Several Quebecers had their dream of living on an isolated island of the St. Lawrence River. The newspaper presents some of these incredible stories to you, but also the challenges that these unique places represent.
The businessman and restaurateur Richard Holder had a love at first sight for an ancestral house located on an island in the north of Laval, accessible only by boat.
“It’s completely charming to be in this place and a few minutes from the city. You feel like you are alone, ”says Holder in an interview.
Whoever has interests in several restaurants in Montreal, including the European Brasserie Holder in Old Montreal, simply saw the house displayed in a real estate site and it was by organizing a visit to the premises that he fell under the spell.
“We got off the boat, I made” Wow “,” he says.
Fascinating thing, 300 years ago, the island in cows, in the aptly named Rivière des Mille Îles, was divided into seven parts and housed farms. The other property remaining of this time is on the other side of the island.
“The house is not habitable at the moment. […] The intention is to renovate it, to make it habitable, ”he explains. Ultimately, he would like to make a kind of chalet in town for him.
Richard Holder must not worry about seeing neighbors coming to disturb his tranquility in the future. In 2020, the City of Laval announced the purchase of most of the island in cows and St-Pierre Island, in the Saint-François archipelago, for $ 21.9 million in order to preserve the environment.
Not the crowd
Contrary to what one might think, Richard Holder does not have the impression that there were a lot of potential buyers for this rare real estate product, when he and his brother Maurice together set up on last year for the sum of $ 225,000.
View of the tunes of Richard Holder’s house on Cow Island.
Photo Martin Chevalier
The island is separated from the rest of Laval by a thin strip of water of approximately 250 meters, without any bridge to reach the shore. “Maybe that’s why we didn’t feel that it was the crowd to buy that,” he said. “Winter access is very limited, not to say impossible.”
It is not an investment, he insists, and the objective is not to make money with this project, even in the long term. “It’s to spend time. […] We will retype it with the idea of preserving its heritage value, ”he says.
“We saw a listing And we got a crush. It was a really charming place, ”he sums up.
Cow Islands
- Laval
- 9148-8767 Québec inc. et Holder Holding inc.
- Property acquired in 2024
- 2012 m2
- “You feel like you are alone”