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"Yvon LeBlanc, Architect, Fortress of Louisbourg" [interview] Cape Breton's Magazine, no. 34 (August, 1983), pp. 49-60

After 12 years here, I'm still enthused by the view of the thing. Every morning when I come to work, seeing it under different light, it's still quite taking. You know, when there's fog, when you just see it through--beautiful sunlight and all that-oh, it's a dilly. And I was lucky. I came here for the last part of my career. Because for other people, younger ones, coming here with a young family, needing social life and all that--oh, it's awfully hard. (To live in Louisbourg?) Oh, yes. It is out of the way. And especially French-speaking ones. That is why we never could get French-speaking people here, as much as we would have needed. Because it is a fringe region to people from inland.

(Would people from the 18th century, living here, have felt as cut off?) Oh, they must have. The few comments we have are usually bad. They were cut off, far away. Although they had quite a lot going on here, you know -- dances and gambling and dinners and things like that. Especially during carnival time, which was from the beginning of the year up to Lent. They had lots of dances and balls and dinners and meetings -- especially in the second occupation (1749-1758). In the first one (1713-1745), we don't have as much information on those activities. We wish we had more-letters, more personal things.

We know that they had certain celebrations. The Feast of St. Louis, for instance, 25th of August. In the first period there's a description of a celebration they had on the occasion when the king, who had been sick, got well. And there was some celebration at the birth of the dauphin, the king's first son. Because King Louis got several girls all in a row. Then finally, he got a son in 1729, and that was the future king. So they had some celebrations. (And your studies for the architecture of Louisbourg, they include even this?) It's the people. That's the part which was interesting to me here: working for people, trying to imagine people who have been dead for 250 years. In other words, building for clients who have long been dead. In order to try to make up my mind about how their house was.

This was one of our latest buildings. It's called the de la Plagne house. He was the nephew of one of the officers here, de Pensens, who owned this land. And maybe it was his uncle who built it, we're not sure. We found the foundations. Very soon after it was built, there was a lawsuit. A soldier came and stole something from it, and he went in front of the court. It's a very sad kind of story. Most of our stories are rather sad. This one was a young soldier who was on guard one night, not long after the house had been built. And he came out for --- as he calls it --- his necessities. And he was right at the corner of that fence we see here today. There was a latrine there, we think; we're not absolutely sure it was still there at that time. Anyway, he was there doing his thing, and he saw this house; and he remembered that he had worked here earlier as a servant, and he knew they were fairly rich. This all comes out at the interrogation.

He climbs over the gate on the other side, comes inside, lifts one of the window panes, puts his hand inside, unhooks and goes in. And he steals some money and a pair of white gloves. The next morning, the Negro slave, the servant in this house, came down and saw the pane hanging out. That's how the theft was found out. And he was reported and he was caught. He was in a tavern. He wasn't a very bright fellow. I think he was a very young man, an orphan, about 20 years old.

Then, of course, the outcome of the story is very sad. There's a first account. And then there was another account of it, which says this: that after he went through the first trial, he was sentenced, and some people thought the sentence was not hard enough--so the whole thing started again. All through the whole interrogation and everything. And in the course of one of the interrogations, a very touching scene happened. The judge was making a review of the information, of the testimonies, and he interrogated Mrs. de la Plagne. And he asked her if she had anything to add to her testimony of before. She said something like, "Yes. On a certain date, I was in front of my house, and a young soldier went by with guards. He broke away. He came and threw himself on his knees in front of me, and said he would never do it again -- asking me to pardon him." And then, that second time, he was hanged. So, we have the whole series of questions and answers. We could put that on the stage as it is and make a beautiful play out of it. A touching story.

