This story was originally published April 30, 2011.
MONTREAL – Once a neighbourhood fixture, the local hardware store has all but disappeared, driven out of business by the big-box store. But there’s a breed of independent, family-run hardware stores that is still going strong.
These are stores that have changed gears and made themselves over, refusing to give up their place.
In Quebec, we call them quincailleries. Traditionally, they stocked nuts and bolts, paint and stain, lumber and all manner of washers, wires and widgets. In earlier eras, when people did their own home repairs and walked a few blocks to the hardware store if the faucet started to leak or a light bulb burned out, the local quincaillerie was almost as ubiquitous as the dépanneur.
They were almost universally family-run, passed down from generation to generation. Their specialty was service, with knowledgeable staff who could tell you straight away which was the best primer for drywall and the fastest-drying grout for ceramics, whether you needed bolts, screws or rivets, plywood or Masonite. If they didn’t have it, they ordered it and delivered it straight to your door. If a barbecue needed assembly, they found somebody to do it right there on the spot.
But as Réno Dépôt, RONA Entrepôt and Home Depot arrived on the market with their sprawling square footage, reduced markups and mammoth marketing campaigns, the little guys started to feel the pinch.
Eventually, most of them closed.
The ones who remain, though, are enjoying something of a renaissance as specialty stores.
While maintaining their independence, many have joined buying groups such as RONA or Home Hardware, allowing them access to better prices. Others branched out into different offerings.
In Westmount, for example, Hogg Hardware has an exquisite selection of home decor accessories and garden tools.
In Beaconsfield, The Hub is the go-to place for paint and wallpaper.
And Dante, the corner store in Little Italy that has been in Elena Faita and Rudy Vendittelli’s family since the 1950s, is a magnet for Montreal cooks – and hunters.
How much these quincailleries cram into their compact locales is just short of miraculous. Even at the new, condensed Hogg Hardware location, for example, the shelves hold more than 30,000 kinds of items. At RONA Notre Dame, owner Marc Lanouette calculates he stocks more than 130,000 kinds of items compared with the average big box store’s 50,000.
“They might have large volumes – but their selection isn’t nearly what ours is,” he boasts.
“They might carry the 10 bestsellers a company puts out. But we will get the whole line in.”
And so, Montreal putterers, cooks and green thumbs – fed up with getting in the car only to run up and down 27 aisles in search of out-of-stock merchandise – are heading back to neighbourhood quincailleries.
Just in time for the big spring cleanup, we take you on a tour of several old-fashioned Montreal quincailleries – each with its own niche.
QUINCAILLERIE AZORES 4299 St. Laurent Blvd. (at Vallières St.), 514-845-3543
Owners: Paulo, Gabriel, Edward and Kevin Pereira
You know it’s spring in the Plateau when the Pereira brothers start hauling out their patio furniture. The multi-coloured Adirondack chairs that line the sidewalk outside Quincaillerie Azores are just a slice of the seasonal stock for sale at this old-fashioned hardware store on The Main, just north of Rachel St.
The store recently doubled in size, expanding its housewares and outdoor furniture offerings. The four Pereira brothers took over from their father, a Portuguese immigrant who worked as a carpenter at Expo 67 before venturing into the hardware business in the late 1960s in what was then a burgeoning Portuguese community.
The store has always boasted an interesting selection of Portuguese pottery and kitchen essentials, as well as hardware basics.
“Dad would always go with what people asked for. And that’s what we do, too,” said Gabriel Pereira. “If two or three customers ask for something and I don’t have it, I’ll make sure I bring it in.”
Their teak furniture is popular, as is the hand-painted clay kitchenware from Portugal. But so is the store’s well-priced and varied collection of glass mosaic tiles.
It’s not immediately obvious, but they sell drywall, plywood and 2 x 4s, too – at prices they say are competitive with the chain stores. The brothers order straight from the supplier and deliver directly to their clients, thus saving overhead.
“Anything you need, we’ll get it. And deliver it,” Kevin says. “We go out of our way to serve people.”
QUINCAILLERIE DANTE
6851 St Dominique St. (at Dante St.), Little Italy, 514-271-2057
Owners: Elena Vendittelli Faita and Rudy Vendittelli
Everybody calls this buzzing Little Italy hybrid store Quincaillerie Dante, even in English. But nobody expects to find hardware here.
This is Montreal’s best-known mecca for cookware and kitchen supplies.
