Patience and a DIY spirit are true virtues in Laval riverfront home

Unless it’s a proverbial swamp somewhere in Florida, buying land is always a good deal. For as Mark Twain said: “They’re not making it anymore.”
That is what one man (who preferred to remain anonymous for this article) had in mind when, at the end of his university studies in 1994, he bought a piece of land in Laval.
Bordered on one side by Rivière-des-Mille-Îles and a conservation area on the other, on which research scientists were converting a me