June 2020
After close to seven months of discussion with the City of Westmount, preliminary work on the repair of the bell tower finally began in May.
The issue we had to resolve with the City was accessing the bell tower. Initially, the plan was to access the tower from the outside by opening one of the louvres on the east side of the bell tower and adjusting it to function as a door should work be required in the future. The City was not favorable to the idea that we modify in any way the external appearance of our patrimonial edifice. After several months of discussion with Louis Brillant, our consulting architect, it was decided that the bell tower be accessed from inside the church.
This was done by slowly lifting one of the church’s interior ceiling panels, located at the back of the choir loft, in order to access the narrow catwalk that leads from the back to the front of the church, where the bell tower is located. The ceiling panel that was lifted will be laid back in its place once the work is done and fitted to facilitate future entry. The good part is that there will be no visible trace that this panel has become a door, so to speak.