What is left of it

The land

In the spring of 2015, the 104-acre land, with the house and all the buildings, is still for sale, at $240,000. The collective has "a great file put together for the rezoning of the place and the arguments needed to convince the authorities of our good will", and the house is even for rent to whoever is interested. Nobody takes up the torch.

Five years later, on September 25, 2020, Christian learns the rest from the buyer's own mouth: "ALL the trees he cut on the land, the ones that served us as labyrinths, camping, cabins, meditations of every kind, dancing, making love, rediscovering the inner child, contemplations and more… well, none of them were any good for lumber! So they were sent back or burned. So the guy cut down the whole beautiful paradise it was, only to be told the wood is scrap. Today you should see the place, the house has become nothing less than a chicken coop."

The spruce plantations the Agorians had planned to saw themselves to build with, the trails, the treehouses: nothing left.

The project

As early as June 2015, the page announces that "L'Agora (the project) is now looking for a new place to establish itself, so if you know of a piece of land with a water stream whose owner would appreciate sharing the idea of a wonderful concept in nature with treehouses, please do not hesitate to tell us!" Ten acres and up, then twenty or thirty "with lots of spruce", in 2019: "It's possible that the Agora project starts up again!"

In the meantime, Christian puts his tools at the service of the other festivals of the scene (Éclipse, Timeless), adds in 2018 "many photos of what this place looked like before, during and after, because there was a lack of photos of past experiences on this magical spot", and in 2019 finds the DV tapes of Guindonville, the other fight, sixteen years earlier: the film is edited and shared on the page.

In 2021, "in these uncertain times and with this sword of Damocles over our heads", he invites his friends to look again at the photos of L'AgorA: "I dare hope to bring a smile of hope, a glimmer in your hearts with this flashback where everything came out of the imagination and was woven into the forest for events outside the system." In 2023, he reposts the 2013 plan and looks for hands to build a sauna, 8 by 8 by 8 feet, by a river, "also a place of meditation, contemplation, rest and disconnection". The projects are starting again, he says. He wishes a happy 2026 "to the rebels and to those who seek the truth at any cost".

This site

The archive you are reading was assembled in 2026 from what survived on a hard drive: the ledonjon.ca and ag0ra.org websites made with iWeb, the brochure, the plans, some 2,600 files of photos and videos, and L'AgorA's Facebook page, whose 426 posts were read one by one for the timeline. What is still missing: the page's complete albums, the accounts of the Agorians who lived there, and the memories of those who passed through for a night or a season. They have their place here. To add something, write to [email protected].

Christian sums up the place, with hindsight, as a sanctuary for people wounded by their eccentric, out-of-the-ordinary choice of life. That may be the best definition anyone will ever give of it: a place that existed for four and a half years, where "everything came out of the imagination and was woven into the forest", and that left in those who passed through something the saw could not cut.