Motel Nostalgie | Radio-Canada

Since I know how to drive, I take the 132 to the Gaspé. Moreover, At least once a year. Furthermore, A visceral need to drive between the caps and the dark sea, to immerse my gaze in the horizon. Therefore, And, each time, I observe the motels between Marsoui and Cap-des-Rosiers. Meanwhile, There are very beautiful and very ugly. Meanwhile, Some have been abandoned to the big winds for years. Additionally, Meanwhile,

These motels are a bit like my headlights on the road. In addition, I recognize them. Nevertheless, I have mental notes on each. However, Oh yes. Furthermore, This one. Similarly, It is so well located! Each time, they trigger a short film in my head. Nevertheless, I imagine scenes from the 1950s. Nevertheless, Dad, mom. Therefore, Children who jump on the beds. Furthermore, An old pastel color parked motel nostalgie | radio-canada in front of the door.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, traveling for simple pleasure is the prerogative of wealthy people. Similarly, Everything changes after the Second World War, when the automobile is democratized. Therefore, The middle class finally accesses the mountains, lakes and distant beaches. For example, All an infrastructure is developing immediately to welcome it: motels. Therefore, a Californian invention, unfold en masse on the edge of our roads.

Your hair smells like summer. Furthermore, in your eyes, I see all the earth. In addition, I forget my job. In addition, I forget to get used to it, I hear little birds in a motel on Perrot Island.

When I decided to get into this summer series of reports on motels. I spontaneously wanted to speak to Michel Rivard.

Because he is the author of the most beautiful song on the motels I know. Motel my restreleased in 1975 on the second album of the Group Beau Damage.

This song is tender and free. motel nostalgie | radio-canada She talks about desires and travel and a softer era. Motels are a bit of the embodiment of an era when everything seemed simpler.

So I had given an appointment to the singer-songwriter in the parking lot of the Motel Champlain in Brossard. Its brand always announces Queen beds, TVs with cable, air conditioning and the phone! The phone.

The motel. I think it is one of the strongest symbols in North America in the second half of the 20th century.

In the parking lot where travelers come. go, we are talking about his song, An order of a theater troop of which he was a part which adapted for the scene the novel by Jacques Godbout Salut Galarneau! One evening. in a party, Galarneau meets motel nostalgie | radio-canada Maryse, who has the same first name as his mother And who will become the woman of her life.

In the novel, they end up night together. But the book says no more, so I took over and I invented them one night in a motelexplains Rivard.

Around the Motel Champlain, real estate developments swarm. Condos and more condos towers. Many motels that pushed here in the 1960s were destroyed to make way for housing buildings with a view. of the river.

At the end of the 1950s. early 1960s, the Grands Boulevards des suburbs will welcome motels. The idea is to intercept people before they arrive in town. The announcement of the 1967 universal exhibition will be a key moment because we think there will be so many people that many motels will be built on the edge of Montreal to welcome themexplains Gérard Beaudet. professor of town planning at UQAM.

In 67. everything was not beautifulhowever, said Michel Rivard, a nod to the famous song of beautiful damage written by Pierre Huet. That year. The year of love, the year of the exhibition, The young man then worked in a motel on the South motel nostalgie | radio-canada Shore in which his father had invested.

It was a high level kitch! I do not know who had this idea. I hope it is not my father, but they had built the motel bar in a huge teepee.

At that time. motels compete in fantasy in the creation of exotic sets where we pastiche an indigenous community here, there a Hawaiian beach, etc.

In another Motel parking lot, the curtain, also located in Brossard and as preserved in formalum since the 1960s, we meet a real amateur. However, Charles Breton-Desmeules is only 30 years old! Despite his young age, the lawyer specializing in cultural heritage law appreciates the sets like this. The orange color of the doors, architecture, small details such as identical lace curtains in each room.

There are a lot of hopes in motelshe said to me, when I question him about this affection. This testifies to an era when everything was possible. Obviously. there was an carelessness for many things that we rightly question today, but there is a form of freedom that motel nostalgie | radio-canada is expressed in there.

The curtain has lost its superb. A little decathered, it attracts a variegated clientele. Cyclists come to sleep there. And we guess that in a few rooms take place more compromising activities, let’s put.

Charles Breton-Desmeules undertook to archive in his own way the traces of the missing motels thanks to the postcards. He brought the one where we see the curtain in all its splendor of the time of the exhibition. Bright colors, a magnificent swimming pool.

The young university professor has accumulated traces of. the golden age of the curtain on these small rectangular cards that each motel was printed.

The postcard became the testimony of the reputation of a place. we asserted modernity, the rooms with carpets and all thatunderlines Breton-desmeules by showing us his cards.

First, there is a style search. One of the objectives of the motel is to attract the eye of motorists in the distance with neon signs. bright colors. It gives an idea of what we considered as progress at the timehe adds.

The historian of architecture Luc Noppen had made us an appointment. too, in a motel where time seems to have stopped. HAS l’officeeverything is false wood. The motel nostalgie | radio-canada calendar dates from the 1970s, the cash register too. The rooms are clean and sober. Furniture, retro. There are even the famous solar chairs that border each of the storefronts.

It is a place of change on mentalities and also innovationsummarizes the professor.

It was in motels that we started to offer comfortable mattresses because the manufacturers gave the owners so that people try them. buy them. The first televisions in Quebec appeared in the motels, and then a whole series of comfort items. There are not many people in Quebec who had experienced a shower before knowing it in motels.

This great defender of the built heritage is distressing that motels are in the dead angle of preservation.

Wildwood in New Jersey is the leader in preserving a modern heritage. The conservation movement. set up in the early 2000s, aims to protect motels Doo Wop Unique from the 1950s and 1960s, characterized by their futuristic architecture, their bright colors and their extravagant neon signs.

Nothing in Quebec, where the idea of preserving certain motels as we do with churches makes you jump. Heritage sacrilege?

In the world of preserving built heritage. there is a kind of disavowal in motel nostalgie | radio-canada front of the motel or even the bungalow, because they are constructions inspired by the United States, deplores Luc Noppen. It is as if it was not enough for us to recognize them in our heritage. It’s a shame because heritage is what shapes our environment. therefore our imagination, and the imagination of the motel, it is very strong in Quebec.

An imaginary that is singing.

Your hair smells like summer. in your eyes, I see all the earth. I forget my job. I forget to get used to it, I hear little birds in a motel on Perrot Island.