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Other Wallack’s stores that have closed in Orleans, Gatineau and in the Glebe will not reopen. Nor will the 20,000-square foot, 15-employee framing warehouse that was in the City Centre for several decades before it closed last year. “We were losing $300,000 or $400,000 a year,” John Wallack said of the warehouse, which did work for many smaller framing shops and galleries in the city.

The creditors who will vie for portions of the former company’s meagre assets include the Canada Revenue Agency, which bankruptcy documents say is owned $400,000. John Wallack believes the figure will be lower once an audit is completed. He says that the claim will be his “personal” liability.

Also listed as creditors are some well-known artists, including Ottawa’s Jennifer Dickson ($5,000) and Duncan de Kergommeaux ($4,600), British Columbia artist David Alexander ($10,600) and the estate of the late Montreal artist David Sorensen ($14,700).

Dickson, who is among Ottawa’s most senior and most-esteemed artists, said Tuesday that she’s been trying to get paid for works sold by the gallery in 2014, “but there’s always been areason why they can’t pay me.” She noted that John Wallack has been very good to her during her 45-year relationship with the gallery, but during the bankruptcy, she said, “I don’t like the way that artists have been treated.”

John Wallack said that Dickson owes the gallery money for framing, which she later said hadn’t been paid because the gallery had not yet paid her for artworks that had been sold. The damage to that relationship is so deep that, Dickson said, “I’m going over to the gallery to terminate my relationship with them.”