People pay their respects while standing next to the casket containing the remains of Canada's former governor-general Romeo LeBlanc as he lie in state at the chapel on the Memramcook Institute in Memramcook, N.B.PAUL DARROW
A steady stream of people arrived in the farming community of Memramcook in southeastern New Brunswick on Thursday to pay their final respects to Romeo LeBlanc, Canada's first Acadian governor-general.
Mr. LeBlanc died peacefully at his home in the tiny parish of Grande Digue, N.B., on June 24 after a lengthy illness. He was 81.
He is lying in state in a chapel at the Memramcook Institute, where members of the public began arriving Thursday morning under grey skies.
A six-person vigil guard stood near the casket in the room lined with bouquets of flowers as members of Mr. LeBlanc's family, including his widow, spoke with the mourners.
An official portrait of Mr. LeBlanc, wearing a grey cardigan, sat next to the casket under the room's soaring ceilings.
Rene Poirier said he remembered the elder statesman as a man of humility, humour and ordinary charm.
"We always called him Romeo, never Mr. LeBlanc," he said outside the institute, where hundreds of people were filing inside.
"When he was governor general, I met him in a grocery store pushing a grocery cart. That's the type of man he was. . . . He was one of us."
Others echoed the sentiment and commented on the simplicity inside the chapel.
"He's like a friend for us," said Bernadette LeBlanc, who is not related to the politician.
"I really felt I had to come just to have a presence here."
Several medals and medallions were placed atop the closed casket, including the Legion of Honour, the Order of Canada, the Companion of Military Merit and the Order of New Brunswick.
A state funeral for the former Liberal cabinet minister is being held in Memramcook on Friday.
Mr. LeBlanc was an important player in the federal Liberal party, serving as press secretary to former Liberal prime ministers Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau, before being elected as a New Brunswick MP in 1972.
As federal fisheries minister in the Trudeau cabinet, he was called the "fishermen's minister."
LeBlanc became a senator in 1984, was appointed Speaker of the Senate in 1993 and became governor general in 1995.
Former prime minister Jean Chrétien, who chose Mr. LeBlanc to be governor-general, called him a close friend and a great Canadian, adding that he was "a good example of what public service was all about."
Dominic LeBlanc said his father always felt he'd been very privileged compared with many of his generation, and used all his public service jobs to try to expand opportunities for others.
Dominic LeBlanc, a Liberal MP who now represents the Beausejour riding once held by his father, described how his dad became the only one of six siblings to go beyond Grade 8 in school because a religious order of priests who ran the college "took some cords of wood from his father as sort of down payment on tuition to heat the college in winter."
Mr. LeBlanc had Alzheimer's disease and suffered a stroke in the months before his death.
Throughout his political and vice-regal career, Mr. LeBlanc was known for his humility and tireless advocacy of French language and culture.
Mr. LeBlanc wielded considerable influence in his home province as an MP - tagged as the Godfather of New Brunswick for his ability to control patronage and government projects.
Mr. LeBlanc used his background to show how francophones outside Quebec can thrive in Canada and how French and English can co-operate.
"If there is one group of Canadians whose past could have poisoned their future it is the Acadians," he once said of his ancestral history.
Mr. LeBlanc was born in 1927 in the Memramcook Valley and spent his childhood there.
After graduating from university, he spent two years as a high school teacher and then taught at a teachers' college in Fredericton.
Ill health forced Mr. LeBlanc to leave Rideau Hall early in 1999 before his five-year tenure was up.
As governor-general, Mr. LeBlanc proclaimed National Aboriginal Day on June 21. He was also credited with opening Rideau Hall to the public, holding a garden party in 1997 that drew 10,000 people.
Mr. LeBlanc is survived by his wife, Diana Fowler LeBlanc, and their four children.