Blue House of Sainte-Luce sur Mer

House near the beach at Anse-aux-Coques, with its salty sea air.

Painting on exhibit in Paris from November 23 to 25, 2025...

It was on a trip to the Bas-Saint-Laurent region, some 500 kilometres east of Saint-Hyacinthe, during a bicycle ride along the river road, that I spotted this BLUE HOUSE set in the bucolic landscape of the charming village of Sainte-Luce-sur-Mer.

Founded in 1829, Sainte-Luce is a pretty little seaside village with its salty air, where one finds colourful ancestral houses to admire, and restaurants and inns with a view of the St. Lawrence.

This small municipality of 2,845 inhabitants (2021), 16 km east of Rimouski, the capital of the Bas-Saint-Laurent, is famous for its beach and its 2.5-kilometre promenade along the St. Lawrence.

A sandcastle competition is held there every year.

Off Sainte-Luce, in the St. Lawrence, lies the wreck of the Empress of Ireland.

On May 29, 1914, this ship, which sailed the regular route between Quebec City and Liverpool, England, was wrecked in the St. Lawrence estuary near Rimouski and sank in only 14 minutes, with 1,012 victims among the 1,477 people on board.

It is the worst shipwreck ever to occur in Canada and ranks among the greatest of the early 20th century, alongside the TITANIC and the LUSITANIA.

Among Sainte-Luce’s attractions, the Anse-aux-Coques promenade offers a different, often surprising panorama every day, depending on the tides and the winds.

Twelve kilometres from Sainte-Luce, one can visit the Pointe-au-Père maritime historic site and its Empress of Ireland museum, to discover the fascinating fate of the liner and the multisensory show "The Last Voyage", reliving the ship’s final day through a striking multimedia projection, and to tour the submarine ONONDAGA, an experience unique in Canada.

Forty kilometres west of Sainte-Luce, before reaching Rimouski, in the village of Le Bic, is the Mange-Grenouille, a charming inn of incomparable style, with a restaurant where the air of another era lingers and a refined, seasonal cuisine that puts local products in the spotlight.

This painting of one of the colourful ancestral houses of Sainte-Luce-sur-Mer is also one of my SIGNATURE canvases, with its naphthol red fire hydrant, a light, warm red that brightens my paintings.

All the photographs of my paintings shown at this Art Show Saint-Honoré exhibition were taken and signed by professional photographer Réal Voghel of Saint-Hyacinthe.