit them to do. 

Pierre Bédard

Pierre Bédard is 69 years old and has lived in Richmond for the last four years.  After studying Computer Science and Economics, he obtained an MBA from the Université de Montréal’s Hautes Études Commerciales.  His varied and extensive work experience began with a paper route when he was still a young boy.  He spent 25 years working with different oil companies in, among other things, distribution and sales.  For a time, he owned a small company that operated vending machines and doubled its profits in four years.  He also worked as a consultant to small and medium businesses.

He has always done volunteer work, something he describes as a family trait and traces back to his grandparents’ involvement in scouting.  Since moving to Richmond, he has become a volunteer at the Centre d’Art de Richmond as well as continuing his involvement with other volunteer organizations in Sherbrooke.

“Part of the reason I’m running for office,” Pierre Bédard says, “is to meet more of my neighbours and learn their concerns.  Richmond’s demographic is changing.  There are many people here whose roots go back several generations, but there are also new arrivals from all corners of the world.”

“I’d like to work towards making Main Street a little more attractive,” he says.  “Richmond already attracts visitors with events like the St. Pat’s Parade and the Antique Car Show, but I wonder if we can’t do a little more?”

“I find that, in general, people tend to be a little shy,” he continues.  “I wonder if holding neighbourhood street parties wouldn’t be a good way to get people to mingle a little more.  It’s a common phenomenon in Europe.  Recently, the Mahubay Fest on Richmond’s Main Street brought out a lot of people and suggests to me that there’s an appetite for that kind of get-together.”

“I’m also conscious of the need for affordable housing,” he adds.  “Could the Town help in some way, either by investing in buildings itself or by encouraging developers to integrate more affordable units into their new construction projects?”

“As well,” he says, “we could look at other income streams for the Town.  We should also consider balancing what the Town contributes to organizations outside of the municipality and to those within the municipality.”

Raymond De Martin

Raymond De Martin is 63 years old and has lived in Richmond for the last six years.   He studied Law at the Université de Montréal and later Administration at the Université de Québec.  Despite his academic background, he never took his bar exam and never practiced law.

Raymond’s work experience is quite varied.  For several years he worked as an administrator, overseeing programs that supported community groups as well as individuals and families facing difficulties.  For a period of time, he owned and operated a travel agency.  He was also an independent trucker for close to two decades.  He has travelled widely, both in Europe and Africa.

“A friend, who currently sits on Richmond’s Town Council, told me about this byelection,” he says.  “At the time, no candidates had stepped forward to contest the seat and I was interested, both in terms of personal experience and making a contribution to the town.”

“I think I could help in a few ways,” he continues.  “One of my preoccupations is with waste.  There are several small steps that could be taken to reduce waste, and taken together would reduce the drain on the Town’s coffers.”

“To go a step further,” he adds, “it might be worthwhile to consider an amalgamation of Richmond and the surrounding municipalities.  Do Cleveland, Melbourne, and Richmond each need their own administrative structures?  Wouldn’t a single administration save considerable sums of money?”

 “As a young retiree,” he says, “I could focus all my time and energy on serving as a councillor.  I believe it’s essential to listen to citizens and then work together to find solutions to the problems that Richmond’s taxpayers face.”

Yves Lupien

Yves Lupien is 64 years old.  He was born in Melbourne and, except for three years spent in Montreal, has lived in Richmond his entire life.  He studied Marketing at the Cégep de Sherbrooke.  He worked for a few years as a number cruncher for the toy company, Hasbro, before becoming an operator at the Domtar mill in Windsor.  His volunteer work in the area includes driving and delivering for Meals on Wheels as well as clearing brush off the trails at the Melbourne Cross-Country Ski Club.  He also helped out regularly at church suppers.

“I decided to run for town council shortly after doing a TV interview with CBC News,” Yves Lupien says.  “From mid-May till the end of July the water coming out of taps at home was brown.  I found it hard to accept the mayor telling me that brown water was good to drink.  A third of the town was affected and yet we were told nothing.  The Town has to be more transparent with its citizens.”

“I’m also bothered by the debts that the Town has incurred,” he continues.  “On my municipal tax bill, 20 per cent is allotted to covering costs related to decontaminating soil on the site of the new apartment buildings on Adam St. and water infrastructure.  At least some of those costs should not have been borne by the Town.”

“I’m running for councillor because I want to be involved, I want to improve things,” he says.  “For example, Dufferin Street has only one functioning street light.  That’s not acceptable.  Similarly, we need lighting at the intersection of Laurier Street and Highway 143.  As well, because my wife and I walk a lot, I notice that the upkeep and maintenance of streets and parks leaves a lot to be desired.  Our municipal workers should take more pride in their work.”

Benoit Saint-Pierre

Benoit Saint-Pierre is 71 years old and has been a property owner in Richmond for the last 15 years.  After retiring 12 years ago his weekend getaway became his permanent home.   Benoit holds a B.Sc. in chemical engineering from the Université de Sherbrooke.  He spent his career in the aluminum industry where he rose to a senior management position, a role that saw him oversee projects as far afield as Australia.

In 2015, Benoit became the founding president of the non-profit, Couvent Mont St-Patrice, where he succeeded in refurbishing the old convent and finding tenants to rent almost 100 per cent of its useable space.  For the last four years he has sat on the Comité Consultatif d’Urbanisme.  He is also a volunteer at the Daniel Menard Library and for Meals on Wheels.

“I’m running for office because I wonder if I can help in some way,” Benoit Saint-Pierre says.  “Sitting on the town council will be a learning experience, a chance to see how things work and also to find out the limitations within which the Town has to operate.  All my life, I’ve worked to improve on ideas and initiatives that were already established.  I see myself as someone who can bring people together.  I believe that it’s important that the Town and its citizens have a shared vision of the future.  There are always immediate problems that have to be addressed but long-term planning is essential.  We saw this here recently when the pump at the water filtration plant broke down.  Water security should definitely be one of the Town’s objectives.”

Kevin Stoddard

Kevin Stoddard is 32 years old.  Except for a year and a half that he spent in Sherbrooke, he has been a Richmond resident all his life.  He studied Criminology at Champlain College before opting to join the Sherbrooke Fusiliers.  After three years with the army, he decided to join his father and brother in the family business, Centre Mécanique RS, in Richmond.  For the last decade he has been a volunteer firefighter, participating actively in the extra tasks that the fire department undertakes:  collection of hazardous waste, family day, and Hallowe’en security.