It’s where chefs and home cooks come for Le Creuset, All-Clad and Mauviel pots. For toasters and blenders, knives, cutting boards and parchment paper muffin liners, olive pitters and pepper grinders. Elena Faita, who presides over the kitchen section, is warm and welcoming, a fount of culinary knowledge.
At the back of the store there is a hunting section, where Faita’s brother, Rudy Vendittelli, has a devout following of his own among the city’s big-and small-game hunters. They stop in to buy their Beretta rifles and handmade bone and wood-handled knives. Elena and Rudy’s uncle opened a hardware store here in 1954 and their father bought it from him in 1956. Faita remembers the days when Quincaillerie Dante sold thousands and thousands of gallons of paint a year to the growing numbers of Italian immigrants who were moving to the neighbourhood, buying old properties and restoring them, or building new duplexes or triplexes.
But in the 1980s, with the advent of the big-box stores, Dante saw its paint and hardware sales decline.
So the family added housewares to the mix; then Faita’s daughter, Cristina, suggested they get into high-end Le Creuset and Emile Henri cookware.
“We are a family of cooks, so the shift came naturally,” explained Faita, whose son, Stefano, a cookbook author and television host, also helps out at the store. “Before long we opened a cooking school, too.
“We are all very passionate people. We love what we do and our customers feel that.”
HOGG HARDWARE
4855 Sherbrooke St. W. (at Victoria St.), Westmount, 514-934-4644
Owners: Al and George Hogg and brother-inlaw Russ Tisshaw
Hogg Hardware is more general store than hardware, with a focus on higher-end home decor and gardening. Opened in 1991, it feels like it has been here forever. It’s the place to come for basic hardware supplies, but especially for table linens, baking supplies, cookbooks, good-quality dish cloths and cleaning supplies. Even Buddha heads and tie-dyed scarves.
The merchandise changes with the seasons, Smartwool socks and fireplace gear making way for barbecues, push mowers, garden tools, serious Le Chameau rubber boots and work gloves come spring’s first thaw.
It also features the city’s best selection of British foods, such as Duchy shortbreads and Marmite yeast extract. There are also Bewley’s teas, from Ireland.
The store has consolidated recently, moving to a more compact, lower-rent location just west of the spot it previously occupied. But the basement paint section is still there, featuring Benjamin Moore paint and the no-fail expertise of the paint manager, Wilder Wall, who has influenced the colour schemes of more Westmount homes than any decorator in town.
THE HUB
441 Beaconsfield Blvd., Beaconsfield, 514-695-3389
Owner: Stan Rutkauskas
In sleepy Beaurepaire Village, Stan Rutkauskas has a loyal following among local home renovators. He has one of the West Island’s best selections of Robert Allen and other wallpaper and upholstery fabric, as well as Benjamin Moore paints and painting tools.
And there’s a small selection of hardware and gardening basics, too.
There’s a cappuccino machine on the counter and bowls of candies for the kids and biscuits for the dogs at the cash. Friendly service and a homey atmosphere are the big draws. Customers are welcome to have a coffee while browsing through the decor magazines and fabric samples. There’s even a decor consultant to help with colour choices and a list of painters, handymen and craftspeople to recommend.
“We have people here who know what they are talking about,” is how Rutkauskas, who has been in business 40 years, explains his success.
LE QUINCAILLIER RONA NOTRE DAME
2371 Notre Dame St. (near Charlevoix St.), 514-932-5616
Owners: Marc and Jean Lanouette
Welcome to the oldest hardware store in Montreal. It was founded in 1889 by the current owners’ great grandfather, supplying nearby stables with horse bridles and knives.
It grew as a general store and cookware shop before developing a loyal following among the city’s builders, general contractors and maintenance managers. The Lanouettes joined the Rona buying group, but also source their material elsewhere.
No fewer than six employees, moving effortlessly between French and English, offer to help in your first five minutes inside the store; no one ever wanders these aisles lost or helpless.
It boast three floors jammed to the rafters with power tools and nuts and bolts, hoses and valves.
There are whole aisles devoted to rope and twine, a back store that stocks what plumbers call the most extensive selection of plumbing parts and fittings in the city.
The inventory is a most comprehensive and eclectic mix: camping gear, cast iron pans, bike locks, patio furniture and chain link in 50 gauges.
“You have to work hard to provide service in a hardware store. People don’t want to walk up and down the aisles looking for what they need. They want knowledgeable help and they want to be out of here in warp speed,” says Marc Lanouette, whose store is always well-staffed. “And you have to be able to change with the times.”
ssemenak@montrealgazette.com
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