Craft Stalls Everywhere

Thanks to the automobile boom, visitors flocked to the region from the 1950e onwards. Numerous small hotels, motels and restaurants sprang up along old Route 2 (now Route 138). It is also the golden age of craft stores, craft stalls and flea markets. American tourists were crazy for them.

The Portelance family’s crafts stall, on the side of Route 138, circa 1948.

These stalls were so popular that in the second half of the 20th century, there were some twenty of them in the village of Grondines alone. In fact, some said that every house in the village had its own stall!

Among them was the modest store run by Juliette Tessier (1913–2011), which opened in the late 1950s and remained open for almost 50 years. The shop, which sold colourful woven carpets that hung in the front to attract customers, was also the very last of its kind to close its doors.

Juliette Tessier’s craft store, Grondines, 1975.

A little further east, on Chemin du Roy, Madeleine Sauvageau (1925–2016) managed to talk to English-speaking customers despite the language barrier. She only needed to call an acquaintance who would act as an interpreter. At Madeleine’s, one could find everything from jams, canned goods and woven rugs to sculptures, furs, iron weathervanes, old jugs, slippers and even artwork by her sister, artist-painter Thérèse Sauvageau.

Gaston Turcotte’s woodworking craft store, circa 1975.

A few steps from this store, across the road, popular artist Gaston Turcotte (1940–2020) sold his wood sculptures to connoisseurs and passing enthusiasts. At the eastern end of the village, Robert Arcand (1939–2016), also known as “Bob the Vegetable Grower,” sold his vegetables alongside the socks and mittens his wife knitted from the wool of their sheep.

Craft store at Donat Trottier’s on Route 138, June 1962.

The completion of Highway 40 between Deschambault and Champlain in 1985 contributed to the decline of these once-popular roadside stores. By the end of the 1990s, only four craft stores and craft stalls remained in Grondines. Today, they are all but a memory.