“I’ve always had an interest in municipal politics,” Kevin Stoddard says.  “I was contemplating running in the next general municipal election in 2025.  It was a friend on town council who told me there was going to be a byelection and suggested I consider running.”

“There are a lot of good things about Richmond,” he continues.  “It’s a friendly place and you can feel safe here.  Still, one source of dissatisfaction for me is the lack of activities for youth.  For example, we have a skate park but it’s largely abandoned.  Another example is our Main Street which has far too many closed storefronts.  We should be working to bring in new businesses, perhaps through grants or subsidies for new start-ups.”

“I am concerned about taxes,” he says.  “Homeowners are paying rates comparable to Sherbrooke’s without the same level of amenities.  I want to listen to people’s concerns and then find ways to address them.”

At press time, Nicolas Isabelle had not yet replied to requests for an interview.

The byelection in District 5 was called following the death of André Brussière, who was in his first term as councillor.  If a council seat becomes vacant more than 12 months before the next general election, the municipality is legally bound to hold a byelection.  A town official estimated that the cost of holding the Sept. 30 byelection will amount to $7,000 or $8,000, an unexpected expenditure in this year’s budget.  The next general election, on Oct. 5, 2025, will likely cost about three times as much and will be budgeted ahead of time.  Most electoral costs go to training and salaries for election officials.

Photo courtesy
Husk Scow Ferry

By Nick Fonda

Local Journalism Initiative

Drummond County was at the northwest edge of the Eastern Townships as they were laid out late in the 18^th century.  Unlike most of the Townships, which were first settled by Americans from the New England States, Drummondville was founded by a British army officer.  Frederick George Heriot, who had distinguished himself in the War of 1812-14, was given the mandate to establish a dual-purpose settlement.  This new place would be a farming community, but it would have an armory and a ready militia.  Almost all of the first settlers who followed him to Drummondville were disbanded British soldiers and mercenaries. 

One of those disbanded soldiers who received a 100-acre allotment was John Husk.  Born in 1781 near Plymouth, on the south-west coast of England, he was a married man with a young son when he enlisted and was shipped out to Canada to fight in the War of 1812-14.  He and his fellow soldiers arrived in St. John, New Brunswick and inaugurated their first winter in Canada by marching 1400 km to Niagara, Ontario.  He fought and survived several battles, and at the end of the war, he opted to join Heriot’s colony rather than return to England. His wife, Elizabeth Wood, and son, William, joined him some time later.  The couple had a second child, Mary Ann, whose date of birth is unknown and who passed away in 1881.

The first years, John Husk and his fellow soldiers-turned-farmers had a very rough go of it.  Unbeknownst to them, as they were scurrying to erect shelters and sow crops, halfway around the world the eruption of Mount Tambora was starting to spew so much smoke and ash so high into the atmosphere that the Earth’s climate was changed for the next few years.  Carbon particulate floating ever so slowly downward blocked so much of the sun’s light and warmth that 1816 came to be known as the year without a summer; and 1817 was not much better.  

John Husk’s 100-acre allotment was on the west bank of the St. Francis River, approximately where the Drummondville airport is situated today.  He fulfilled his obligation of building a cabin and clearing a certain acreage of farmland.  Sadly, he was killed in 1823, at the age of 42, while felling a tree.

John’s son, William Wood Husk, perhaps partially prompted by his father’s death, moved upstream to L’Avenir.  Many of the early settlers did likewise as the Drummondville area’s sandy soil—the dried-out bed of the Champlain Sea—was ill-suited to farming.  William moved to another river-front property, a location which would later lead his son to operate a ferry service for almost half a century.   

William Cyrus Husk, son of William Wood Husk and grandson of John Husk, the disbanded soldier, was born on the family farm in what is now L’Avenir on September 8, 1847.  In 1868, when he was 21, he married Sarah Ann Barker and the couple had nine children.  Sadly, in 1884, Sarah passed away.  Five years later, Cyrus remarried and with Mary Selina Harriman he had five more children.  At the time of his death, in 1924, 11 of his children were sill living, some of them as far afield as Saskatchewan and Ohio.

Cyrus Husk played an active role in his rural community.  His death notice in the Sherbrooke Record following his passing on May 27, 1924, reads in part:

A long life spent in the service of other—no duty shirked, no task evaded—warrants the statement that in the death of Mr. Husk, Drummond County has lost one of her outstanding citizens.

The relatively long obituary mentions that Cyrus Husk died of pneumonia following a short illness.  He died on the family farm where he’d been born 76 years earlier and where he’d spent all his life.

Cyrus had played a major role in church affairs and this was reflected in his funeral services.  They were officiated by not one but two clergymen, the Reverends Thomas Knowles and J.S. Dickson. 

The Sherbrooke Record noted:

Mr. Husk ever displayed a keen interest in the work of the church with which he was long connected as a member and an official.  For more than 40 years there was scarcely an activity of the Methodist Church or of the Sunday school of Ulverton in which he did not have an important part. 

The obituary notes that Cyrus Husk was keenly interested in education and served as a school trustee.  He was similarly involved with agriculture, serving for 30 years as president of the Ulverton Farmers’ Club.

What is not mentioned in the obituary is that between 1876 and 1920, Cyrus Husk operated a ferry service across the St. Francis River. 

Cyrus was 25-years-old in 1872 when, following his mother’s death, he inherited the family farm on the first range in what is now L’Avenir.  The farm fronted on the St. Francis River and was only a short distance from the road that ran from Richmond to Drummondville.

Four years after taking over the farm, Cyrus invested in a long steel cable, a scow, and a couple of rowboats—all the equipment he needed to begin ferrying people and livestock from L’Avenir and Ulverton near the west bank of the river and St. Felix de Kingsey and St. Lucien near the east bank. 

A vivid description of the ferry is provided by J. Clifford Moore who, in 1996, when he was in his 90s, published a slim volume entitled The Life and Times of a High School Principal in Rural Quebec.  Moore grew up, and later taught, in St. Felix.

