Description of Historic Place

The Michel LeBlanc House is a one-and-a-half storey wooden residence clad in wooden shingles. It is located on Amirault Street in Dieppe.

Heritage Value

The Michel LeBlanc House is designated a Local Historic Place for being one of the oldest dwellings to have been conserved by the City of Dieppe. Michel LeBlanc built this house, his second, circa 1827. He wanted to relocate to the new large road, whose cut-through created a greater distance from his first location near the edge of the Saint-Anselme marsh. He also wanted to be closer to his brother-in-law Raphaël Bourque, who intended to re-locate to lands he had purchased on the other side of the Fox Creek valley. Michel’s new location was upstream from this same valley, more precisely where the road met the aboiteau used to cross the water. Michels’s former neighbour, Thibaud LeBlanc-Pinou, isolated by the cut-through and jealous of Michel’s improved situation, tried in vain to purchase land and a house in the area. Nevertheless, because of Thibaud’s premature death, his oldest son, Dominique, succeeded in his father’s quest in 1847, when he and his young family replaced the elderly Michel in his home. Dominique died young like his father. His widow remarried to Onésime Gaudet who lived here for a time and left the house to his LeBlanc stepchildren. The turbulent, even chaotic, history of the familes that lived here is due in part to a heart problem that doomed mostly the men to an early death, usually while they were in their 40's. This meant that the father did not have enough time to carry out all of his life plans.

In addition, the Michel LeBlanc House reflects a major change in Acadian habitation that occurred in the early 19th century, i.e., a shift from building on sites bordering a marsh or river to sites along a road in a more upland location. The location of the house also reflects the influence and remarkable growth of provincial roadways in rural communities around 1830.

Source: City of Dieppe, Historic Places File (2) D3

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements that describe the Michel LeBlanc House include:
- location near Fox Creek and the main road (Amirault Street), specifically where the aboiteau was formerly situated in order for the road to pass over the water;
- main bady of the house, a little more prominent than what was the norm in rural areas at the time of construction;
- one-and-a-half-storey asymmetrical massing resulting from several additions.