In Montreal, journalist Louis-Philippe Messier travels mostly on the run, his desk in his backpack, on the lookout for fascinating subjects and people. He speaks to everyone and is interested in all walks of life in this urban chronicle.
In order to liquidate his deceased brother’s imposing personal library containing 40,000 books, a Montrealer temporarily transformed the deceased’s apartment into an improvised second-hand bookstore.
During the funeral of his brother Normand, Michel Leduc promised his bereaved nephew to take care of his father’s books.
“My nephew didn’t want to do that, and I wanted to be of service to him,” says Mr. Leduc, an 81-year-old retiree.
“I thought it would be 2000 or 3000 pounds, not 40,000, but I gave my word…”
Due to an old family feud, Michel Leduc had not visited his brother Normand’s home for several decades.
What he discovered in the house of number 4e Avenue, near rue Masson in Rosemont, stunned him: “It was a mess!” exclaims the former French and catechism teacher at the Édouard-Montpetit high school.
“Stacks of books everywhere, between the dryer and the washer, on the appliances, between the furniture and on the furniture, in every room, everywhere.”
In the basement, buildings of stacked books form narrow corridors.
“To sneak in, you had to walk like a crab, sideways,” he illustrates.
A “library of Augias”
Many books had never before been removed from booksellers’ bags.
“Normand spent almost all his free time reading, but he didn’t have time to go through all that,” explains Michel Leduc.
The former library technician at the University of Montreal bought at least 1,000 books per year and kept everything.
Normand Leduc, represented in this portrait, was a well-known customer of Montreal booksellers.
Louis-Philippe Messier
“If he found a book interesting, it was beyond his control: he bought it.”
“It looks like he wanted to replicate a public library in his home.”
His bibliomania narrowed his habitable space.
Some cluttered rooms have been deprived of floor washing for years.
The old living room and the old bedroom.
Louis-Philippe Messier
Orphan of Duplessis
“Normand and I are former Duplessis orphans, we didn’t have it easy, and my brother quickly took refuge in books,” confides Michel Leduc.
“He would lock himself in a room and read. He’s been doing this his whole life.”
Exclamations of surprise escape me, from room to room, as I continually discover new shelves of books.
All the walls in the basement are book shelves.
Louis-Philippe Messier
“It took me three years to put things in order,” sighs the retiree who has swapped his walking-Sudoku-Scrabble routine for that of an improvised bookseller.
“I’m here 20 hours a week, it keeps me busy!”
From the start, Michel Leduc pruned 10,000 books that he considered unsaleable by donating them to a second-hand bookstore.
So there are around 30,000 left.
It took three years to classify everything…
Louis-Philippe Messier
“My nephew and I have calculated that at the current rate, if each of our visitors leaves with a book, we will have finished liquidating my brother’s library in a hundred years,” he says with a laugh.
Will this column direct customers as eager for books as his late brother to Mr. Leduc? I wish it to him.
The address of this unusual estate sale is 5175, 4e Avenue, in Montreal.
Michel Leduc is (normally) on site from Thursday to Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.