As far as the building itself (the de la Plagne house), we had, when it was sold, mention of this: it was boarded inside and out. It was a wood frame building, garnished, as they call it, with stone and brick. In other words, stone and brick between the frame, inside the wall. We presume it's that. That's all we can do. Then boarded inside and out. That is why, on the inside, where we see one of the walls, we filled the bottom part with stone and the upper part with brick -- presuming when they said with stone and brick, maybe they went one floor stone and the other floor brick. And then we sort of deduced things from that, assuming that that was it. For instance, in the archeological work, we had found in the foundation some traces of the wood plate on top of the foundation-not very very strong, but some trace. It seemed to be about 12 inches thick, 12 pouces -- which was the old French -- a pouce is about 1/16th more than our inch. So from that, we deduced that probably the ground floor framework of the wall was 12 pouces by 12 pouces, as we knew some others were, by documentation. And that's a good thickness for stone. And at the upper part--it often happened that the upper floors of buildings were thinner, making that, say, 8 inches or so--and so we filled that with brick. So it's a lot of detective work, really.

We also know that the glass of the window panes was held in with points, and then on the outside there were strips of blue paper. In the 1720s, there's an account in France, saying there's this new thing, this putty, that you put on the outside of the window -- it stops the drafts from coming in. But they say that now, since that hardens very soon, you can't take the panes off to clean them. In other words, when they had paper around them, they took each pane out to clean them. Now we know that here at Louisbourg they had strips of paper also. Because this fellow, when he went into the house, he lifted one of the panes, he put his arm in. And the next morning, the slave saw the pane hanging out. Therefore, this house, built in about 1740, had the paper holding the glass in. But we put putty today, because we have to. We haven't found a proper paper and glue which would answer to some extent our present need for maintenance. So for the moment--and since we do know that they were starting to use putty here occasionally-we've taken the liberty for the moment to use some putty. Though some fine day, you may find little strips of glued-paper.

(But you really want to be that precise?) Oh, we're trying to be as precise as we can. We have to do things for modern needs, but we go out of our way to do it as close as possible as it was. Now, quite often we're not absolutely sure. As close as possible as we have reason to think it was. If we have to do something else, for some reason, we like to have it written down that we did it, but knowingly. Sometimes we have to guess. And that is why, when I first came here, my whole point was to try to sort of imbibe myself of everything I could find out about building anything of that time, so that when the time for guessing comes, well, I guess with that influencing my guess. That's the best we can do.

The boarding of the de la Plagne house-that's purely invention, but justified by this: the gate down at the bottom of the street, the Frédéric Gate, is built in wood -- we have a drawing of it. And it shows strips of wood like that, with the deep joint. These both were built about the same time. We know this house was planked, or boarded. And since we knew that they were fairly well-to-do--on and on like that -- we figured that, well, this house could very well have been boarded like the Frédéric Gate.

But we have no real first hand reason to think that.

Now, we're still mystified about what we're going to do with the stone part of the de la Plagne house. Because the foundations that were found are very, very clear, that this part was obviously an addition. We had to presume that it was there in 1745; we're not absolutely sure. We have a drawing -- a general view of the town, seen from outside -- where we see this building, what we think is this building. And this end here, the extended part of the building, is not very clear. So, oh, we hemmed and hawed a long time before building that part. There's a later drawing, 1758. It's a strangely interesting drawing; it's a sort of a bird's-eye view of the town, based on imagination, largely. And it's all sort of distorted. But it's amazing how you can recognize some of the buildings. And this building, we see it. We see the number of windows. But we don't see any difference in the wall surface. It was very, very small scale, you know, and it's a thing which the artist might not have noticed. But on the other hand, it could have meant that either the planking continued over the stone extension, or that the same paint would have been applied on the stone surface. The stones could have been given a coat of mortar, and then the whole thing painted the same colour as the boards. And that's what we may do, eventually. We-don't know yet.

That is why now, since I'm leaving this summer, I'm preparing a summary of all the buildings. I have to include a comment on each building, saying the things that now, by-hindsight, we could have done differently.

We worked in a team, a design team. There's a historian, an archeologist, a draftsman, and the architect, who's chairman of the team. And we gather all the information from those different aspects. And then we put all that together, see what we can deduce. And then I fill the holes by going into architectural background, how people lived at that time, secondary historical documents, archeology -- what different pieces might mean. It's a question of putting things together. And then, from what, we know of the individuals themselves. Now me, as an architect, I've always been people-oriented in architecture. so, I went as far as I could to get as much as I could about feeling about the people themselves.

