The test of time: Canada’s only watchmaking school still ticking after 80 years

Canada’s only watchmaking school probably isn’t what you’d expect.

For one thing, the École national d’horlogerie is located on the third floor of an elementary school in Trois-Rivières – a city of about 140,000 people, halfway between Montreal and Quebec City.

And, despite an entire wall covered in cuckoo clocks, a half-dozen grandfather clocks standing side by side, cabinets full of watches, and mantel and wall clocks taking up entire shelving units, the space is surprisingly quiet.

Benoit Mercier says the near-silence is necessary.

“It requires a lot of patience and peace of mind to work with so many tiny pieces,” said Mercier, one of two full-time teachers at the school.

“We’re lucky, we have the whole floor to ourselves.”

Mercier says the school was founded 80 years ago, after the Second World War, with the purpose of helping veterans learn a new skill to help them reintegrate into society. But he says the goal today is much different. 

“We try to teach watchmaking from the basics to be professional on the market,” he said.

There are 20 full-time students enrolled — the maximum capacity — and 11 potential students are on a waiting list to get in. 

And while Mercier says the focus is on jewelry making, the skills students acquire like high dexterity, attention to detail and patience are highly specialized and favour a wide array of job opportunities.

The space is made up of several classrooms, each serving their own unique purpose — from working with gases in order to create extremely hot flames to soldering metal parts.

In one of the larger, brighter rooms, student Emma Boudet has finished putting together an intricate-looking cuckoo clock.  

But the 23-year-old says it was a frustrating task because of its complexity and fragility. 

“They look pretty on the wall,” she said with a chuckle, “but that is the last one I will do in all my life.”

Originally from France, Boudet says she left her job in a lab in the food industry to study at the watchmaking school, and she hopes to eventually find employment at a high-end jewelry and watch retailer in Montreal.

Mercier says companies like TAG Heuer, Rolex and Birks reach out to the school looking for future employees. 

Farther down the hall, the music of Tchaikovsky sounds from a Bluetooth speaker set up on Louis-Philippe Grondin’s desk.

He’s scrutinizing an automatic wristwatch through a magnifying glass attached to his head.

“There are things inside it that are paper thin, so every breeze of air is too much,” he said. “I try to work [with] the windows closed, and I try to hold my breath to do certain things.”

Grondin says he’s three-quarters of the way through his program, and he’s cleaning, oiling and reassembling a case of 10 watches as part of a final exam.

The 46-year-old former interior designer says he wanted to switch careers and find something that better aligned with his values.

“Sometimes the materials we used would be good for a lifetime, but in five to seven years, it would all be going into the trash can because it was out of fashion, and I wasn’t at ease with that,” he said.

Grondin says that doesn’t happen with watchmaking — a point he makes daily by wearing an 87-year-old watch on his wrist. 

“It’s more meaningful, I think, to maintain something.”

Grondin says he plans to work for himself once he graduates, designing and creating his own jewelry and watches.

Behind a locked door in a windowless room, hundreds of small drawers line the space. Each one is filled with dozens of tiny bottles containing even more miniscule components. 

“This is where we keep all of our pieces, all of our tools,” Mercier explained.

Every bottle is marked with handwritten letters and numbers. Mercier says it’s a universal system that each student must learn so they can recognize the calibre of each piece. 

If working with such miniscule pieces is difficult, the idea of moving them is nearly inconceivable. But that’s something Quebec’s Education Ministry says needs to happen.

Mercier says the school got notice a few months ago that it will have to move.

“The primary school needs more space, and the fact that we occupy an entire floor all by ourselves is kind of a problem,” he said.

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Mercier says the school will remain in Trois-Rivières, but when asked how the millions of very organized tiny pieces will be transported, he sighs and shakes his head.

“I don’t know, I don’t think it’s going to be up to me,” he said.

While the timeline of the move is unclear, the discussions involve respecting needs in order to keep teaching once it’s complete.

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