The Tourny Fountain

Forged in the 1850s, the Tourny Fountain spent a hundred years gracing an elegant promenade in Bordeaux, France. In 1960, however, it was considered no longer appropriate for the site it occupied. And so the fountain was decommissioned and subsequently dismantled. Forty-some years later, Québec patron Peter Simons found the collection of cast iron pieces languishing in a suburban Paris flea market and recognized it as the gift he had been looking for. He bought the fountain, paid to have it shipped across the Atlantic, and offered it to the city of Québec for its 400th birthday.

Since then, the Tourny Fountain has been the centerpiece of the roundabout in front of Quebec City’s Parliament Building. It always looks to me as if it was built for exactly that spot. Bordeaux will not get it back. Not a bad find for a flea market…