The de Gannes house was one of the earlier buildings I worked on. And I don't think I worked in enough of that. I had riot imbibed enough of the people at that very early stage. That is why, now, I'm going to recommend that we change the interior batten doors, to put doors which have a bit better finish. In a house like this the doors probably were what we call the emboîture doors, that is, the doors which are flush. All sorts of little things haven't been solved yet. Or things that I'm getting solved now, after years. It takes a long time. As a matter of fact, it was only after about 4 years here, that I began to feel a little bit comfortable about guessing, that I could trust my imagination, that it would be sufficiently coloured by all that I had imbibed.

De Gannes was a captain of one of the companies here. He was born at Port Royal in Acadia, to a military family. But he's not an Acadian, as such. He was born there - but to us Acadians, there's a difference. He was born there; his father was in the military there; but he was not a settler, he was not an Acadian, not as the people who had settled down there. If you lived in England, even if you were born there, it makes you an English citizen as such - but it doesn't make you an Englishman. (I had heard that de Gannes was wealthy enough to build a house like de la Plagne. But because he was from Acadia, not France, and had experienced Maritime winters, he chose a smaller, more humble house -- but one easier to heat.) That's interesting. That comes from me. Because, as an Acadian, I'm trying like mad to find out what the Acadian houses were like. We have extremely little on Acadian houses. Now there is this: he was born in Acadia, but we don't know too much about his youth, whether he actually lived there. Because, at that late period -- this house was built in the 1740s -- he built with piquet. The piquet type building -- that is, with the vertical logs in the ground -- was a type of building which was built at the very first in Louisbourg, as a very quick way of building, a nearly temporary way of building. That's my opinion. Because, it's a very inefficient way of, building, logs in the ground. Although we are amazed how some of them lasted; one built in 1713 was still there in 1745. Still, it's quite astonishing that he, an officer, 30 years after the start, still built in that technique.

And we found the foundation, and we found the traces of the piquets in the ground. It's on account of his building here that way, that we wonder whether the Acadians did not build like that in Port Royal as well. We don't know how they built in Port Royal. In some of our other buildings, you'll see the piquet technique exposed. Here, during the archeological excavation, we found little bits of plaster in the foundation, so we presume that the interior was plastered, or partly. We don't really know. We tried both. We covered some with boards, and some with the plaster. And you'll notice we arranged the plaster to show slightly the form of the piquet underneath. But by far, the interiors seemed much, much more often boarded than plastered inside.

Building this modest little house in 1742, de Gannes must have gone through a very low time, a difficult time business-wise. Because he had owned three lots in town, on which one had a house from quite early, where he must have lived. He died in '52. And we know that in the early '40s, when he sold his lots, he was living on another of his lots. So therefore he had two houses. We know he sold those three lots in a fairly short period of time. We know he'd sold all his lots, so it's by that that we presume that he was living here. This house shows-on the first English plan in 1745. So it's by all that surmising that we figure he was here. What we really only know is that he died here. Because, when he died, it's definitely this house, by the inventory.

But why would he build such a house? His wife was from an engineer's family, de Catalogne. She died in 1750. Around that time, his daughter got married. She got a dowry of over 10,000 livres, of which he had paid 8,000 at his death. Therefore, he must have been quite well off. Oh yes, and when the family came back after the first siege, three of his daughters came back with him. They had interesting names. Whereas, usually you're Mary or Anne or something like that, they were Mademoiselle de la -- Something or Other -- Mademoiselle de So-and-So. That seems to mean that they had become attached to some property in France. They came with four servants. And they presumably settled down in this house. Three girls and a son, the father and mother, four servants who might have been living there. So therefore, they must have been fairly well off. But it's not a house which seems to indicate that kind of living. (Because of the use of piquet?) And small, and sort of temporary. The modesty of the building does not seem to add up. Whether it was a choice ... or influence, or perhaps he built it when he was in low means in the '40s. We just don't know. When he died, he had lots of stuff, but there were lots of old things. And it appeared that his family was not living with him -- there was no evidence of the family in his inventory. Although often they didn't inventory the things considered belonging to the children or others. So that is why it makes it difficult for us at times.