Moore wrote:

The ferry boat was able to accommodate two rigs at $0.25 per rig and $0.10 a person for pedestrians.  I don’t think Mr. Husk adhered strictly to that regimen.  This writer remembers helping his dad drive ten or twelve head of cattle to the river en route to the fair in L’Avenir.  Mr. Husk and his sons were very cooperative, loading about four of the animals on the boat and those of us on shore urging the rest of the animals into the water.  As I recall, when we had safely crossed the river, my dad asked Mr. Husk how much he owed him, and Mr. Husk said, “Forget it,” and that was that.

Moore points out that the ferry was particularly important to the younger generation.  While Ulverton’s two-room schoolhouse offered primary education, it was St. Felix that had a Consolidated School—the first such school in the province—that provided high school courses.  Several families, including the Husks, on the west bank of the river, sent their older children to the Consolidated School thanks to the ferry. 

The scow was moved back and forth across the river by one or two men hauling on the steel cable.  Pedestrians, if there were only two or three of them, were ferried over on one of the rowboats.

The ferry ceased operating when the river started to freeze up, usually in December, and, after the ice was thick enough, people crossed on an ice bridge.  In the spring, after the ice had cleared, ferry service resumed.  This meant that for two or three weeks every year, students from the west bank were unable to get to school.

Cyrus Husk operated his ferry service until 1920 by which time roads and vehicles had improved enough that people found it easier to travel to Richmond or Drummondville where bridges spanned the river.  During its four decades of operation, it was one of a handful of ferries that regularly crossed the St. Francis River.  To the people of Durham and Kingsey Townships, Husk’s Ferry was a vital service.

Family lore recounts one other unusual story about Cyrus Husk.  Along with another man, he was hired by a Montreal merchant, James Millar, to drive a flock of lambs to pasture in Vermont.  The trip took several days and was made with a horse and buggy.

After his death, his farm was taken over by Stafford Husk, the oldest of the children of Cyrus Husk’s second marriage.  Stafford would be the last of the Husks to operate the family farm.

Grest Golden Digger Wasp. Photo: Susan Mastine

By Nick Fonda

Local Journalism Initiative

The neighbour in question lives on the other side of the street, up just a few houses.  His back yard fronts onto the river, and as such, he sees quite a bit of wildlife.  A small telescope set up in his living room that overlooks the St. Francis lets him keep a close eye on local fauna.  This year, he had a resident beaver at the foot of his property for a short while.

Like an expert woodcutter, the beaver felled a couple of trees, dropping them into the St. Francis so they stretched from the riverbank to a small island.  The trees were the starting point for a dam that would have spanned ten metres or more.  Given more time, or other conditions, the beaver would likely have completed the job.  As it was, there were heavy rains, the river rose, and his (or her) hard work was swept downstream.   He (or she) moved on.

Mammals that haven’t moved on, the neighbour said, are the muskrats.  There’s a small colony of them digging tunnels into the bank of the small island.  Eventually, their burrows will hasten the erosion of the river bank and shrink the small island even further. 

The neighbour sees lots of birds.  This year, at one time or another, he has spotted almost 40 different species in his back yard.  He frequently sees two eagles, and he suspects they have a nest nearby.  He has also spotted an osprey fishing in the river.

Still, despite the variety, he says there are fewer birds this year than he is accustomed to seeing.  With the possible exception, he adds, of starlings which are at least as numerous as ever.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, starlings are not native to North America.  The good folks who brought 100 European Starlings to New York City in the 1890s and let them loose in Central Park had no idea how quickly they would multiply and become an invasive species across the city, the state, the country, and the continent.  They thought that, in a very subtle way, they were enriching the culture of their fellow citizens.  They wanted Central Park to have all of the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays, including the starling.   Did any of them know that in Celtic mythology, the starling is a symbol of fertility? 

As for insects, my neighbour hasn’t noticed the same significant decline as he has with the bird populations.

That’s not the case on my side of the street.  In the past, at the right time of the day, our back yard often hummed with insect life. 

Some insects, I consciously hunted and killed.  When I found a wasps’ nest—often up quite high under the eaves of the roof—I resorted to insecticide, a long ladder, and the cover of darkness to exterminate them.  I rationalized that eliminating the wasps would make the garden safer for the bees. 

I now have some regrets.  We had no wasps last year and have not seen any this summer.  As for bees, I have only seen one in our garden this year.  (I’d have seen more had I spent time in the garden in May.)  We still have flies and mosquitoes and other insects, but noticeably fewer than in previous years.

While I am not the resident gardener in our household, I am occasionally called on to help with one small task or another.  In previous years, any job that involved strenuous work like digging was scheduled to avoid peak insect times.  A job might not be finished until the next day because, when the insects got too bad, seemingly not at all deterred by insect repellent, I would abandon my tools and take refuge in the house. 

The other day, I had a couple of small tasks in the garden.  I was not quite finished the first job when I became aware that it had suddenly turned quite hot and it was no longer overcast.  Even before I finished thinking that these were conditions that brought the bugs out, there they were.  No-see-ums are small, black, flying insects that want to get into your ears and eyes.

I was a little annoyed with myself.  I could have started earlier and dawdled a little less.  I could have had both jobs done before the little midges started biting me to death.  I continued on.  If I could finish at least the first job, it wouldn’t feel like a lost morning.  For the moment, they weren’t that bad.  Then, to my surprise, they were gone.  They came back once more, but again didn’t stay long.  I ended up getting both jobs done. 

I know that, in previous years, under the same conditions, the no-see-ums would have driven me into the house.  This year, the swarm that came at me was small, and was disinclined to pester me for more than a few minutes.

Nor is it just in my back yard that there are fewer insects.

It has always been common, in the summer, to return from a road trip with the front of the car encrusted with the remains of insects. 

The other week, a day after getting back from Three Rivers, I decided to take half an hour to give the car an unaccustomed wash.  Because I have an electric car, the front end lacks a grille.  Instead, there’s a solid front panel that stretches from headlight to headlight.

While the sides and back end of the car accumulate a certain amount of dust and dirt, the front end, in the summer time, tends to accumulate a lot of small, dark dots—the tiny carcasses of insects killed by a vehicle travelling at a 100 km/h.

