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A car museum proposed by one of the bidders for LeBreton Flats would be built around a private auto collection with a troubling history and sponsored by car companies eager for a presence near Parliament Hill.

The World Auto Experience, part of the LeBreton proposal from the group that includes Gatineau developer Devcore and Montreal billionaires André Desmarais and Guy Laliberté, is one of the oddest ideas for the Flats. Canada has had a generations-long love affair with the automobile, but Ottawa has never been a car town, particularly. We have an auto show, and QNX in Kanata makes software for cars. But we don’t have a manufacturing plant or big races or anything.

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Turns out Jean-Pierre Poulin, the boss at Devcore and a leading figure in the DCDLS bid, is friends with the Demers family of Thetford Mines, the unlikely owners of one of the world’s largest car collections.

“One of my friends, he’s in Quebec City, in Thetford Mines, and his grandfather started collecting cars 75 years ago. He has one of the most — he has the largest car collection in North America. He’s got over 500 cars and it’s sitting in Thetford Mines in four warehouses and you have to see it. It’s unbelievable,” Poulin said in a visit to the Citizen to promote the DCDLS bid.