Compagnie Legaré
These two extraordinary glass panels were saved from oblivion by a quick-thinking vendor at Marché Underground, which is right across the street. The MSP was poised to retrieve all the panels, in cooperation with the property development company involved, but a mix-up stopped the right demolition team getting our message. We thought they’d all gone, until a keen-eyed friend of ours on Instagram commented that at least some of them had survived and were right across the street. A local resident (and fellow sign geek), who had kept a close eye on these unique panels, helped us liaise with the vendor, who revealed he’d managed to save two intact panels.
The panels are reverse-painted glass, which means the lettering and background colour were expertly applied to the inside surface, by hand, in reverse. Both panels are large, very heavy, and extremely brittle. This highly distinctive storefront feature might best be termed glass (perhaps Vitrolite) transoms with applied text. We know of only one other local example, sadly lost, in Westmount; their rarity is perhaps due to their cost, weight, fragility, and the rise of cheaper, durable plastics.
A Brief History of Compagnie Legaré: A Québécois commercial giant
These iconic Compagnie Legaré signs are relics of a business empire that shaped Québec’s shopping scene for much of the 20th century. Once lining the streets of Montreal and beyond, they were a familiar sight for generations of shoppers.
Compagnie Legaré’s long-lasting presence began at the end of the 19th century and lasted until the very end of the 20th century, spanning a century of rapid evolution in the province. Pierre-Théophile Legaré, Compagnie Legaré’s founder, worked from a young age as his father’s associate in a small agricultural equipment factory. In 1877, he took over his father’s business and began manufacturing horse-drawn carriages. However, in 1899, a disastrous fire wiped out a third of the town of Saint-Sauveur, destroying his business. To recover, he partnered with Montreal merchant Robert Johnston Latimer and started a new business, Latimer and Legaré, which specialized in farm implements, carriages and other machinery.
Legaré became the sole owner in 1896 and renamed the company P. T. Legaré. He rapidly opened branches in several cities in Québec, making P. T. Legaré one of the first chain stores in Canada. Soon, Legaré bought the Percival Plow and Stove Company Limited (1916) and later founded Dominion Carriage Company Limited (1917), expanding his company’s manufacturing operations. Technological advancements eventually forced Legaré to phase out his production of horse-drawn carriages in 1924, but he had already anticipated his next move: he partnered with Québécois businessmen the Fortier brothers to set up a network for automobile sales. First known as Compagnie d’Automobiles de Montréal, then as Legaré Automobile and Supply Company Limited from 1917 onwards, their motor car sales company became largest in the country at the time.
By the early 1920s, Legaré produced everything needed to equip the modern farm in a still mainly rural society, and practically everything needed to furnish the farmhouse and the urban middle-class home. The company sold products from wood stoves to refrigerators, washing machines, furniture, musical instruments and more. When Legaré died in 1927, Compagnie Legaré was at its height: it had taken over the commercial landscape with four department stores, more than 50 stores and about 1,000 local agencies in the provinces of Quebec, northeastern New Brunswick and eastern Ontario. Following his death, the company faced challenges like bankruptcy and fraud, but survived by restructuring several times. Compagnie Legaré lasted until 1998, marking over a century in business.
Compagnie Legaré’s Catalogue: A “Bible of French Canada”
Modern marketing techniques were a crucial part of Compagnie Legaré’s success, from their advertisements in the press to their credit sales. The business was most known for its hefty mail-order catalogue service, which the Toronto Financial Post called the “Bible of French Canada” in 1925. In just over 40 years, the company published more than a hundred 500-page catalogues, and many smaller ones, featuring their entire stock of merchandise beautifully portrayed with photographs and line drawings. Legaré’s truly prolific catalogue production has become a fascinating archive of daily life and material culture in Québec, showing technological changes, shifting priorities, and the increase of indoor leisure as the population moved to urban centres.
Compagnie Legaré’s newspaper advertisements help us trace the company’s history, too. Archival detective work shows that a Compagnie Legaré branch opened at 3534 Notre Dame O. around 1931, but, according to the Lovell Directory, moved down the street to 3734 Notre Dame O. in 1935. The sign panels’ lettering echoes the lettering from the 1932 ad (below); by 1940, the lettering in their ads became more modern.
La Presse, May 6, 1932: A newspaper ad features lettering sharing obvious affinities with the two surviving glass panels.
La Presse, September 27, 1940: By the end of the decade, the brand’s lettering was blockier. This highly illustrated full-page ad is typical of Legaré’s catalogues and newspaper advertisements.
An image of the storefront at 3534 Notre Dame Ouest in La Patrie (October 16, 1931).
According to their newspaper ads, Compagnie Legaré stayed at the same location on Notre Dame at least until 1983, as shown in an advertisement in Le Courrier de St-Hyacinthe (Oct. 19, 1983). After that, the final Notre Dame location disappears from the major newspapers, perhaps also heralding the imminent closure of this branch. Still, these remarkable glass sign panels remained hidden— treasures of the past that were waiting to be uncovered nearly another 40 years later!
With special thanks to fellow sign geek Camille Pfeiffer, and Marché Underground vendor Gilles Gascon. Thanks also to Martin Bérubé (Propos Montréal), Concordia subject librarian Josh Chalifour, eagled-eyed Instagrammer Gil Russo, and friend of the MSP Eric Robillard.
Writing and research by Marie Bernard-Brind’Amour.
Sources
La Patrie. (1931, October 16). Une grande organisation pour la vente de radios (Collections de BAnQ).
La Presse. (1932, May 6). Compagnie Legaré (Collections de BAnQ).
La Presse. (1940, September 27). Voici l’automne! Embellissez votre maison (Collections de BAnQ).
Le samedi. (1936, December). Le Samedi.
Lechasseur, A. (2005). Legaré, Pierre-Théophile. Dictionnaire Biographique Du Canada.
Lessard, M. (1995). L’empire P.T. Legaré limitée.