What was surprising, given that the car hadn’t been washed in over a month, was how few insects’ remains I had to scrub off the front of the car.  They were as difficult to wash off as ever, but there weren’t very many of them, not compared to previous summers.

I don’t have any particular fondness for flies, mosquitoes, wasps, and other flying insects.  Scraping them off the front of the car is a bit of a nuisance, even if the water I’m using is hot and soapy.  Having them hover around me like a dark cloud when I’m working in the garden is an impediment that I’m glad to do without.

Still, it troubles me that insects that were once abundant are now scarce.  It doesn’t help that I’m all too conscious of the direct correlation between insect populations and bird populations.

As for the neighbour up the street, it may be that insects are faring better in a riverfront habitat.

Photo courtesy

By Nick Fonda

Local Journalism Initiative

A friend who keeps an eye on a wide variety of topics sent me a link to an on-line article in The Conversation, a nonprofit media outlet.  Written by Misha Teramura, an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto, the article had the long title:  Think tech killed penmanship?  Messy handwriting was a problem centuries before smartphones.

My first reaction was to ignore the article.  I already knew that messy handwriting predated smartphones and computers.  I had firsthand experience with messy handwriting dating back to the middle of the last century. 

I was first made aware of penmanship in Grade 5.  That was the year that pupils were expected to make the big step of graduating from pencil to pen.  In September, we were doing all our work in pencil.  At some point in the year, those whose penmanship was judged adequate began writing with a pen.  This was the late 1950s and a pen consisted of a handle and a nib.  Every few strokes, the nib would have to be dipped into an inkwell.  It could be messy.  Hence, our teacher insisted that we had to write neatly and legibly with a pencil before we were permitted to write with a pen.  At the end of Grade 5, I was one of those still writing with a pencil.  (As I recall, in Grade 6, despite my failures in Grade 5, I was writing cursive with a ballpoint pen.)

It was only on second thought that I scrolled down to scan the rest of the text.  It was written in response to an article in the New York Times several months earlier which attributed the poor penmanship of today to the use of laptops and smartphones.

Teramura begged to differ.  As someone immersed in the world of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the professor from Toronto had ample evidence that bad handwriting could easily be found 400 years ago.

Teramura wrote, “In countless letters that survive from the early modern period, writers apologize for their bad handwriting.  Sometimes they blame it on circumstances:  they were groggy from just waking up or tired late at night (“scribbled with a weary hand in my bed” reads one sign-off from 1585).”

At other times, he noted, the excuses for poor handwriting were medical:  a broken arm from falling off a horse, a hand injured in a duel, or stiffening joints from arthritis or gout.  A common excuse—as it still is today—was that the letter had to be written in haste and hence the handwriting was poor.

Teramura described cacography—or bad handwriting—as calligraphy’s evil twin.  He pointed out that there is a long list of famous people who had poor handwriting, including Queen Elizabeth I and the Dutch scholar, Erasmus. 

At the time, before typewriters and laptops, handwritten letters were all that could be sent.  Penmanship was a necessary skill, or at least a useful one.     

Strangely enough, although good penmanship was of benefit to the upwardly mobile, it was cacography that that appealed to the ruling class.

Teramura wrote, “The aristocratic nobility was notoriously bad at writing by hand.  Popular dramatists even made jokes about it.  But bad handwriting may have been deliberate.  In fact, Shakespeare’s Hamlet says just that:  I once did hold it, as our statists do,/ A baseness to write fair, and labored much/ How to forget that learning.”

Hamlet had mastered handwriting, but he now intentionally neglects to use this skill.  It was below those born into power and privilege to write neatly. 

Teramura noted, “Writing carelessly could be a way of asserting one’s social or political clout by forcing others less privileged to struggle to decipher what one had written.”

Today, or at least up until quite recently, the medical profession tended to be associated with cacography.  A few decades ago, it was still commonplace for a doctor (sometimes more that one) to run a general practice in a small town.  Typically, a patient would call the doctor’s office, show up for an appointment, and leave with a prescription for the pharmacist.  In my experience, the prescription was always all but illegible.

Cacography is as close as I got to med school.  Perhaps my handwriting wasn’t bad enough.  Equipped with ball point pens, I remember carrying on regular and even frequent handwritten correspondence with friends through my teens and twenties.  (Of course, I made a point of typing my papers at university.)

Today, on my laptop, I type the stories I send to my editor.  The notes I take during interviews however, are scribbled with my ballpoint pen into my notebook.  My handwriting hasn’t improved with age.  I always try to type up a story as soon as possible after the interview.  Even with a fresh memory, I’m not always able to decipher my hastily scrawled notes.  And reading something scribbled three or four days previously is often impossible.

Teramura reminded me that I was in good company, “The Reformation theologian Martin Bucer allegedly couldn’t even read some of his own manuscripts.  Nor was he alone.  As the preacher John Preston (1587 – 1628) observed in a sermon, “One would think a man should read his own hand, yet some do write so bad, that they cannot read it when they have done.””

Teramura finished his article, “Today, the ubiquity of smart phones and laptops has no doubt played a role in the ways we write.  But for those of us who can’t read our own sticky notes and to-do lists, it may come as a relief to know that bad handwriting is not an unprecedented phenomenon, but has its own centuries-long history.  We’re simply living a new chapter of it.”

A quick inquiry into penmanship in school today makes me wonder if handwriting hasn’t already gone the way of straight pens and inkwells.  Has cursive script already disappeared?

Describing her Grade 5 class, one teacher told me that of her 21 students, only one—a girl—always wrote in cursive script.  All her other students wrote in block letters.

As well as being unable to use cursive script, many young people today cannot read a handwritten text.

In 2019, an enterprising teacher at a local elementary school initiated a local history project for Remembrance Day.  The research material included documents from Archives Canada and handwritten letters from WWII.  One of the difficulties the students met was that much of the old documentation was handwritten.  The students had to learn to read and write cursive script to make sense of their research material.  And then, as would those of us long accustomed to handwritten letters, they had to cope with cacography.  The project planned for mid-November was completed in June.

Handwriting was useful until quite recently because writing in cursive script is much faster than printing out words in block letters.  However, it is not as fast as typing and, in most circumstances, not nearly as convenient as a laptop or a smartphone.