But to come back to the house. The Acadian thing -- that is partly me trying to explain why he did that. And maybe this is some little indication of how some houses at Port Royal might have been. It's very thin, our thing. And I'd like to find out. Now, when the archeological sources tell us, "a fireplace, centrally located in the house" -- that can really be two fireplaces. It is a normal thing to do in a small house, because you can heat two rooms with one mass. Now, I've heard it said how the engineer was stupid building his great big house, whereas this guy, de Gannes, up the hill there, he was much brighter -- he built a small house around a fireplace. That is the kind of myth we have to debunk, because we just don't know. It goes without saying that a house like this was more comfortable. Is that why de Gannes built it? Intentionally and all that? That's another story.

Now look at the roof -- this was re-roofed recently. That's one of our maintenance problems; things that don't last very long here. This had to be re-roofed after only 6 or 7 years. That's a problem with the climate. I would like to paint some of the roofs. (Does anything stop you?) Oh yes, yes, yes. See, we always hold our heads, and everything has to be thought out and justified with great care. And I would like to paint some of them because there is some mention of paint in our papers.

None connected with roofs, except there have been pieces of shingles found with traces of colour on them. But any mention of paint is just as often to complain that there was not enough of it. There were some paint shipments arriving, there's some yellow ochre and quite a lot of red ochre. But we know there was a lack of paint. So we are still hemming and hawing and discussing all that, because we have to reflect. We want to be very serious.

For the Duhaget house, we have no inventory, no nothing on that. We think there was some paint on it; there might have been some paint applied. That is, in one of the rental agreements, there is some hint -- but we're not sure, we're not sure. And we'd like to paint it, because our houses are deteriorating with the weather and all that -- the exposed wood. Oh, it's a big worry we have. And we'd like to paint them all. If we could get evidence. Although we have no definite evidence one way or the other, there are certainly indications that a lot were not painted. There's no doubt about that. So that is why we're a bit leery.

(The Duhaget is one for which you've not made decisions on the interior.) That's right. It's a bit bigger than others. We knew it had two floors. We knew that Duhaget was captain of a company. We have reason to believe that he may have been not too badly off. We also tend to believe that he built that rather big house, planning to have a family, but he didn't have any. And then, there was a later view of it which showed it fairly high. Therefore, it was quite a substantial house. We had a terrific controversy about the roof. When I arrived, they were just starting to work on it, whether it should be the gable roof or the hip roof. Some of the views were contradictory. Working by team, you see, and working by a sort of majority vote --it was not easy for an architect.

The placing of board: vertical on the upper part, horizontal on the lower part. We knew this house was framed - -we found traces of the posts and all that. And therefore I think we presumed it was boarded, or maybe we had some reason to believe it. was boarded. Now, as it was high, and a sense of the place, that it was a fairly large house, boards all the same width could have been very dull. Since we do see buildings with a different kind of finish on the ground floor part and on the upper part -- well, using wood both places, the only possible way to vary it was one horizontal and one vertical. So that's really how we came to that. It's purely to give it a bit of a shape, of a look, on account of the size. That's the only reason we did that. And it's quite plausible.

Most of the houses that I worked with, what we find -- the foundation and the location of the fireplace -- usually gives us a pretty good idea of how it was divided inside. But this one has me stumped. The way the fireplace is -- I haven't found an interior distribution of rooms which makes any sense. So it's got me stumped. It's the only one, really.

But when there's something definite, we of course try to stick to that. For the Lartigue house, for instance, we have a document which is dated 1753 -- probably done after that -- when Widow Lartigue was showing the state of her estate, the houses she owned, pieces of land here and there. So we followed this, but with great, great care. There are so many errors, we had to make up our mind on a lot of things. There's a note on it saying how the pieces of frame were 12 by 12 pouces pine wood, filled with rough stone between the posts put on a foundation of stone, about one pied and a half above the street. (One pied is 1.066 feet.) So we could observe very well.

