Martin C. Barry
With two Quebec cabinet ministers and three generations of the Nadon family on hand to mark the Riviera Residence’s sixty years of dedication to golden agers, guests at an anniversary celebration optimistically inaugurated the seventh decade by releasing monarch butterflies.
Quebec Finance Minister Eric Girard, Senior Citizens Minister Marguerite Blais, Laval mayor Marc Demers, Souvenir-Labelle city councillor Sandra El-Helou, Chomedey MNA Guy Ouellette and former Laval-des-Rapides MNA Serge Ménard were among the 60 guests who attended the joyful event on Aug. 30.
A year of events
The gathering was the first of four events the Riviera’s administration will be holding with employees, residents and families over the next year to commemorate the important milestone.
The Riviera Residence on Notre Dame Blvd. in Chomedey is one of a five seniors’ residences that have been opened beginning in 1959 by the Nadon family. André and Marilyn Nadon, who are today the oldest members of the clan, were followed by their children who now constitute a third generation of the Nadon family to be involved.
In the founders’ footsteps
Finance Minister Girard, who is also Minister Responsible for the Laval Region, said the Riviera Residence’s owners, Perry and Jean Nadon, were following in the footsteps of the founders, while promoting constant and respectful communications between residents, their families, employees and managers, in order to create a warm and loving atmosphere.
“It is truly a gift for the people of Laval to have you with us,” Mayor Marc Demers said of the Riviera Residence’s longtime presence in Laval. “It is a source of pride for a community to have organizations like yours that care for people. As I have often said, the quality of a community can be recognized by the way it takes care of its most vulnerable people. And in that sense you are the example to follow.”
Premier sends a letter
Premier François Legault sent a letter which was read out, in which he pointed out that in 2003 when he was Minister of Health and Social Services with the Parti Québécois government, he had issued the necessary authorizations for an expansion at the Riviera Residence.
Among other things, the Riviera Residence was the first long-term health care facility (CHSLD) in Canada to become accredited in 2009 in accordance with the BOMA BEST standard for environmental sustainability.