Penmanship, in the form of calligraphy, continues to exist as a minor art form.  For those of us who still do put pen (or pencil) to paper, cacography continues to be an occasional—if not frequent—presence, even on things as innocuous as a shopping list.

L’affaire Louis Robert, 2020. Wood, natural dyes, ink. Dimensions 205 cm x 133.5 cm x 23 cm. Installation view, Grantham Foundation for the Arts and the Environment, Saint-Edmond-de-Grantham, Quebec. Photo courtesy www.ibghylemmens.com

By Nick Fonda

Local Journalism Initiative

There aren’t many agronomists who have a piece of artwork that carries their name, but Louis Robert is one.

“I was flabbergasted when my son told me that there was an exhibit at the Musée de la civilization in Quebec City and it included an artwork that was entitled L’affaire Louis Robert,” says the semi-retired agronomist.  “The artists had previously invited me to see the sculpture.  I couldn’t believe where it was being exhibited.”

The artwork consists of 128 pieces of wood of varied lengths.  Half of the pieces are painted in a range of colours and half of the pieces are in natural wood of different hues.  The blocks of wood are arranged in pairs with each pair consisting of a painted block and an unpainted block.  The 64 pairs are arranged on three levels and are framed by a sturdy wooden structure.   All the pairs are of uneven length.  Sometimes the painted block is a little longer; sometimes it’s shorter.  In all cases the difference in length is only very slight.

At first glance, the sculpture is enigmatic, mysterious, and unfathomable.  If art is supposed to make you stop and reflect, then what is a viewer supposed to make of this?

The key to the artwork is its title, L’affaire Louis Robert.  It is the experience he had that gives context to all those random sticks of wood and turns them into artwork.

They offer a visual depiction of a scientific study on the productivity of 64 commercial corn fields consisting of sections planted with seeds treated with neonicotinoids and adjacent sections planted with untreated seeds.  The painted sticks represent the crop harvested from the treated seeds while the blocks in natural wood represent the control crop, from untreated seeds.  The lengths of the blocks of wood corresponded to the crop yield in kilogram per hectare.

What is immediately obvious is that while the sticks vary in length, they are paired up in such a way that the sticks that make up a pair are of almost equal length. 

What the sculpture is showing is that sometimes the pesticide increased the crop yield, and sometimes it didn’t.  The difference in yield from treated versus untreaded seeds was, in scientific parlance, statistically negligible.  A farmer might opt to use the pesticide on his fields but it might, or might not, help him get a marginally bigger crop.

The viewer of the artwork should also know that neonicotinoids, the chemicals used as pesticides, have a deadly effect on insects, birds, and other living organisms.

Louis Robert knew, by the time he was in Cegep, that biology was the field he wanted to work in.  He began his university studies at Laval, but the following year changed course and enrolled at MacDonald College.

“I wasn’t sure what career to follow,” Louis says, “but as I looked around, biology seemed to have limited options.  I envisaged agronomy as a form of applied biology.  I saw the soil as the key to sustainable agriculture.”

After earning a Master’s degree from McGill University, he was hired, in 1989, as an agronomist by the Ministère de l’agriculture, des pêcheries, et de l’alimentation du Québec (MAPAQ).   He was based in St-Hyacinthe and worked primarily with large-acreage crops such as corn, soy, and wheat.

“From the beginning, my job at MAPAQ was essentially communications,” Louis Robert explains.  “At one time, MAPAQ offered consultation services to individual farmers.  Because of budget cuts, that service was ended.  Instead, MAPAQ began making information available through documentation and public meetings.  This meant gathering and collating studies and scientific data to present the findings to farmers in practical terms.  My job was to give farmers the information they needed to make informed decisions.  Because it was my job at MAPAQ, over the years, I’ve written hundreds of articles and given hundreds of talks.”

One of the things he noticed was that MAPAQ itself was at times ignoring scientific research, even when it came from its own studies.  Farmers were not necessarily being fully informed, especially with respect to the excessive use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers.  Companies with vested interests sometimes had considerable say in the formulation of government policies.

“A major turning point came in 2017,” Louis says.  “The government passed new legislation that offered whistleblowers protection from reprisal as long as they proceeded according to the norms that were set.”

“I acted according to the guidelines which had been set out,” he continues.  “I spoke to my superiors.  I asked for an internal review.  Only after taking those steps did I start speaking to the press.”

At issue were the side effects of pesticides that made use of neonicotinoids.  Pesticide manufacturers did not want it mentioned that neonicotinoids had devastating effects on the environment.  They were pressuring scientists to stay mum on the topic.

In January of 2019, soon after going public, Louis Robert was fired by MAPAQ.  In June of the same year, after the intervention of the Quebec Ombudsman, Louis Robert was rehired by MAPAQ.

“I was given the back pay I would have earned,” he says, “and I returned to my former position in St. Hyacinthe.  I was strongly encouraged, including by my own union, to take a similar position in Granby, but I refused.  Not taking up my old post would have felt like a defeat.  I was not in the wrong.  Everything I did was in conformity with the whistleblower legislation.”

Louis Robert’s situation was newsworthy and the English press as well as the French press gave his story considerable coverage.  He was approached by a Quebec publisher, Éditions Multimondes, to write a book.

“It took about six months,” Louis notes.  “It was an interesting exercise for me because I had been accumulating material for decades and the book forced me to bring it all together.  I appreciated working with my editor who had me reappraise the way I structured parts of the book.”

Pour le bien de la terre was published in 2021.  A slim volume of just under 150 pages, it makes the case that intense industrial agricultural practices are harming Quebec’s fertile soils.  Among other things, the excess quantities of phosphate fertilizer being spread on farmland cause outbreaks of blue-green algae in our lakes and rivers. 

One of Louis Robert’s concerns is the conflict of interests that agronomists sometimes face.

“There are about 3,300 agronomists in Quebec,” he says.  “In MAPAQ alone there are about 130.  Others work for the Union des Producteurs Agricole (UPA).  Still others in much greater numbers are employed by the industries that cater to the agricultural community.  Some are consultants to individual farmers.  One of the problems we face is that some agronomists find themselves serving two masters—advising a farmer on the one hand and, at the same time, promoting products like pesticides and fertilizers.”

