Thanks to the exceptional generosity of an entrepreneur who built a fortune from nothing, four Montreal institutions will share a legacy of more than $140 million. Businessman Paul Durocher began his working life as a sewing machine mechanic for Daignault Rolland before launching multiple businesses and making his fortune.
Posted at 2:29 a.m.
Updated at 6:30 a.m.
Paul Durocher was born in Montreal in 1929 and had a full life. After starting out in the factory which at the time manufactured baseball pads and gloves, he started his own business as a sewing machine repairer and developed production hub systems for clothes on hangers.
This first company would become Planiform in 1974 and it would be bought several years later by his nephew Claude St-Jean with whom he had partnered. It should be noted that Planiform still exists and distributes its conveyor systems in more than 150 cities around the world.
At the same time, Paul Durocher multiplied his initiatives by opening a furniture store, a housekeeping company, a dry cleaner, three gas stations, a snow removal company, a cabinet door manufacturing plant, etc.
In 1970, he also set up a screw and bolt import and distribution company called Les Attaches Reliable, which became very profitable before he bought the Montreal manufacturer of specialized screws and fasteners Visqué in 1980.
In the early 2000s, he sold Les Attaches Reliable to Quincaillerie Richelieu et Visqué to another company to invest in the hotel sector, where he notably became co-owner of the Auberge Universel in Montreal, the Clarion and the Concorde in Quebec, Aztec RV Resort and Universal Palms Hotel in Fort Lauderdale.
“He was one of the main financiers of these hotels, but he gradually sold all his interests to become exclusively a mortgage lender in the hotel sector, where he was notably the mortgage lender of the Bonaventure Hotel,” tells me his nephew, Claude St-Jean, who is also the co-liquidator of the Paul Durocher estate with Chantal Thomas of the National Bank Trust.
It was Claude St-Jean who contacted me to inform me that the foundations of the Heart Institute, the CHUM and the St. Mary Hospital Center were going to inherit more than 42 million each, while the Society of Saint-Vincent de Paul would receive more than 14 million of the fortune of more than 140 million left by his uncle, who died in March 2023.
A philanthropist at heart
Claude St-Jean contacted me because his uncle would not have done so during his lifetime and he never asked that we make public the important legacies that he will leave to the four Montreal institutions.
“My uncle did not explicitly request that his donations be publicly disclosed. As co-liquidator, I find it right that we recognize his exceptional generosity and I am sure that the foundations concerned will pay tribute to the spirit in which these contributions were made and that they will be able to highlight Paul’s great generosity. Durocher,” Claude St-Jean explains to me.
Mr. St-Jean recalls that his uncle was a discreet, reserved man, who never wanted to show off his wealth or demonstrate opulence. Without children, he had been a widower for about fifteen years and lived in a condo on Paton Island.
“My uncle was a philanthropist throughout his life, making often anonymous contributions to countless causes. He wanted to leave significant donations to these four institutions because he wanted this money to be used for research, improving patient care and providing relief to less fortunate people,” underlines Claude St-Jean.
He was notably treated and followed at the Montreal Heart Institute, to which he was very attached, and at the St. Mary’s Hospital Center where he was operated on for cancer. The exact nature of his links with the CHUM is unknown, although his financial involvement with the Society of Saint-Vincent de Paul dates back many years.
The 140 million from Paul Durocher’s estate and the sum of donations that will be paid to the three hospital centers are among the largest ever made in the health sector in Quebec, estimates Chantal Thomas, co-liquidator of the National Bank Trust.
Two years ago, feeling the end approaching, Paul Durocher sold the twenty mortgages he had left to grow his assets through the National Bank’s wealth management team in order to enhance the legacy that he wanted to leave behind the foundations he had chosen.
Claude St-Jean now hopes that the generosity shown by his uncle becomes contagious and that such concrete gestures for the community multiply in the future, regardless of the size of the donation.