But there are little mysteries again. Here we found the foundation. What was found did not completely reflect the drawing. For instance, there was very clear evidence of the floorboards and joists and things. But they were found below the top of the foundation wall. That would mean that you would have gone up two steps, and then gone down. That doesn't add up. We never figured that one out. Also, there was some paving in the house, at the back, some stone and brick paving at two spots, which were down at the level of the floor. We know that this building was used much later by the English as a stable or something else like that. And for the moment, we attributed those things to that second occupation, and had to leave the mystery. The mystery is still there. We're building for 1744, and all we can surmise is that the floor was at the level of the bottom of the door. That's the way we built it. But we haven't really solved the mysteries yet

The Lartigue house is interesting, because there were quite a lot of people living in there. And at first glance, they could have been quite squeezed in. But it worked out that they could have had about 18 people in that, without being all that overcrowded. The way it was laid out. (Do you mean, the way you chose to lay it out?) No, the way I found out that it probably was, by following the indications. I chose because I was being led -- that there were the two fireplace bases, and all that. And also, led by a typical way that houses were, at that time: houses of a certain size, where the rooms were in groups, in suites. You find that in elaborate townhouses, great big houses. Even in this rather small one, as far as townhouses go, you could have a group of three rooms on one side of the stair. And on the other side of the stair, you could have a group of three rooms. And often the rooms go one into the other. We had enough room to make a hallway; and they often had that. Because the sense of privacy at that time was a bit different from ours, since beds had curtains around -- a room was a room, not necessarily a bedroom. A living room could easily have a bed in it. Or a bedroom could also be for living in, on account of the curtains. So, people travelling through a room was not that unheard of. And in this house, it would reflect that quite easily. Although, we knew something about the house: we found the foundation and we had the elevation (a drawing of the face of the house). That's all we had. And the date that he died. And the number of his family, including a daughter who had married. As part of the dowry or wedding arrangement, we knew Lartigue was going to lodge them for a period of time. And with them in there, with a couple of children -- I think there were some servants -- they could have fitted there quite easily, not more than two per room. Some of the rooms were smallish. And still leaving a big general area where they could have dined, where the stair came down--leaving a largish room for him to conduct his business as a judge.

(Do you ever have these people come to you in any way?) I dearly wish that they would! Oh, I dream of that! It's not that I dream of them as such -- no, I haven't dreamt of them. But I find myself speaking in the present sometimes, of that time. People have a good laugh at me, that I speak of them as present, or speak of "us."

For instance, about the Royal Battery out there. It's a very sad story about that, how it never was used. Because at the first siege, they were in the process of doing some repairs on it, and they felt they could not defend it. It had some weaknesses; there were some hills around. But it had been made to shoot at the entrance to the harbour, to protect the harbour. So anyway, they decided to abandon it, when the English were coming. (Because they came by land.) Yes. That is a very sore point to me, because the engineer, Verrier (here from 1724 to 1745), he's really my predecessor here.

When they decided that they could not defend the Royal Battery, and decided to give it up, they discussed the possibility of blowing it up completely. It was Verrier, the engineer, who was instrumental in stopping that decision, making the decision that they should spike the cannon to stop them from being fired. And then withdraw all the ammunition. Now, that was decided. Some people have looked very crossly at Verrier for doing that, that he did that because he was very proud of his Royal Battery, he didn't want to see it destroyed. Well, I think that's not so at all. I think he was hoping that it could be protected, and that they could get it back after and still use it. But they got panic stricken, and they didn't properly spike the cannon. So that a couple of days after, the English were shooting at us with our own cannon and balls. And look, I find myself saying, "They were shooting at us." Which makes people laugh.

