Pete Lachance welcomes you to the hardware section of the Dép CPL Lachance, Épicerie, Quincaillerie.

“I was 22 years old when I came home from the hospital,” he said, “and my mom took me in.”
That was not the beginning of the story for the famous grocery-hardware store in Sawyerville, but it was a devastating turning point for Pete Lachance, its present owner along with his wife Lorraine Gagnon and his son Cédrick Lachance.
It was 1976. He was playing broom-ball in East Angus. “I heard the coach say, ‘You, Lachance, when you go back on the ice, you’re going to go off in a stretcher.’ Then this guy broke my neck with his stick. He hit just the right spot. Then I was lying on the ice, and I couldn’t move my arms or legs.”
That’s how his life began in a wheelchair. “I didn’t try to make you walk, I tried to save you,” the doctor told him.
Before then, Lachance was into sports; he played hockey and broom-ball, and he worked hard. The second of five boys, he was born in Sherbrooke and grew up in Sawyerville. His mother came from Newfoundland. He went to the French school in Sawyerville, then Cookshire, then East Angus, and worked in his uncle’s mill. A photo shows him in front of a hay wagon, standing tall, strong and handsome.
“Maybe when I was 20 years old, maybe I was a little bit wild, like any normal kid, but I loved sports.”
After the accident, he got back into sports, but now he was mentoring a new generation. He raised funds, he bought ice cream, he coached hockey and baseball. Anything for the kids.
“There’s nothing I didn’t do after that,” he laughed. “I can’t run, but I can move people around.”
He is a consummate entrepreneur. Two years after his accident, he married Lorraine Gagnon, and together they opened a store in 1979, Accommodations Sawyerville, opposite the Hotel. He put on beach parties for crowds of 500 people, with tons of sand transported to a sugar bush, a pool, music and all kinds of games. He organized dart tournaments, card tournaments, skidoo rallies, and four-wheeler races. He had a bar, a motel, a dance hall, Christmas tree plantation, and a bowling alley. He recently finished a 12-year stint as the Cookshire-Eaton District 5 councillor.
Pete and his son Cédrick were in the Sawyerville bowling alley when they saw the J.A. Lowry store across the street was up for sale.
The store’s story was as tumultuous as Pete’s. Edgar Austin Kingsley “purchased [the] business of J.R. Cunningham, general merchant, Sawyerville, 1893,” reported Morrill and Pierce in their 1917 book, Men of Today in the Eastern Townships. But disaster struck Kingsley’s store in September 1923, when a fire destroyed much of the building. The main part of the store was saved by the quick action of the Sawyerville firefighters, said history buff Danny Bousquet, and by the spring of 1924, it was back in business. An ad for ladies’ hats proves that.
In December 1926, James A. Lowery [Lowry] took it over, said Bousquet. Selling both groceries and hardware supplies, for many decades it was known as J.A. Lowry’s general store even after it passed into other hands: Lincoln and Mamie Matthews, then Charles Charpentier, and then Marcel Charpentier.
Finally, 13 years ago the store got a new hardware section, extensive renovations, and a new name: Dép CPL Lachance, Épicerie, Quincaillerie. Like Pete’s story, the store’s is one of resilience.
“We have six employees. We do our best. I know prices are a bit higher, but we’re a little store. We can’t compete with big chains. But we’ll save your time and gas. Sawyerville needs us. People come in and they’re so happy, it’s incredible. That’s what’s so fun. It’s not about getting rich. I’m happy to serve.”
The Lachance store offers local groceries as much as possible, Pete said. Meat from the Boucherie Éric Vachon of Saint-Isidore-de-Clifton, for example. Vegetables from Coaticook and St-Isidore.
People come from beyond Sawyerville: St-Malo, St-Mathias, and Chartierville. “Some come everyday,” said Lachance. “What’s good about the store is that it’s friendly and it’s family. We know everybody. They’re family, not just a number.”