OTTAWA | The federal government wants to see Laval’s famous “Vieux Pen” converted into hundreds of housing units. The former prison inaugurated in 1873 is looking for a vocation more than 30 years after its closure.
Ottawa will announce today that the former Saint-Vincent-de-Paul penitentiary, closed in 1989, will be registered in Canada’s public land bank, we learned The Journal.
Heritage and dilapidated
The Saint-Vincent-de-Paul penitentiary was classified as a “national historic site of Canada” in 1990 after its closure in 1989. It includes 8 heritage structures.
Since then, the buildings on Montée Saint-François have fallen into ruin.
Cédérick Caron/ JdeM
Ottawa estimates that 1,500 housing units could be built on this 23-hectare plot of land, which could become a new living environment, according to documentation from Public Services and Procurement Canada.
The federal government recently created a directory of abandoned or surplus land and buildings in order to build housing there in order to alleviate the shortage.
The “Vieux Pen” in Laval is added to an increasingly long list of federal buildings that Ottawa wishes to reconvert.
Among other things, there are the former studios of the National Film Board (NFB) in Montreal, the Rimouski military armory and several buildings in the Old Port of Quebec.
Started in 2018, the alienation process should be completed next year so that the site is ready for project submissions.
The heart of a village
At the end of the 19th centurye century, the penitentiary is seen as the heart of the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul district. The village then depends on the prison’s infrastructure, particularly its aqueduct.
Cédérick Caron/ JdeM
In a historical capsule of the city of Laval published in 2019, historian Guillaume Bouchard Labonté tells the story of a revolt that occurred there on June 17, 1962 during a softball game.
The riot was so violent that the inmates set fire to some buildings. The RCMP, the Sûreté du Québec and even the army will be called in to help restore calm.
After its closure in 1989, the “Vieux Pen” served as a filming location for a handful of films and series. This was the case of the Quebec TV series The Gold of Timewritten by Réal Giguère.
