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Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois has put her Ile Bizard home on the market for $8 million. (Photo courtesy LCN)
Pauline Marois puts Île Bizard home on market
Residence described as 'a good deal'
Catherine Solyom
The Gazette
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois has put her Ile Bizard home on the market for $8 million. (Photo courtesy LCN)
Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois is moving to Charlevoix – and selling her home in Île Bizard for $8 million.
Described by her real estate agent as having a “Château de la Loire look” at Quebec prices, the property is a “good deal,” said Sotheby’s Cyrille Girard.
With 1.7 million square feet of land backing onto Rivière des Prairies and landscaped into duck ponds and fountains, the property is described as a “true oasis.”
The mansion itself, where Marois lived with her husband, former head of Quebec’s Société générale de financement Claude Blanchet, and four children, is a three-storey, “very elegant French-style villa,” with eight bedrooms and seven bathrooms, a Jacuzzi bathtub, guillotine windows and central air-conditioning.
“The children have moved out, so they made the decision as a family to live in the riding (of Charlevoix),” said Pascal Monette, the PQ’s communications director.
“The leader of the opposition does a lot of travelling, so now she’ll be spending less time on the road … and people change their lifestyle after their kids leave.”
Marois’s empty nest, with its 12,000-square-foot interior, has been in the spotlight before.
Marois and Blanchet are suing The Gazette over a 2007 article that said that part of the land within La Closerie’s wrought-iron gates was government land and that the house was built after a partner of Blanchet managed to build the house on land zoned agricultural before he sold it to Blanchet.
Blanchet bought the land for $65,823.38 in 1992.
In the lawsuit, which is still before the courts, Marois and Blanchet are asking for $2 million in damages for defamation.
The Gazette denies any wrongdoing, and insists the articles were accurate and in the public interest, particularly after Marois made a political issue of her “modest” home.
Sotheby agent Cyrille Girard said the estate, perhaps the largest in the Montreal region, would be appealing to local and international buyers alike – and particularly to Sotheby’s exclusive clientele – regardless of its history.
Built in 1994, it will age well, Girard said, adding that the online listing has been receiving up to 100 hits a day since the property was put on the market on Friday.
In the meantime, Girard is looking for a suitable home for Marois and Blanchet in the Charlevoix region.
PQ communications director Monette says she wants to live in the cliff-top hamlet of Ste. Irenée.