Cape Breton's Magazine

Yvon LeBlanc, Architect Fortress of Louisbourg 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. Be? cause for other people, younger ones, com? ing here with a young family, needing soc? ial 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, liv? ing here, have felt as cut off?) Oh, they must have. The few comments we have are us? ually bad. They were cut off, far away. Al? though 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 begin? ning of the year up to Lent, They had lots of dances and balls and dinners and meet- ings--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 View along Rue Toulouse description of a celebration they had on the occasion when the king, who had been sick, got well. And there was some celebra? tion 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 fu? ture 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 in? teresting to me here: working for people, trying to imagine people who have been dead for 250 years. In other words, build- CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE (49)