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Les Affûtés opens in Toronto!

We often talk about our mission, which is to empower as many people as possible in their daily lives.

And for some time now we’ve been seeing people from Toronto coming to Montreal to take several workshops in a row over a weekend, because they can’t find an equivalent locally.

Bringing manual autonomy to Toronto

This inspired us to bring our workshops and tools to Toronto. By taking the time to visit the city several times, we quickly realised that, when all is said and done, the people of Toronto and Montreal are very similar. The same lifestyle, balancing urban pleasures with environmental responsibility, the same taste for cycling and good food, the same individual desire to do more for our planet and to feel capable of carrying out all our projects on our own.

Protecting the structure of Montréal

Nevertheless, we’ve always said that our aim at Les Affûtés is to create a solid, sustainable project that will be with Montrealers for a long time to come, and that won’t disappear at the first sign of trouble.

To reconcile these two desires (to spread our mission while protecting what already exists), we’re doing what we did when Les Affûtés was first launched, and then when the kitchen and garage were created: we’re starting slowly, by subletting spaces for our first workshops, to humbly test and adapt what we’re doing to Toronto’s culture.

The perfect place to start

And we’ve found the perfect place to do just that. Toronto has a place dedicated to social innovation and positive impact projects, the Center for Social Innovation. It’s a project that’s over 20 years old, and houses hundreds of social and environmental projects in 2 beautiful buildings. And they have the perfect space to start giving our first workshops. What better solution than to start spreading our workshops in a community that corresponds so closely to our values?

After looking around for a few weeks, thanks to Gilles who set up the cooking workshops at Les Affûtés and has now moved to Toronto for the project, we quickly decided on this option to run the first workshops.

The next steps

We still have thousands of things to do and communicate, but the project is coming to life, and we’re really excited to see a sister project to the one in Montreal emerge, with its own identity, its own Sharpeners and its own tone.

Would you like to help us bring this project to life? All you have to do is share the first workshops and our social networks with your friends in Toronto. It will help us enormously to spread the word about the project!

And we’ll be bringing you lots more news about this new project soon!

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Opening of the Affûtés Garage, in Parc-Ex

And here we go with a new project, the Garage!

We’ve been wanting to do some welding for a while. You ask us. But metal and wood don’t mix. And we didn’t have a welder in our happy team of Sharpeners. So we waited, waiting for the right time, the right person and the right place.

And so did the mechanics and bodywork. We tried to organise it outside our premises, but this proved complicated (insurance, type of premises, subletting, etc.). And we had the same problem of not having many people with expertise in these areas.

 

But things have changed in recent months. Firstly with the arrival of Morgane, a mechanic by training, who has started to give workshops and courses on vans, and knows everything about mechanics. And then with the arrival of Bruno, a young retiree with a great experience in welding, who offered to help us build the welding activity together.

When you have such a great team around the table, it makes you want to do things, so we looked for a place to test these new manual subjects! And we quickly found a place, perfectly adapted and available for 2 to 3 years, to test these new manual worlds.

The place is located at 7211 Alexandra Street, at the intersection of Jean-Talon and Alexandra, near the Parc and Castelnau metro stations.

The first workshops are scheduled to start on August 29th! You’ll find them here: https://www.les-affutes.ca/en/workshops/garage/

 

Finally, a word to thank you: all this is possible thanks to you. Thanks to your ideas, because you have given us your desires in these new fields. Thanks to your presence, pandemic or not, inflation or not, heat stroke or not. You are there, the Affûtés live thanks to you, and we can thus dare new ideas like this garage. Long live you, sharp friends!

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7 steps to a great woodworking project

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Our policy to reschedule or cancel

Exchange

At Les Affûtés, you can exchange at no charge, up to 48 hours before the workshop starts, to register for a later date, or to register for another workshop.
We then create a credit, valid on any future workshop or activity.

Later than 48 hours before the workshop starts, the sale is final, and you cannot exchange anymore.

We have set this 48-hour limit because we unfortunately cannot find a replacement within 48 hours, and the trainers have already bought all the materials for those who have registered by that time.

Cancellation

You can cancel your participation in a workshop up to 48 hours before the workshop starts and get reimbursed.
The only charge is the credit card payment fee (3%) which is unfortunately kept by Visa and Mastercard.

Later than 48 hours before the workshop starts, the sale is final, and you cannot cancel anymore.

If you are less than 48 hours away from a workshop, the best solution to avoid losing your registration is to offer your place to someone close to you.

Gift cards

Gift cards (and credit codes created after an exchange) do not have a validity date, but cannot be exchanged or refunded. However, like workshop registrations, they can be passed on to a loved one!

Postponement of a workshop

Unfortunately, we sometimes have to postpone or cancel a workshop (ill teacher, insufficient number of participants, power failure…). We always try to give as much notice as possible, and in these cases it is of course possible to get a credit or a full refund, depending on your preference.

Delay

Unfortunately, many safety instructions are given at the beginning of the workshop. We can’t accept a late arrival, for security reasons, and the registration is then lost. So run fast :).

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