The conflict of interest problem might have been solved a few years ago when Louis Robert ran for president of the Order of Agronomists.

“I’ve been advocating for years that an agronomist should work for one entity at a time,” he says.  “I ran on the promise to eliminate the potential for conflicts of interest.  I lost by 15 votes.”

Today, Louis Robert is semi-retired.  He left MAPAQ in 2022 but he continues to work as a consultant and speaker.  Most recently, he addressed a group of about four dozen people in Bedford.  His audience was made up largely of politicians and functionaries who came from Vermont and New York State as well as Quebec.  All were there to consult on the problem of blue-green algae in Lake Champlain.

“Despite everything we know scientifically,” Louis Robert says, “we are still spreading too much phosphorus in our fields and using too many pesticides.  Still, there’s room for optimism.  Media attention and public sentiment can bring about change.”

As for the artwork, L’affaire Louis Robert, it was created by Marie Lou Lemmens and Richard Ibghy with the support of the Grantham Foundation which promotes the link between art and the environment.  It is now housed at the Musée national des beaux arts du Québec in Quebec City.

Danny Perkins. Photo courtesy

By Nick Fonda

Local Journalism Initiative

The official opening won’t be until mid-May, so right now the interior of the new Perkins Art Gallery is a vast, near-empty, well-lit space with newly sanded floors and white walls.  The renovation work, including the entire electrical re-wiring of the building, was started the first week of January and is now down to the final details. 

The only change to the exterior of the building, aside from signage, is visible only at night, when coloured lights illuminate the spire of the new gallery, a building that for almost two centuries served as St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church.

“We had been looking for a new space for the gallery for about a year,” says Danny Perkins.

“We’ve been in the gallery on the Danville Square since 2020,” adds Rebecca Taylor, the gallery director.  “We only had 500 square feet on the ground floor.  The basement, which was much larger, was useable space but access to it was difficult.  Here, 95 per cent of the building is wheelchair accessible.”

“And here, we have 8,000 square feet of space,” Danny continues.  “The basement is only a little smaller than what was the church sanctuary and the church hall.”

Built between 1841 and 1842, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church had some unusual features, including box pews.

“We had requests for some of those pews,” says Rebecca.  “The Richmond County Historical Society next door kept a couple and a few other organizations kept some as well.”

“We recuperated all the wood from the pews,” Danny adds.  “A lot of it is stored in the basement, and we’ve been using it in our renovations for door and window frames, for molding and baseboards.  We’ve even cut some of it into thin strips to fill the cracks between the pine floorboards.  The wood they used for the pews was butternut and some of the boards are as much as 20 inches wide.  In the long run, it’s all going to be used.  An artisan in Victoriaville is using some to make pens.  Another artisan will be using some to make jewelry.”

The cracks between the floorboards were the inevitable result of the wood shrinking. 

“Two coins were found when the pews were removed,” says Rebecca.  “One with the date 1829 and the other dated 1781.”

The coins, American halfpennies, are about the diameter and heft of a loonie.  They are, understandably, quite worn.  The older coin would have been in circulation for over 60 years if it went lost when the church was first built. 

“The coins will be on display with several other artefacts,” Danny explains.  “We want to acknowledge the history of St. Andrew’s and we’re planning to have an area set aside for a permanent exhibit dedicated to the church.  It will certainly include one of the box pews, some of the organ pipes, and a much-used roll-top desk.”

In addition to a history space, the Perkins Gallery will also have classroom space.

“We are setting up a multi-purpose studio,” Rebecca says.  “We want to host open workshops.  Visual artists who work in anything from ceramic to watercolours would have space to accommodate a workshop of a dozen or more participants.  It could be used for a Saturday morning art class, for example.  It could also be used by an artist from someplace distant who comes here to give a multi-day workshop.”

“Our aim,” she continues, “is to bring people in.  Some people might feel intimidated by the name, art gallery.  We want to be just the opposite.  We want people to feel welcome to come in and look.  We will be displaying the work of 30 artists who span all the spectrums, from emerging to established, from young to old, from local to international.  Similarly, the artwork we sell will go from very affordable—like cards that cost no more that $5—to quite expensive artworks that cost as much as $75,000.”

The Perkins Gallery wouldn’t be the Perkins Gallery if it didn’t include Danny’s artwork, which is now also being exhibited and sold across North America.  As well, his work has found its way to Japan, the Bahamas, and Australia. 

Only seven years ago, Danny was bringing his metalwork to the Richmond Craft Fair and attracting local notice with the three sets of metal gates at the Richmond fair grounds—work he did pro bono.

Since then, he has shown his artwork well beyond Cleveland Township.

“In 2018,” he recalls, “I brought some of my work to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto, which lasts 10 days.  I’ve been back every year since.  This year, I was asked to prepare an entrance piece—something that will be seen by visitors as they arrive.  I’ve also been asked to prolong my stay.”

In 2022, Danny’s work was exhibited in Miami and in Los Angeles the following year.

“Often,” says Rebecca, “an artist, or a gallery, can apply to attend a show.  Some only take artists, while others only accept galleries, and some are open to both.  If the show likes the samples that are submitted, the artist or gallery will be invited.”

“Other times,” she continues, “we’ve received an invitation to attend.  That was the case at the Hamptons Fine Art Show in New York in 2023.”

“That show was memorable for all the wrong reasons,” Danny adds.  “The area was hit by a violent rainstorm.  We were set up in tents and pavilions.  As the rain continued, we found ourselves standing in several inches of water.  Everybody was told to evacuate but all the artwork was left behind.  In my case, it didn’t really matter if my metalwork got wet, but other artists, those displaying watercolours for example, were not so lucky.”

“Another show we’ve attended is in Perth, Ontario,” he continues.  “It is also an outdoor art show.  In terms of the ratio between investment and return, it has been a great show for me.”

Artwork by Danny Perkins can now be found in widely disparate places including an outdoor sculpture garden in Los Angeles, a gallery in the small town of Ellaville, Georgia, the boutiques of the Royal Canadian Mint in Ottawa and in Winnipeg, and the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.

