The beautiful Victorian residences, built on the edge of La Fontaine Park, were the dream of young Indra Kagis. As fate would have it, she lived in one for almost half a century.
“When I came to visit my grandparents in Montreal, I took the bus to go to the Montreal Library [located at the time on rue Sherbrooke]. The bus was passing Avenue du Parc-La Fontaine and I was like, “Oh! How I would love to live in one of these houses,” says the architect and retired teacher.
This daughter of Latvian immigrants, who arrived in the country in 1948, initially grew up in Saskatchewan where she learned French at school. After studying arts in Kingston, in 1967 she met the painter Jean McEwen at the Montreal art gallery where she worked at the time. This former student of Paul-Émile Borduas, who died in 1999, then enjoyed an international career with exhibitions in New York, Paris and London.
Without knowing anything about his young wife’s childhood dream, Jean McEwen set his sights in 1975 on a large house on Avenue du Parc-La Fontaine to start their family. The three-storey building, dating from 1910, is divided into two apartments: a dwelling on the ground floor and a large accommodation which occupies the two upper floors, connected by a magnificent circular staircase.
” Oh ! The staircase! exclaims Mrs. Kagis McEwen, her face lighting up, remembering her first visit to the house. He is absolutly magnificent ! »
Another significant attraction: with its large rooms and high ceilings, the house offered plenty of walls to hang the painter’s works. The hardwood floors, speckled with drops of paint, still bear witness to Jean McEwen’s passion.
“He was never satisfied with his paintings. He always said he could improve them. So he would rework them while they were hanging on the wall,” recalls Ms. Kagis McEwen.
The couple gave birth to three children. The large kitchen made it possible to accommodate the whole family for meals, in addition to their friends. “There were always one or two more around the table,” says the woman who began her master’s and doctoral studies in architecture after the arrival of her third baby. “To receive visitors, there is always the dining room,” she adds.
Indra Kagis McEwen remembers with pleasure the cries of children playing in the alley behind and the family walks in the Garden of Wonders at Parc La Fontaine, just across the street. “The first morning here, I was woken up by the rooster. I was wondering where I was,” she remembers, amused.
Before enjoying a strong power of attraction, the Plateau Mont-Royal was for a long time a neighborhood inhabited by low-income families. Several opulent residences on Avenue du Parc-La Fontaine have been divided into rooming houses or have been stripped of their attractions through poor renovations. The Kagis McEwen residence escaped the horrors of this period.
The five-bedroom house has been maintained over the years to retain all of its Victorian charm. Its precious woodwork, its hot water heaters, its windows set in alcoves and its double living room divided by a colonnade have thus been preserved.
The only compromises to modernity are a kitchen counter – “at my height”, emphasizes the great lady –, certain amenities in the bathroom and the provision of a powder room on the main floor.
“We resisted this idea for a long time, but with a family of three children, we had to decide one day to install a second toilet,” confides the owner who moved to the ground floor at the beginning of autumn. The building will thus become an undivided co-ownership upon the sale of the main apartment.
With its long corridors crossing the floors from the front to the back, ventilation occurs naturally during the summer heat. A room transformed into an office opens onto a romantic gable-covered balcony, from where you can see the Théâtre de Verdure and the pools of La Fontaine Park.
It is there that this specialist in the history of architecture settled down to write her books, all published by the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His most recent work, devoted to the Italian Renaissance, came off the presses last March.
At the back, a small living room leads to a large terrace overlooking the pretty alley. “I designed it when I was in my second year of architecture. Some classmates came to help us build it,” she recalls.
Leaving an apartment full of memories amassed over 47 years was not easy, Ms. Kagis McEwen concedes, after recounting the adventures surrounding the discovery of the weapon kept by her husband since his military service during the Second War worldwide.
“But I’m fine now. Another family will make great memories in this house,” she concludes.
