Selling flowers outside Florateria, n.d.
Florateria flower shop
Fernand Leduc opened Florateria in 1956 in the Plateau neighbourhood of Montreal. He bought the florist from two of the famous Dionne quintuplets and turned it into a full-fledged family business. As a reference to ‘groceterias,’ the common name for self-serve grocery stores at the time, Leduc originally named his new shop Fleureteria. Fernand’s son Roger took over the business in 1981 and still recalls his early days working at Florateria: “At the age of five, I was already working the cash register on a little bench.” After starting a career at Bell Canada, Roger Leduc returned to the family business at age 19 when he agreed to help his father in the shop during a busy summer and never left. Over the years, several more family members joined the team. Roger’s grandfather and uncles lent a hand during holidays and other periods. His sister, Jacqueline, worked at the store for 43 years, and at the age of 81, she was still working every day. Roger’s three sons also worked at Florateria to pay for their studies, but for everyone who worked there, according to Roger, “it was really like a family.” Roger worked seven days a week at Florateria until July 31 2024, when a sudden rent increase forced the store to close.
During its 68 years in business, Florateria wove itself into Montreal’s history. Roger Leduc recalls the excitement of providing flowers for the Canada and China Pavilions during Expo 67. Armed with his brand-new driver’s license, he was tasked with flower deliveries to the pavilions seven days a week for the entire Expo summer. More recently, Florateria has collaborated with prop masters to choose historically-accurate flowers for films. “Let’s say they did a 1970’s scene… I was the one who chose the flowers. They needed someone who knew about all that,” he recalls with a smile.
The store often worked with interior designers and decorators, as featured in the December 1998 issue of DécorMag. Following his eye for floral creativity, Leduc prides himself in pioneering the sale of exotic flowers in Montreal, sourcing them from Colombia, Ecuador, and all over the world. “My father didn’t like spending more than he absolutely had to when he ran the shop,” Roger recalls, “but I brought in all kinds of flowers that I liked.” In the early 2000s, he traveled to the Netherlands to source new blue roses and sell them at Florateria.: “I was the one who brought back the blue roses myself, the first in Montreal”.
Roger Leduc, owner of Florateria (1999)
Florateria was solidly involved in its community, too. Roger’s father often donated flowers to various groups and insisted that his son continue when he took over the store. Florateria won the Yvonne-Maisonneuve Prize in 2019 for the store’s commitment to helping the Chainon Women’s Shelter, to which Leduc always sent poinsettias for Christmas and bouquets for Easter. Florateria also often donated flowers to La Rue des Femmes, a nearby women’s health centre. To honour the surrounding Portuguese community and through the influence of Maria de Souza, an employee who worked at Florateria for 30 years, the store often provided flowers for celebrations at a local Portuguese church, l’Église Santa Cruz.
When Florateria closed, Roger Leduc kindly gifted the Montreal Signs Project one of a pair of signs that had hung in the windows, both of which had remained intact since their installation around 1970. “My father wrote very well, especially for a man,” Leduc jokes, so he collaborated with a company to customize the sign. “[The sign] was his handwriting— they kind of autographed it, then added fluorescent lighting,” he remembers. According to Roger, this matched the store’s interior, as his father had hand-painted all the signs for the store.
Until Florateria’s closure, his father’s hand-painted red and black interior signs were still on display, covered with protective plastic. Roger notes that many aspects of the store had remained the same over the years: the sign had even been plugged into the same mid-50s electrical breaker since its installation. “It’s like a heritage site here,” he exclaims, “after 68 years of existence!”
In July 2024, family and past staff members attended Florateria’s closing party to celebrate this “heritage” site and reminisce on the shop’s long history. The event was commemorated through the photography of Professor Marisa Portolese, a faculty member in Fine Arts at Concordia and a regular at Florateria for over twenty years. “My friend Genevieve—my thesis advisor— introduced me to them. She said, ‘This is where they have the best flowers in Montreal.’” When Portolese moved down the street from the shop, she became a familiar face. “I was so happy because I had a florist that I could go to more regularly, and they were so nice. And then, as time went by, I went more and more often. And so, you get to know them in a special way. I’m a localist. I want to go into a store and know who the owner is.”
In the workshop. (nd)
Flowers have creatively inspired Portolese since the early influence of her gardener father, so Florateria has played an essential role in several of her projects. “I could trust them,” says Portolese, “every time I used flowers in my work, I always went to them.” Her 2018 exhibition ‘In the Studio with Notman’ at the McCord Museum combined inspiration from Notman’s photographic archive with her focus on female portraiture. She chose backdrops from paintings by old masters and made countless trip to Florateria to create lush matching flower sets for her 19th century-inspired portraits. For her more recent project about Goose Village, a vanished Montreal neighbourhood, Portolese paid attention to the oft-overlooked flowers (aka weeds!) around the parking lot where it once stood. That winter, Roger ordered these unusual plants for her so she could continue her work. “I’d ask, can you get me some golden rods? Can you get me some Queen Anne’s lace?”
Of course, Florateria also played a part in the milestones of many regulars’ lives: birthdays, weddings, and funerals, including for Portolese’s own parents-in-law. She was shocked when she learned of Florateria’s closure and used her photography to commemorate its long-time role in locals’ lives. “I bought a lot of plants. My mom bought plants, my friends bought plants. And then, I started photographing the walls. Not like a journalist would, like an artist would. That’s what I was interested in, was all the vestiges of the past, all the markings on the walls.” In July 2024, Portolese said goodbye to Florateria with a final group photo of past and present employees to remember its 68 years of involvement in the Plateau neighbourhood.