-by Rebecca Silver Slayter
Twenty-six years ago, when Michel Williatte-Battet was a young man, he drove from Montreal to Nova Scotia in an old Toyota pickup. “I decided that I was just going to travel along the coast line,” the Montreal native remembers. “I didn’t know that Cape Breton even existed.”
He found himself in St-Joseph-du-Moine, on a beautiful, bright day, staring at a for-sale sign in front of a store called the Treasure Chest. “I had always wanted to live next to the ocean,” he says. “It was a dream.” He went inside to speak to the owner.
“She told me how much it was, which was basically about how much I could afford, and she told me to take a walk out back, up the hill. I saw the view and that was it. And I just did it. I just said, ‘I’m doing it.’”
Michel left a deposit with the owners and returned to Montreal, where he found a job as an assistant archivist for Canadian Pacific. But he continued to make payments on the Cape Breton store, and it remained in his thoughts. A year passed, and the job wasn’t working out. The last thing Michel remembers his boss saying to him was, “You go live in your lighthouse.” And so he packed up his apartment, loaded his truck with all his belongings, and headed back to Cape Breton.
But returning to Cape Breton in fall, nothing looked quite the same as it had. The weather was cold and the trees were bare. He struggled to find the business he now owned, unable to remember how far it was from the causeway or exactly where it was located. Eventually he arrived, pulling into the driveway of his new home and business. That summer, he would open La Bella Mona Lisa gallery, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.
During Michel’s first winter in Cape Breton, he was forced to adjust quickly to country life. “I didn’t know if this place had a well, I didn’t even know the water situation. And of course there was no firewood and there was no stove in the kitchen, just an old cook stove.” He bought unseasoned firewood, and spent the winter lying in the damp cold and wondering what he’d done.
As the months unfolded, Michel made preparations to open a folk-art gallery. He met with artists and started buying a carving each time he received an unemployment cheque. But eventually he realized, “ This isn’t working. I’m not going to get enough stuff. And I’m looking at this stuff, and I’m thinking, like a lot of people think, I could do this.”
And so, Michel’s career as an artist began. When he opened his gallery that summer, he sold the works he’d bought as well as paintings and carvings he’d done himself. And over time, things slowly got easier. Five years later, a visiting friend introduced Michel to a young Ontario art student named Jennifer. They’ve been married 15 years this July. “This story’s really about the two of us,” says Michel. “You can’t do anything on your own. You need support. Jennifer’s been a great support. I couldn’t have done it without her. We did it together basically.”
In the years that followed, Jennifer gave birth to a daughter, Mathilde, and a son, Félix, while the gallery shifted its focus from folk art to crafts. The beautiful, airy gallery has become a fixture on the Cabot Trail, beloved by tourists and residents alike. Nestled into a hill, just after Cap le Moine offers one last glimpse of the sea, La Bella Mona Lisa is the kind of place where you can always find that perfect gift or a souvenir unlike anything else. Featuring an eclectic collection of Nova Scotia-made handcrafts, from jewellery to hand-turned wooden bowls, the gallery also contains a one-room display of original paintings by Michel, with smaller works and prints lining the walls outside. “I never stopped making my stuff,” he says. “I always kept at it. Because I don’t think I would have done this if I was just buying and selling.”
Michel’s vivid paintings of country scenes often include cows in strange predicaments, floating past the moon or perched on the head of a giant businessman, their impassive cow expressions serenely taking in what’s happening to them. There’s a surreal element to many of his portraits too, some of which include moving parts and other innovations, like eyes that look anxiously back and forth when a lever is pulled, or foreheads that are opened to reveal the thoughts hidden inside, such as a country scene.
Though there have been challenges and hardships over the years since he drove that old Toyota pickup truck to Cape Breton, Michel has no regrets. “Je ne regrette rien,” he sings and smiles. He spoke recently with someone who mentioned the hard winters in Cape Breton, “And I went, ‘Yeah, living here is . . . not character-building, because my character has been built already, but it’s character sustaining.’ . . . I have to say that this place has brought out the best in me.”
Thinking back over the years, Michel grows emotional. “Sometimes I think if I had put what I put into this place somewhere else, I’d be a millionaire.” Wiping tears from his eyes, he continues, “But I’m so rich in other ways. Money could never buy me what this place has given me . . . I’ve got a great family, I met Jennifer, I’ve got great kids . . . and I’ve spent lots of time with my kids, and I don’t think I could have done that somewhere else . . . This place sort of saved me in a way, you know?”
While the reality of his dream of a life by the sea has been romantic, it has also been hard. “But it’s moments,” he says. “In glimpses, you feel so happy, content. They don’t come all the time, and sometimes they surprise you, and then you just feel, all this is for something.”
Gallery La Bella Mona Lisa is open seven days a week from June until Thanksgiving, and can be found at 12225 Cabot Trail, in St-Joseph-du-Moine.