“Something that’s become popular recently,” Danny explains, “is fingerprint art.  Imagine a small statue, about 12 inches high with all the ridges and whorls of a fingerprint.  I made Darryl Sitter’s fingerprint for the Hockey Hall of Fame.  Typically, I’ll make six copies of a fingerprint, of which one goes to the individual, three stay with me, and the two others are often auctioned off at a fundraising event.”

The first event that is going to be held at the new Perkins Art Gallery will be the Salon Empreinte d’Art.  Last year, the Perkins Gallery held the show in June at Parc Marie-Victorin in Kingsey Falls.  This year it will be held on May 18, 19 and 20 at the old St. Andrew’s church in Melbourne.

“We’ll be holding an official opening on the 17^th as a VIP event,” says Rebecca Taylor.  “The following day the Salon will be open to the public.  After that, we’ll be open on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and also by appointment.  We’re also planning a commemorative event in November for Remembrance Day.”

“The gallery opening is the first step,” Danny Perkins adds.  “Possibly as early as next year we will be installing an artistic garden on the five-acre plot of land around the gallery.”

St. Andrew’s transition from place of worship to art gallery will not be an easy adjustment for everybody.  Just a few years ago the Conseil du patrimoine religeux invested considerable sums of money to preserve St. Andrew’s when it was a church.  There were restrictions on what could be done with the building, for example a prospective investor couldn’t subdivide it into housing units.  Its new vocation as an art gallery had the consent of the Conseil.

In its new incarnation, it will again draw people.  They won’t be coming to reflect on the spoken word, but, Danny Perkins and Rebecca Taylor hope, they’ll be prompted to reflection by the visual art.

By Nick Fonda

Local Journalism Initiative

In his three seasons with the Montreal Alouettes, Gordon Ross never got to pose triumphantly with the Grey Cup. The Als won the Cup in 1949, the year before Gordon first suited up for the team, and they’ve won the Cup several times since he hung up his cleats, including this year when they came from behind in the final minute of the game to beat the much- favoured Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

However, last Friday, 71 years after playing his final game, and thanks to the team at the Wales Home, Gordon Ross held the Al’s newly-won Cup while a dozen guests took pictures and three video crews (including CBC) recorded the moment.

Before Gordon was presented with the Cup by Alex Gagné of the Als, the Executive Director of the Wales Home, Brendalee Piironen, gave a short overview of Gordon’s life, and also explained how the Cup came to the Wales Home, a case of family connections.

The Wales Home has always had at least one doctor. At the present time, in addition to Dr. Frazer, Dr. Sophie Bourbeau attends to the medical needs of the Home’s residents.

It was common knowledge that Gordon was not only an Alouettes’ fan but also a former player. After the Alouette’s victory, Brendalee voiced the sentiment that it would be special for Gordon, who turned 100 this year, to get to hold the Grey Cup.

Sports teams have active public relations departments and a request to the Alouettes’ front office for a special visit might have eventually borne fruit, but it turned out that there was a much easier way to ask. Dr. Sophie Bourbeau’s sister, Pascale, is the life partner of Pierre-Karl Péladeau, the owner of the Montreal Alouettes.

So it was that less than four weeks after Alex Gagné (who played for the Université de Sherbrooke and is nick-named Captain Quebec by his Alouettes team-mates) hoisted the Cup in Hamilton, he passed it into the arms of Gordon Ross.

Gordon was born in Sherbrooke, the middle child and only son of Alexander Ross who owned an ice delivery company and who served as mayor of Sherbrooke from 1942 to 1944. Athletic and active, Gordon grew up playing hockey, basketball, football, and rugby. He grew to be 6’3” and 210 pounds at a time when the average Canadian male was 5’8” and weighed 160. He particularly loved contact sports and had his nose broken twice. In his 20s, just before household refrigeration became common, he worked for his father, collecting, storing and delivering ice (25,000 tons of it in 1948) that was then sold in blocks that weighed 25 – 100 pounds.

It was making ice deliveries to the Sherbrooke Hospital that he came to meet a nursing student from Danville, Mabel Elizabeth McCullough. A few years later, in 1952 when he was 29 and Betty was 26, the couple were married in Sherbrooke. For Gordon it was the beginning of a new phase of his life but also the end of his playing career.

Gordon had joined the Alouettes in 1950 as a lineman, playing center, guard, or defensive end. At some point he earned the nicknames Beef and Bruiser. There may have been renown and glamour to playing professional football in the 1950s but there wasn’t much money. Gordon was paid $25 when he attended a practice, and $100 when he played a game. By way of comparison, the minimum annual salary in the CFL in 2023 was $70,000.

In 1950, the Montreal Alouettes franchise had only been in existence for five years. They were part of the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union along with the Ottawa Rough Riders, the Toronto Argonauts, and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Teams dressed 37 players compared to 45 today and a season lasted a dozen games rather than 18. Out of town games meant travelling by train, only two hours from Montreal to Ottawa but six and a half to Hamilton. When Gordon had to stay overnight in Montreal, it was at the YMCA.

Two years after his retirement from the Alouettes, Gordon returned to football as a coach with the Bishop’s Gaiters where he won the championships that had eluded him as a player. He coached from 1954 to 1961, a time during which Bishop’s played against Loyola College, MacDonald College, the Royal Military College, and St. Patrick’s College. His teams won the league three years in a row, winning 18 of 19 games over that period. Yet, at 38 and after seven years of coaching, Gordon wanted to give more time to his growing family.

By the early 1950s households were replacing ice boxes with refrigerators and the job that had seen Gordon through his late teens and early twenties disappeared. For a time, he and Betty managed an oil delivery business until Gordon opted to start work at the Ingersoll Rand factory where he stayed until retirement. He continued to enjoy physical labor and helped out at a moving company as well as at the W.H. Hunting & Sons Ltd. saw mill, and the C. Wilson & Sons music and furniture store on Wellington Street.

Gordon and Betty raised three children: Peter, Catherine, and Paul.

“Both Mom and Dad were athletic. Peter and I inherited some of their athleticism and we were involved in numerous sports,” says Catherine Ross, “but neither of us had that extra drive, determination, and mental toughness that our father had that put him into the professional ranks.”

