As part of the Journées de la Culture, Héritage Montréal celebrates the artisans who work every day to preserve and restore Montreal's heritage. Here's an interview with stonemason Alexandre Maquet.
What is your job?
I'm a stonemason. My job consists in shaping natural stone to make interior decoration elements such as sinks or mantelpieces or architectural elements that are integrated into the building.
How did this vocation come about and how did you learn your trade?
My grandfather restored stone fireplaces. He wasn't just a stonemason, but it was one of the things he was good at. Then I met some stonemasons and I liked it. I did four years of training in France, part of which was a sandwich course. I spent two weeks at school and two weeks on the building sites. I had the chance to work with a master apprentice in Paris on large heritage restoration sites such as the Pantheon or the Louvre.
What are the qualities you need for your job?
Have a good three-dimensional vision of things. Patience. Cutting a stone takes time, you have to respect all the steps to get a good result. Meticulousness. A sense of geometry. An interest in art history, especially when doing heritage restoration. And curiosity.
What is special about your job in the Montreal and Quebec context?
Quebec stonecutters have very different backgrounds, some come from cabinetmaking, others were trained in carving schools or worked on construction sites. It's very rewarding to work with these different profiles and backgrounds.
The practice is less compartmentalized. There are different possibilities than in Europe. On a site like the Louvre, I would never have been able to touch the sculptures. That's the work of sculptors. Here, it's different. Often, we are called sculptors on construction sites. I took training courses to be able to integrate this type of work into my practice.
Another particularity in Montreal is the great variety of architectural styles and techniques, sometimes very specific. The first stonemasons came from Europe, the French, the Scots, the English and the Italians. Each community had its own way of working the stones, its own finishing techniques. Once, I worked on a stone with a finish I had never seen before. A friend explained to us that it was a technique typical of a region in England.
In terms of materials, there are all kinds of stones, granite, limestone, very soft stones, such as sandstone. Grey stone can be worked very well. Sometimes the challenge is to find the right stone with the right colour. For grey stone, there is a quarry in Saint-Jacques-le-Mineur where the same style of stone can be found.
What is a typical construction site like? What are the steps?
I start by observing the facade, the style, the type of stone and the finish. I take measurements to draw workshop plans of each stone. I draw up a cutting sheet that describes all the dimensions of the " bloc capable ", i.e. the stone that contains the piece to be cut. The stone supplier sends me the stone and I cut it. I send it to the building site and the mason lays it.
The building site you're most proud of?
I have made beautiful pieces for the former Montreal courthouse, the Lucien-Saulnier building, Parliament. At the National Assembly, I used to cut the stones on site, at the foot of the scaffolding. When I walk past a building, I am proud to see a stone that I made and that will be there for a long time.
A construction site that's been giving you a hard time?
All of them! I remember a staircase in New York City made of solid stone, self-supporting and spinning. A real technical challenge!
In restoration, the challenge is often to find the right stone and above all to give it the right finish. It is this last step that gives the right colour. If the finish is different, you can see it right away because the stone does not catch the light in the same way.
Which Montreal building would you like to work on?
All of them! There's a lot of them that need restoring but I'd say Craig's Pumping Station. It's got some beautiful stones, the town crest. I'd like to restore it.
Are you integrating new elements related to sustainable development into your practice?
Stone is very durable as a material. When you change a stone, it will last a hundred years. There is no programmed obsolescence in our practice.
But practices are still evolving with these new parameters. For example, a lot of water is used to cut stone. Now we install settling ponds so that we can reuse the water. We are trying to use scraps, falls and rubble to make crushed stone for example.
The tools are evolving too. Some tools have tungsten carbide tips for cutting hard stones. When the tip breaks, the tool is finished. Today we come back with older tools that can be repaired, reforged.
Heritage is like an open-air library that tells us the ways of doing things, the history, that gives us references to be able to create something else.
Alexandre Maquet
What will be the challenges, stakes and opportunities for the practice of your profession in the 21st century?
One of the big issues is the training of the next generation. Currently, there is basic training at Mégantic, but there is no follow-up afterwards. I sometimes give training in masonry restoration. The participants have no idea what they are going to learn there, they think it is easy. For them, the stonemason's trade is a lost profession, their grandfather's trade. I'm working with CMAQ to set up training and make my practice better known.
Another challenge is the digitisation of the profession. Today, there are robots that scan the stones and are capable of reproducing them. But they have limits. I've already seen this type of machine scan a stone window sill and the wooden moulding of the window. It reproduced both of them in stone! They are good tools, but they cannot replace the stonemason. Just because you have a good oven doesn't mean you're a good cook. You can use them for technical drawings, you can do most of the work, but you have to preserve and perpetuate the culture of the trade.
Finally, if you had to describe your job with a smell?
The limestone is a little wet, a very typical mineral smell.
A noise?
The sound of a big block splitting in half. Banging on corners. Little by little, the sound changes and all of a sudden there is a thud when the stone opens.
Texture?
A multitude of textures! In Montreal, bush hammering.
A color?
The grey, the blue that goes all the way to the black of the Montreal stone, which is grey when extracted and becomes black when polished.
Meet Alexandre Maquet, Grand prix de l'Opération patrimoine in the Know-How category in the video below.
