Welcome and bienvenue
My name is Anton and thank you for joining me on my journey to restore Mountain View Chapel, a landmark 1898 heritage building situated at the foothills of the Parc de la Gatineau in Aylmer, Québec, Canada.
The chapel – designed by renowned architect Moses Chamberlain Edey – first opened its doors in 1898 as a Methodist church for the local Protestant, Anglophone farming community. Declining numbers of people attending their local churches, lack of finances and high maintenance costs have forced many churches and chapels to close. Mountain View Chapel was no different. After many years as a place of worship, the changing demography of the farming community and secularization led to the chapel’s closure in 1978. Since closing, the building has served as an art studio and a yoga centre, changed owners a number of times, and attracted unwanted attention from vandals.
Many church buildings have basic utilities and have been vacant for years. Dry rot, wet rot, structural damage, subsidence, leaking roofs, primitive plumbing, poor insulation, awkward layout, abandoned gardens, graveyard access, neglect, planning restrictions, heritage status and ecclesiastical covenants are enough for the average person to about-face and run. And then there are those for whom the emotional attachment is too great to resist – in their madness they buy these “diamonds in the rough” with aspirations of creating a unique living space. I was in the latter category.
The chapel has been owned by two people before me. The first owner was a builder and completed the water and septic systems, as well as upgraded much of the electrics. The next owners included an architect, but new additions to the family prevented them from focusing fully on the project and so they reluctantly placed a classified advert on Kijiji to sell the chapel. They received lots of interest, but no serious offers. As I had grown up around historic chapels in northern England, I was hooked the minute I saw the building. We negotiated a deal, and a couple days before Christmas 2010 we exchanged contracts so that I became the new custodian of Mountain View Chapel.
Church conversions are complicated projects fraught with drama and challenges, and I highly recommend hiring an architect and/or builder with specialist knowledge who can work with church buildings. Converting a property designed for communal worship into a private home, while maintaining its architectural integrity, is one of the most difficult aspects of any chapel conversion. The inability to find the right balance between the existence of a large, empty space and the need for cozy living quarters is one of the most fundamental failures of all conversions. As I discovered, design plans are also hindered by factors such as windows high off the ground that restrict views of the exterior, high ceilings, entrances centred at one end, and an East-West orientation that affects sunlight positions.
Throughout the conversion process, I worked with the very helpful staff at the Building Department of the local City Hall (Ville de Gatineau, secteur d’Aylmer) to get the necessary information regarding the chapel’s zoning status. With their assistance, I was able to meet the necessary requirements to get the chapel changed from being zoned as a community building to a residential property. In the summer of 2011 Mountain View Chapel became a residential property for the first time in its 113-year history.
Over the past ten years I have spent much time landscaping and gardening, working on what was essentially a third-acre blank canvas. Tonnes of topsoil have been added, gravel laid, grass seed spread, and fruit trees, bushes, trees, plants and bulbs have been planted. Now that the basics are in place, I am working on the decoration of the interior living space.
I hope that you enjoy reading about my journey. Please feel free to look around, and if you have any comments, or would like to share a story about the history of the chapel, contact me via the Contact page. Cheers!