We've all got our own people that we prefer or like, that we get more involved with. And Verrier, he was a sort of dullish kind of-person. But he's accused of all sorts of things, and I feel bound to try to put things straight. They accuse him of wasting money on building the big gates, monumental gates. They say, if he had been working at his fortification rather than at that, it might have been better. But what I tried to make them realize, it ain't necessarily so. Because at that time, in the times of kings, the monumental entrances to a town were extremely important. They express the prestige of the king. And in architecture and in the mores of the time, that part was a functional thing. These gates are not embellishments. They are part and parcel of fortress building at that time. And these are rather tame compared to a whole lot of others elsewhere. Usually, they bore the name of the direction in which they were going. But not here. Why was it called the Maurepas Gate? And another, Frédéric Gate -- because they're the same man. He was Frédéric de Maurepas, the Pontchartrain Comte de Maurepas. He was the Minister of the Navy -- oh, he had lots of functions. He was the Grand Master of the king's household. He controlled France. And he was the one that we are in constant correspondence with here. So that would be an interesting thing to speculate on: how come he got two gates named after him? Whereas there was none after the king; there was one after his son, the Dauphin Gate. We understand how that came. The king had had several daughters, and he was hankering for a son, and finally he got one. So there was a big celebration. And they were planning the gate in that year, so it became the Porte Dauphine in his honour. There's a little wee gate called the Queen's Gate, that was on the other side. Now, why did the queen get such a small gate to her name? Poor Queen Mary, she was a shy kind of girl; all she did was make kids for the king. She took a second seat; she wasn't very outgoing. She was the daughter of the king of Poland, who was exiled in eastern France because he had lost the throne of Poland. And they needed a royal personnage to marry the king.

There are some ghost stories starting to come around here. People have been hearing things, have been seeing things, over the last several years. One day, somebody saw a person in a red costume coming, and they thought it was me. The people who saw him did not recognize his face, or see it very much. I'm not too sure. Because those stories, you know, they sort of grow. There's also somebody hearing things, steps in the house -- in the Duhaget house. In the bakery, the baker one day swore he felt a presence behind him and saw something. It's all things that could be imagination, there's no doubt about that. But anyway, I hear that, and I say, Geez, wouldn't I like to see one, to talk to him, 'cause I'd like to know this: it's either of two things. Either our work is so good that they feel at home. Or it's so bad that they're coming to haunt us. So I'd dearly like to know.

I'd like to come back in 50 or 100 years, To see how this thing has lived. Because right now, you see, the reality of Louisbourg is this one, not that one from the past. It's this one, because it's here and it's living. With all its problems, its present-day conditions. And this is the one which is interesting to me, to see what will have happened to it, how it will have lived over the time, how it will have adapted. One thing that I can see is that in time it will become interpreted completely in English, in its English reality, which is the "now" one. Which starts with the sieges. It's just a feeling I have. Because when you come to think of it, all this heritage business -- nobody has any heritage from Louisbourg, nobody at all. It's meaningless. Except to, maybe, the descendants of the New Englanders. They are the ones who have ancestors buried here, who came and suffered here, and died here. Maybe the descendants of some of the French ones, too. We Acadians, we have no real heritage here. Canada doesn't, because this is a very short interlude of French history, and is only connected with Acadia in a by-the-way sort of thing, because the Acadians were up there in Nova Scotia, and traded with Louisbourg. And only a few came to settle in Cape Breton.

The ones who have really close feelings are those Americans. So, to me, that is the reality of Louisbourg. And I would be willing to bet that in 50 or 100 years, that will be the one which will have taken over. It has been rebuilt as much as possible as a French thing -- that's fine. But with the other thing superimposing itself on it. (In what way?) That it becomes lived in by English-speaking people, who can handle it and tell the story. I illustrate it this way. When a study has been made of a certain subject, they're taken mostly from French text sources, and then digested, made into a report. And then when they need to be done in French, they are regurgitated in French from the English intermediate. And that shows. It shows in the form of the language that comes out, as well as into the thing itself. It cannot but be so.

