Have you ever dreamed of being the sheriff of an old-timey frontier town? Perhaps you’re looking for a place to hitch your wagon? Or maybe you just wished you lived like a pioneer? Well, for the tidy sum of $2.8 million, you can turn those fantasies into reality in southern Quebec.
Known as , this sprawling 55 hectare property outside of the town of Rawdon, some 60 kilometres north of Montreal, is being sold by . The quirky postcard-perfect property has served as a backdrop for numerous films, including the 2007 Bob Dylan biopic “I’m Not There.”
Forty buildings dot the property, such as a general store, a mill, a church and even a saloon. Some were built for movie shoots; many others are authentic ancestral homes transplanted from all over Quebec.
“A lot of people in Rawdon are very attached to it,” local resident Beverly Prud'homme told CTV Montreal.
Prud'homme grew up visiting the village when its original owners, Earl and Nora Moore, began collecting its buildings in the 1960s.
“They were really into history, and they were passionate about it,” Prud'homme said.
The community even pitched in with period furnishings and the Moores soon opened Canadiana Village to the public. In its heyday, it attracted more than 35,000 visitors a year.
“The idea was that Earl would organize the village and get it going and then turn it over to the municipality,” Prud'homme said. “And you see, that didn’t happen.”
When the Moores died, Prud'homme created a foundation to keep the village going, but was unable to find enough investors. In 2013, its current owner put it up for sale with a local agency, but failed to find a buyer.
In the two months since the village has been back on the market with Sotheby’s, the broker in charge of selling it says he’s received roughly one hundred calls from around the world from groups looking to do everything from transforming it into a summer camp to turning it into a nature retreat. But while locals aren’t necessarily opposed to such plans, many would rather see the site preserved as a tourist attraction for film shoots and education.
“What I prefer is to keep it as you can see now,” Rawdon resident Serge Baril told CTV Montreal.
Prud'homme agrees.
“It was a very, very good historical prompter, you know, to get people to think about how things were and what it was like not to live with… electricity or running water,” she said.
With files from CTV Montreal
