Réal Giguère TV – television repair shop
Réal Giguère TV, a family-run television repair shop, was a fixture on the Plateau for nearly 70 years. Founded in 1955 by Réal Giguère, the business witnessed the rise of a once-rare commodity that would soon become a household essential. Serge and Alain, Réal’s sons, began helping out around the store with their brothers at a young age and studied to one day run the business. They worked at Réal Giguère TV full-time beginning in the mid-70s and eventually took over their father’s shop in 1989. The brothers fixed generations of televisions over nearly seven decades on the Plateau, adapting to enormous changes in the technology that came through their doors. Their mandate was to bring any era of television back into operation, so Serge and Alain knew every model by heart, from wood-panelled 1974 Zeniths to flat 2006 Hitachis. Réal Giguère TV’s services also went beyond repairs: the shop rented out the beautiful vintage TVs that lined its walls to producers for movies like C.R.A.Z.Y. and Funkytown. None were for sale; instead, the store functioned like a technological library.
Musician and Plateau resident Steve Dumas was a regular client at Réal Giguère TV. To him, the store was a reminder of the neighbourhood’s history. “I think it’s very representative of what the Plateau used to be like, you know, with little shops,” he remembers, “and it’s one of the last businesses that looks like it dates back to the 60s.” The store’s vintage-looking sign and front window stacked high with all kinds of televisions had often sparked his curiosity. Inside, the crowded locale felt like stepping into the past. “It was like a maze. There were televisions piled up everywhere, bits and pieces. It was hard to get around because there was so much TV equipment, electronics, radios,” Dumas laughs. He adds, “It was really a way of entering, I’d say, another era.” The 70s-style forest wallpaper and wood-panelled wall perfectly preserved the store’s retro charm.
When Dumas’ boombox broke a few years ago, he found that Réal Giguère TV was the perfect place to restore his musical equipment. Over the years, he brought various gadgets for repair, including headphones, cassette players, and even some older radios, which he used in his concerts. Dumas remarks that “old-fashioned repairers are something we’ve lost today. We have a culture of buying, then throwing away— we don’t repair—but this was one of the last bastions in the neighbourhood that did specialize in repair.” In an interview with Le Devoir in 2014, Alain Giguère expressed the same sentiment, commenting that he was disturbed by today’s wasteful practices. According to his experience, new electronic devices are cheaply made, designed to break after five years, and built to be thrown away rather than repaired— a vicious cycle. Serge and Alain viewed their business as a challenge to the current culture of hyper-consumption.
They often had to work miracles to track down and salvage parts from used TVs on obscure specialized websites but remained committed to making a dent in their community’s technological waste. Réal Giguère TV closed its doors in late summer 2024 after seventy years. The store’s closure marks the end of an era on the Plateau, but their ethos of sustainability and community continues to resonate.
Réal Giguère TV’s sign is a plastic, non-illuminated fascia comprising several sections. A common practice was to paint these panels from the back in order to protect them from the elements. Serge Giguère notes that it had remained the same since 1963, when the shop changed locales to its current site. He recalls that his father collaborated with a sign company to select the font and personally designed the funny logo of a fierce dog crashing through a television set. When the store closed, Serge Giguère cut this logo out of the Réal Giguère TV sign and gave it to his nephew as a memento of his grandfather. MSP rescued the rest of the sign in November 2024, just before its successor moved into the space.
Writing and research by Marie Bernard-Brind’Amour