You've heard him called Captain de Gannes here. That is a thing which is not French at all. You don't say "Captain de Gannes" in French. You say, "Monsieur de Gannes, Capitaine." So that when you hear it, it sounds English. A very subtle little thing which grates. A thing seen by English eyes being put into French by -- unfortunately in Canada here, by the very nature of things -- translation, reflects English. So, what comes back there, and comes out -- an English -- seen kind of thing, and an English-felt kind of thing. So it cannot but gradually go in time and become the richest part of the interest. it cannot be anything else.

Here is the Dugas house. He's the only Acadian, really, that settled here from Acadia. He was a carpenter. And his wife was a Richard girl. And after that she married a la Tour, Saint-Etienne de la Tour. (Did you have a great deal to go on when you did that house?) Oh, yes. We knew that it had been built in conjunction with a fellow by the name of Detcheverry as a double house. And Dugas, he got the right to live in it as his remuneration for building the house. And they had made a pact, the two of them --if one left, the other one would buy it all. Dugas settled down in his side. In the 1720s, he bought the whole house. And then he died in 1733, and we had an inventory of that time, on which we based our plan. And then Marguerite Richard, she married again, la Tour, so that by 1744 it was really -- we used to call it the Dugas la Tour house. And then, they would have had 6 unmarried girls (two daughters with Dugas, two of de la Tour, and twins of Marguerite Richard and de la Tour).

To build the house, we found the foundation, which was fairly insubstantial. We were sure it was not a stone house. Now, as far as charpente, we deduced that from the fact that there was a foundation wall. But the rest is imagination. The piquet fill, for instance, that is our own thing. We didn't know. We put some piquet fill because the foundation was sort light. And since there was the occupied upstairs, we presumed that there would have been a knee wall, therefore, the roof a bit higher. And since he was a carpenter, we thought we might try to give something special to his house. So we have put the piquets at an angle within the charpente framework, in the knee wall, just for a little change. Because having pieces like that in the framing members is quite common in many French frame houses. We thought. well, maybe Dugas remembered that. But we don't know at all. This is purely our own thing. It's a pity, because everybody sort of likes it. We thought we could take this little liberty as a plausible thing that might have happened. And it might have been, but I wish I knew if it was really so.

(You're aware of an inventive art, but at the same time, you're determined to get it as, right as you can.) Well, that's the challenge, you see, that I gave myself. Because, from an architecture point of view, it's not worth much, if you take architecture in its sort of superficial way -- the design visual and all that sort of thing. But from a thing of reconnecting with the people of the past, with real people -- the challenge I give myself is to reflect as close as possible what I can make of it, either by finding out or by re-inventing. That is why some imagination comes in. And creation, too. (You read and then you try to apply that when you deal with these buildings.) It's not so much that I try to apply it, but I figure that all that is there, and somehow I hope it will come through in the making of decisions and in the making of how I feel about the whole thing. I manage to get a little of that feeling through -- very, very, very little, I'm afraid -- but maybe more than I think.

While not being great architecture by any means, or exceptional or anything like that, it's extremely interesting. Because it's a good example of vernacular, quite functional. And it's amazing the number of French architects, especially the ones connected a little bit with historical architecture, are quite taken by the simple kind of functionalism and classical look about it. Because it was built-in at that time, a sense of architecture, in a sort of unconscious kind of way. Rhythm. See, they're not carefully, consciously designed.! But they're made with a sense of the form, of the shape. A sense of form that was innate in people. Many, many people have a natural sense of the placing of things. That is the difference between our young civilization and a much older one. So, no, it's not great architecture by any means, but it is interesting.

Some of my architect friends in Moncton think I'm nuts, getting into this foolish thing. But I said, I've had the best of two worlds. I've had 10 years private practice in Moncton and I've had this. But it was easier for me, going into this, because I already had some of the other one. I didn't have to worry about what I would do in ordinary architecture afterward. I wouldn't be good for it at all, now. I'm ruined!

Our thanks to John Johnston, Louisbourg historian, for suggesting we talk with Yvon LeBlanc. And to Eric Krause, Louisbourg historian, who supplied supplementary information and confirmed historical details. While we appreciate his help, responsibility for final historical accuracy rests with the editor.

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