It feels like only yesterday: 1967.

In 1967, Gérard Bourguet, a Parisian by birth, newly arrived from France after military service in the navy and a voyage around the world aboard the Jeanne d’Arc, settled in Québec City to work at the Château Frontenac.

A little later, with a few dollars in his pocket, he opened a Quebec antiques shop in the Old Port, on Rue Saint-Paul, backing onto Rue du Cap, the historic cradle of French America.

The neighbourhood was said to be rough and run-down. Yet Gérard was warmly welcomed and felt at home among families with twelve children and bicycles strewn everywhere, crowded in among speakeasies, corner stores, brothels, artists’ haunts of every kind, antique dealers and colourful characters.

There was, of course, the fortune-teller; Mr. and Mrs. Demerlis with their delicious $1.35 lunches on the corner; Mrs. Tardif, the kindly landlady in her nineties; the unforgettable “Madame 30 sous”; and wild adventures and escapades from which a few mentors and decisive encounters would emerge.

In the evening, Gérard lit oil lamps and set them in his shop window, in a post-war atmosphere, on those February nights when customers were scarce and galleries and antique dealers customarily stayed open late. Place Royale, a little farther on, lay in ruins, and “polite society” rarely ventured so far down into the Lower Town! Still, he dreamed of passing on his taste for what he considers the most beautiful furniture in the world, so full of character and so distinctive, and he succeeded, one client at a time, right up to the present.

Long after the neighbourhood’s gentrification, friendships endure and its soul remains intact, nestled deep in its old stones. In the early 1980s, Gérard Bourguet became a leading authority on exceptional 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century Quebec furniture and objects, a name synonymous with quality and with expertise recognized across the country.