Gordon and Betty were active in the Trinity United Church and also involved with various social organizations like the Rotary Club and the Y’s Men’s Club, which hosted track and field meets.

“My father liked people,” she says, “and people liked him. He was a very modest, humble person who never really talked about himself or his accomplishments. Over the past two weeks, thanks to this wonderful event the Wales Home has put on, we were prompted to go through our family archives to pull out facts and photos on Dad’s career.”

“Dad’s been at the Wales Home now for about three and a half years, and he’s very happy here. And we’re very happy with the care and compassion that he gets from everyone here,” she says.

Those who attended the event at the Wales Home learned that Gordon is not the only centenarian former athlete in residence. As a prelude to the Grey Cup ceremony, Brenda-Lee Piironen introduced Keith Baldwin. Keith and Gordon are only a year or two apart in age, and, when they were in their teens, they played competitive hockey against each other on Sherbrooke’s outdoor rinks.

By Nick Fonda

Local Journalism Initiative

The apartment blocks being constructed on Richmond’s Adam Street, on the site of what was once a French elementary school, already have their first tenants. According to a rental agent, 11 of the building’s 17 units are now rented. The two other blocks, at different phases of completion, will likely be ready to start housing their first tenants before the end of the calendar year.

Construction work on three more identical blocks is scheduled to start in 2024. These will front on Gouin Street, as St. Michael’s Catholic School once did.

When the project, undertaken by Conception Desrosier, a Magog-based developer, is complete, Richmond will have 102 new rental units.

The apartments, ranging in size from one-bedroom to three-bedroom units, can be visited virtually (www.lardoisier.ca) and can be reserved on-line. They are advertised as having superior soundproofing. Each has its own heat pump, air exchanger, and electrical entrance. Most apartments have a separate small laundry room and a balcony. Some come with two parking spaces.

The promoters point out their proximity, among other things, to the French elementary school, the arena, the bike path, and even the river—which is close as the crow flies but access to it is a little more distant. (The web site shows several appealing photos to illustrate these features, but unfortunately, they are all generic shots rather than photos taken around Richmond.)

It’s likely the units will all be occupied in relatively short order. The construction industry estimates that Quebec currently needs 100,000 units to meet the demand of a growing population. (According to Statistics Canada our population grew by 2.9 per cent between July 2022 and July 2023.) The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which keeps track of housing availability, notes that the accepted optimal rate of 3% vacancy dropped last year by almost half to 1.7 per cent.

Rents are hard to come by, and the L’Ardoisier apartments in Richmond are pristine units. However, it’s hard to say how many of the 102 apartments will do much to ease Richmond’s need for affordable housing. The new apartments range in price from $815 to $1,590/month.

If the old rule of thumb that housing shouldn’t equal more than one third of household income still holds, the family renting a three-bedroom apartment would require a monthly income of $4,770, or almost $60 000/year.

“It’s more than I could afford,” says Gilles Dancause who lives with his son and daughter in a three-bedroom apartment that costs $680/month to rent. Because of a workplace accident more than a decade ago, Gille’s rent check has to come out of a disability pension.

“In fact,” he explains, “I couldn’t afford this apartment if it weren’t for a provincial government program designed to help people, whether they are working or not, who have limited incomes. I get a subsidy of $150/month to defray the cost of my rent. The maximum subsidy is $175.”

With both children at an age when they’re not far from leaving the family nest to live on their own, Gilles has been keeping an eye on Richmond’s rental market.

“My kids are happy here at home,” he says, “but I know that sooner or later they’ll want a place of their own. Apartments in town have become expensive. They’re hard to find, and when they come available, they’re snapped up right away. I noticed a studio apartment for rent quite recently and out of curiosity, I inquired about it. The rent was $375/month, and the next day it was already rented. This was for a very modest space in an old building.”

He continues, “I’ve noticed on Facebook that there are a lot of people who are looking to rent here in Richmond. There were a lot of postings to that effect this summer, and normally there are also a lot of postings between January and March, when people are deciding whether or not to extend their lease.”

“Richmond is conveniently located,” Gilles says. “It’s half an hour’s drive from Sherbrooke, Valcourt, and Drummondville, and not that much further from Victoriaville. It’s been the case for a long time that couples will buy a house in Richmond because it provides a short commute for both of them even if one works in Sherbrooke and the other in Drummondville. What was true for homebuyers has become true for renters. For a couple with a good-paying jobs, the new apartments are definitely an attractive option.”

The new apartment blocks might also be an attractive option for investors, if their pockets are sufficiently deep. The 17-unit blocks cost about $4M each. Fully rented, a block would generate a little over $280,000 in annual income and pay for itself in about 15 years.

“It could be quite a sweet investment,” says Gilles, who invested in property in the past. “As these are new buildings, I believe they are exempt from the regular rental board guidelines on rent hikes, normally no more than a few percentage points per year. If the rental market remains tight, an ambitious landlord might raise his rent by five or six percent each of those first four years and he’ll get his investment back in just over a decade.”

It’s difficult to imagine that rents will become affordable in the immediate future. Landlords who own old buildings will, at best, hold rents at their present level. More likely, they’ll raise the rent according to Quebec’s 2023 housing tribunal recommendations of 2.3 per cent for leases that don’t include heating. That recommendation soars to 7.3 per cent for apartments heated by the landlord if the heating system is oil based.

“It can get worse,” Gilles Dancause points out. “Landlords, looking for bigger profits, undertake renovictions—they evict the tenants, often ones who have been there a long time and pay a low rent, carry out some renovations, and then lease the remodeled apartments at much higher rates.”

“The high demand for rents is also being affected by the fact that even in small towns like Richmond, the demographic is changing,” he continues. “Immigrants are not just moving into big cities. It has always been the case that every year there are a few new faces in town. Recently, some of those faces are from Africa, from the Philippines, and from Central America. One of the places you see that is at the Catholic mass on Sunday morning, where the congregation has started growing for the first time in decades.”

It’s still the case that housing—for homebuyers as for renters—is less expensive in small towns like Richmond than it is in larger centers like Sherbrooke, but the gap is not as great as it once was. L’Ardoisier will likely be an economic success for the developer and for the entrepreneurs who eventually buy the apartment blocks, but it will do little to make housing more affordable in a town which continues to be economically depressed.