Living “off the grid”—away from civic utilities like power or telephone lines, natural gas or municipal water—sounds like an adventure. But you don’t have to be too old to remember when there was no “grid,” especially on rural properties.
Roger and Virginie Dallaire have officially opened La Grange, a museum and gathering place on their small farmstead at St. Vincent. Displays and artifacts in their barn (“La Grange” is French for “the barn”) tell the region’s history, while the space itself serves a venue for any kind of small gathering.
Roger and Virginie live the rustic life, off the grid. They raise their own chickens and pigs and grow their own vegetables on the small farm. Roger moved a heritage farmhouse to the site in 2006, repairing and restoring it extensively. More recently he moved the small barn, which has a story of its own, onto the farm.
While Roger and Virginie are both francophone, the homesteading experience crosses the region’s many settler cultures. The displays are all bilingual and the many artifacts reflect the life experienced by many homesteaders.
Roger is a storyteller and musician. He and Virginie would welcome visitors to their farm and show them the old house, sharing the stories of how people used to live. But with a family to raise, it was impractical to open up their house to visitors as a living museum.
“This was something that could have been shared with the community and the surrounding area. But there was a problem of making my house a museum when it’s my house,” Roger said.
“Then with Virginie and the kids living here, it made even less sense having the house as a museum because now we had a family and babies and kids.”
But he was encouraged by Suzanne Prévost of CDEA (“kind of the French chamber of commerce,” Roger explains) to make something of the space. When Suzanne saw the Dallaires had moved the old barn from St. Paul, she immediately saw it working as a museum.
Roger hadn’t bought the barn to house a museum—he bought it because the farm needed a barn. But with a history of its own, Roger recognized the barn’s potential as a story-telling place.
“Joseph Parenteau, a Métis from Saint-Paul-des-Métis, bought a homestead in March 1909,” Roger says. “The main barn was built of logs, he probably built that a few years later.”
The land was bought by Jérémie Faucher, who added a lean-to structure to the side of the barn as living quarters.
“That’s still there,” Roger said. “I’m using the lean-to as my wood shop.”
Now, with help from Parallèle Alberta’s “Artisans at Work” program, the space has officially opened. Roger and Virginie hope it will be a place not just for Roger to perform, but for people to share their own stories.
Although the ribbon has been cut, La Grange won’t be fully in service until sometime this fall. The couple hopes to cater to groups who want to come see the farm along with the barn and its collections. And because it’s on a family’s working farm, visits will be by appointment.
“We still have to work on that during the summer. Probably in the fall, we will be better set up to serve the public,” Roger said.
Roger and Virginie are working on a website for La Grange. In the meantime, more information can be found at Roger’s site, rogerdallaire.com.
