Until midnight the day before his meeting with La Presse, the 81-year-old cleaned his five reproductions of carousels on display in his small apartment in a private residence for the elderly where he lives in Outremont. One of them is easily recognizable: the Galopant de La Ronde.
“You can’t say it’s not beautiful!” says Charles Alleyn with a smile on his face when asked where his particular interest in carousels comes from.
From his bed, the man who has mobility problems only has to weigh on a remote control to turn the carousel, turn on its lights and play the music. “A carousel is nonsense. It’s beautiful to look at, but it’s boring to get on with,” laughs Charles Alleyn.
When Charles Alleyn finally decided to build a reproduction of the La Ronde carousel in 1973, it was not his first time.
The young Charles first had fun with Revell’s glue-on cars, before venturing into his first “real” reproduction at the age of 15.
It took him three years to build a boat the size of his kitchen table. The miniatures of industrial designer Charles Alleyn then increased in complexity.
For 50 years, he has worked to meticulously copy every detail of Le Galopant. Although he subsequently reproduced other carousels from all over the world, the retiree continues to perfect the work like the La Ronde merry-go-round. “I’ll never finish it,” he asserts.
But without the blueprints, how do you go about replicating it? La Ronde provided him with only one essential piece of information: the measurement of the diameter. The ingenious man took pictures of his own sons, whose height he knew (Patrick was 3 feet tall at 3 years old!), in order to measure the proportions of the carousel. He also uses photography for each sculpture and each fresco.
The sculptures, in balsa wood, were made using a hot iron. Some moldings are made of agar-agar and others of fiberglass. The floor is made up of coffee-brewing sticks, which look like old wooden planks.
Before he met his girlfriend, Nicole Renaud, in the 1990s, Charles Alleyn’s carousels were dull. But she, who is a watercolourist, encouraged him to pursue his art and let go of his desire for accuracy. Mr. Alleyn may not be a great painter; the works that decorate the reproduction are not the same as on the “real”, but they are all of his own. The colors of the carousel, which have changed a lot over the years, are those of 1973.
“I don’t have any natural talent,” the retiree says humbly. But according to his son James Alleyn, his father doesn’t realize the magnitude of his accomplishments: “He should be proud. »
On June 7, La Ronde announced that Le Galopant would be out of service all summer. Arriving in Montreal for Expo 67, the ride was restored in 2007 for approximately $1 million. Alas, the carousel, with its hand-carved wooden horses, may well be permanently shut down.
Charles Alleyn would like the Galopant to be installed in a place where it can be admired and where it is possible to take care of it.
The 81-year-old, a real enthusiast, names several examples where carousels have been preserved with more resources, such as the Shelburne Museum, in Burlington, in the United States. “The City should buy it,” the retired industrial designer believes.
Today, Charles Alleyn teaches his son the details of the construction of his miniatures. As the La Ronde carousel is a piece of Montreal heritage, its reproduction “is a part of our family history”, breathes James Alleyn.
