Berthe Chaurès-Louard

Family and Education

Little is known about Berthe Chaurès-Louard’s life before her arrival in Canada on 1 January 1920, except that she worked in her native Belgium as a wool carder in a spinning mill. (See also Belgian Canadians.) Once in Canada, she settled in Montreal, on Sainte-Catherine Street East, with her double bassist husband, Édouard Louard. He worked for the Montreal Symphony Orchestra while Berthe was a seamstress. The Louards moved to the borough of Ahuntsic-Cartierville, north of Montreal, and became the owners of a chicken coop. Chaurès-Louard did not have any children.

La Familiale: The Consumer Cooperative

The upheaval of the Great Depression swept through Canada in the 1930s, and in 1935 Berthe Chaurès-Louard's house became the venue for a Circle of Economic and Social Studies (see The Great Depression in Canada).

In November 1936, during a conference entitled La révolution nécessaire, Chaurès-Louard met lecturer Victor Barbeau, a professor at the HEC Montréal. Chaurès-Louard was very inspired by the cooperative movement discussed by the expert and suggested that they co-create a consumer cooperative (a co-managed grocery store). (See also Co-operative Movement.)

On 8 June 1937, Chaurès-Louard and Victor Barbeau co-founded a grocery store called La Familiale. It was the first French-Canadian cooperative consumer union. Barbeau was its president and Chaurès-Louard was first the secretary, then the manager, all on a volunteer basis.

Over the years, Chaurès-Louard became a leader of the Quebec cooperative model and played several roles at the heart and at the head of its development. She set up networks and led informative meetings on cooperativism throughout Quebec, established a reserve fund and a caisse populaire, and managed La Familiale and the newspaper Le Coopérateur Agricole.

The consumer cooperative model inspired by La Familiale spread to other Quebec cities that were also affected by rising food prices. In fact, Berthe Chaurès-Louard rolled up her sleeves and travelled to rural areas to lend a hand to new cooperatives. Subsequently, in 1938, the expansion of the food cooperatives became a network, the Alliance des Coopératives de Consommation, with Chaurès-Louard as secretary. Its head office was located at La Familiale, at Chaurès-Louard's home, at 2189 Rue Dorion in Montreal.

Relations deteriorated between the co-founders and led to Barbeau’s resignation from La Familiale in 1945. In an annual report from 1954 to 1955, Barbeau blamed the "loss of momentum" of the cooperative grocery movement as soon as supermarkets emerged.

In addition, the cooperative model was hanging by a thread. In 1958, the Alliance des Coopératives de Consommation became the Fédération des Magasins Coop. After the death of Chaurès-Louard, the Federation responded to the competition and in 1969 it modernized its network of grocery stores, which it named Cooprix. The first store, Cooprix Berthe-Louard, was opened on the outskirts of the Domaine Saint-Sulpice, on Avenue André-Grasset.

In the 1980s, the Fédération des Magasins Coop’s bankruptcy destabilized Cooprix’s management. After a decade of instability, the brand was taken over by a rival federation.

Did you know?
In his 1944 publication Initiation à l'humain, Victor Barbeau honored Berthe Chaurès-Louard by naming her the trailblazer of French Canada's consumer cooperative movement.

La Familiale: The Affordable Housing Co-operative

From the 1950s onwards, Berthe Chaurès-Louard invested a lot of her time in setting up a cooperative housing community at a low price. (See also Housing Co-operatives.) Its objective was to make homeownership more accessible to low-income families while also protecting rents from speculative inflation. La Familiale created its housing committee in 1953.

After a decade of talks and pressure, Montreal Mayor Sarto Fournier agreed to sell a fifth of Domaine Saint-Sulpice, on two conditions: a corporation was to supervise the construction of the community and Chaurès-Louard was to be the signatory of the deed of purchase. La Familiale created Les Habitations Saint-Sulpice Inc. in 1959. In 1962, after three years of red tape, the City of Montreal finally transferred ownership of the Domaine Saint-Sulpice property, located in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough, to Chaurès-Louard.

The Domaine Saint-Sulpice

The development plan for the Domaine, approved by the municipal administration, was designed by architects Campeau and Linden. The Domaine was divided into 408 lots of approximately 5000 square feet. Properties were sold to families who were members of La Familiale, based on their contribution to the cooperative, the number of children they had, and to households that did not already own their home.

Between 1962 and 1965, 740 families moved into the 174 duplexes built in the Domaine Saint-Sulpice. The poorest sold their possessions, such as their cars, or took out a loan from the Caisse populaire Desjardins to buy a property (see Caisse populaire). In the summer of 1962, the first five duplexes were built on Rue de Louvain. About twenty families settled in the first newly built houses in the same year.

Cash flow issues overwhelmed La Familiale, forcing it to stop construction of its housing development. In 1963, a liquidation committee dissolved the housing co-operative, which narrowly avoided bankruptcy.

Later Life and Legacy

Berthe Chaurès-Louard died on 7 February 1968 at the age of 78.

Chaurès-Louard's house, acquired during the development of the Domaine, is still located at 1322 Rue Chabanel Est.

In recognition of the neighbourhood’s social, urban, economic and human development, the municipality of Ahuntsic-Cartierville honoured Chaurès-Louard's legacy by building five housing cooperatives (1980s), Berthe-Louard Park (2006) and Berthe-Louard Avenue.

Awards and Distinctions

Berthe Chaurès-Louard has an honorary doctorate in social sciences from the Université de Montréal (1947). She was the first woman to receive the Ordre du Mérite coopératif et mutualiste québécois (Quebec Order of Cooperative and Mutual Merit) from the Conseil supérieur de la coopération (1949).

On 5 March 2020, the Minister of Culture and Communications, Nathalie Roy, named Chaurès-Louard a historical figure who "was able to rally prominent members of Quebec society to support poor and working-class families."