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Photo by Jacquie Miller / -

Chelsey Ouellette, 27, remembers begging her dad to take her by the Marier house when she was a kid growing up a block away. “I remember just being amazed.”

The decorations would change depending on the season, she said. “At Easter, they’d bring out the bunnies.” In the summer, the fish tanks that acted as display cases would sometimes contain live fish. “To this day, I’ve never seen something like that.”

Ouellette enjoyed bringing her own children to see the display every Christmas. She recently moved back into the neighbourhood after a couple of years away, but her sons, now 9 and 7, remembered the Christmas house.

“Every time we walk by now, it’s, ‘Where are all the lights? Where are all the decorations?’

“It was kind of sad; it’s been there for so long.”

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The Robitailles moved into the house in the 1970s, said Boudreault. The decorating began soon after. “He started to put up a couple of ornaments, then all of a sudden he went berserk,” Boudreault says fondly. “I mean, reindeer with Easter rabbits?”

Boudreault sometimes wondered why the fire department didn’t shut the display down as fire hazard — “he had wiring everywhere” — and some considered the house an eyesore. “Pink pigs and flamingos, you know? He was quite a character.”

Gilles was a generous man who would offer help to neighbours who needed it, said Boudreault. “To be honest, I loved the guy.”

Raul Ramos, who was passing by on the street recently, says he’s enjoyed the Marier house display for 30 years. It was a big surprise when December rolled round and it didn’t materialize, he said. “It was beautiful. It’s very sad.”