Snoro
(La Galerie à Fériole – Atotoy – Bière de parc à vache)
Fériol’s porch was known as the finest in the Village du Bois: a place where there was always music, so much so that people said the floorboards vibrated two houses away. At a time when you couldn’t always drink beer at home, Fériole, his father Yvet, and his grandfather Dominique, à Saindoux, secretly brewed their own in the cow barns — a bit like moonshine.
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Atotoy is a vocative onomatopoeia — the call used to bring cattle home. One story tells that one evening, as Fériole was calling his cows, one failed to return. A few days later, he received a message from the Dorchester penitentiary: the cow, like many others that roamed freely at the edge of the woods during the summer, had wandered off… and had been jailed, until Fériole came to pay to have her released.
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The title Snoro comes from a local expression — “mon p’tit snoro” — used to describe someone who is sly or mischievous… which, it seems, was a trait found in more than a few branches of the LeBlanc family.
Le départ de Charlotte
(Le départ de Charlotte – Für Rosalie – Sisterhood Shuffle)
Composed by Mélodie LeBlanc, this suite was born when her sister Charlotte left home at sixteen to move to Moncton. For Rosalie captures that moment when the youngest sister, saddened to see her older sisters leave the family nest, discovers that she can make their empty rooms her own — trace her own path, and enjoy the precious time she still has with Rosalie. Sisterhood Shuffle celebrates the unique bond between three sisters who shared countless adventures — growing up together on an ancestral farm, traveling the world with their music — a connection woven from laughter, stories, and a steadfast spirit that continues to unite them.
Prison de Nantes
(Polcadie)
This piece tells an old ballad of prison and hope, where the search for freedom echoes the story of our ancestors held in Halifax during the Great Upheaval, including Pierre‑Victor LeBlanc and his future wife Marguerite Saulnier, bound by hardship before being bound in life.
Pisiguit
(La Mirligouèche – La Pisiguit – La Chebookt)
This suite of three jigs is inspired by the old place‑names of New France: La Mirligouèche (Lunenburg), meaning “the whitecaps on the waves”; La Pisiguit (Windsor), meaning “the junction of the waters”; and La Chebookt, now Halifax, meaning “Great Harbour.” It also recalls an old ballad of hope, echoing the fate of Pierre‑Victor LeBlanc and Marguerite Saulnier, both imprisoned in Halifax during the Grand Dérangement, where their paths crossed before joining their lives together. After their release, they settled in Pisiguit and later moved to Memramcook, birthplace of a six‑generations of fiddlers at the heart of our family history.
Belle-Isle
(Reel Antoine à Daniel – Reel Marie à Jacques Bourgeois – Reel à Françoise Gaudet)
Daniel LeBlanc arrived in Acadia as a farmer, settling on the diked lands of the Belle‑Isle marsh, whose fertile soil had been reclaimed from the sea through dikes and aboiteaux. His son Antoine, born to Daniel and Françoise Gaudet, belongs to the generation that firmly rooted Acadia before the coming upheaval. By marrying Marie Bourgeois, daughter of Jacques Bourgeois, a surgeon and early pioneer of Port‑Royal, and Jeanne Trahan, he joined two founding families whose alliances shaped the young community.
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Their descendants would later bear the marks of exile: René died on the shores of Miramichi during the Grand Dérangement, while Josephe, known as Le Maigre, ended his life on Belle‑Île‑en‑Mer, a small island off the coast of Brittany in France.
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This suite of compositions evokes stability before the storm, the strength of family alliances, and the quiet transmission that would allow the Acadian people to survive the trials ahead.
1759
(Reel à Pierrotte à René – Le camp d'Espérance– Reel Joseph called « Maigre »)
Pierrotte is one of our ancestors who survived the Great Upheaval. At fifteen, he and his family sought refuge at Camp d’Espérance on the Miramichi River. His father René and his mother Anne Thériault died of starvation in 1759.
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Joseph, known as le Maigre, René’s brother and son of Antoine à Daniel, was a major figure of Acadian resistance before 1755. He ended his life on Belle‑Île‑en‑Mer. This suite of compositions evokes hope amid instability, loss, and exile.
Wingtrala
Wingtrala tells the story of a young woman who meets a kind‑seeming suitor. At first charmed, she later discovers he is a shoemaker and, despite his talk of romance “Amourette”, ultimately decides not to marry him.
Nanette
This tune is dedicated to Anne “Nanette” LeBlanc (c. 1778–c. 1820), who married François LeBlanc dit “Saindoux”, son of Pierre‑Victor dit “Pierrotte”, grandson of René à Antoine à Daniel. Born to parents who survived the Great Upheaval, Nanette belongs to the generation that rebuilt Acadia through everyday life. Her memory echoes the quiet strength of women who carried family, language, and place forward, long after the storm had passed.
Trois bons messieurs
Among the saddest laments we know, Trois bons messieurs tells the heartbreaking story of a young woman who abandons her child
Meurette
Meurette is the story of a cow belonging to the LeBlanc family, whose milk was used to make cheese when the girls were young.
The Barking Dog Set
(The Barking Dog Reel – La Charles à Jack à Fériole – La tcheu de cochon – Les sœurs Landry)
This set draws its breath from a belief once held in the village of Bois: when a black dog stopped before a house to bark, it was taken as a dark omen. Ira, my grandfather’s brother, taught me all the old tunes of our family. He and Edgar dit “Jack”, Fériole’s son, were raised in a home where music never fell silent. Fériole was a remarkable fiddler — and, as the village liked to say, its worst driver. On Sundays after mass, no one wished to drive ahead of him; so, out of courtesy, he was always invited to lead the way.
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My father, Charles, would visit Fériole with his own father, “Jack”, on beautiful summer evenings, escaping the heat of the city of Moncton to find the cool air of the Memramcook valley. There, while the breeze settled over the fields, you could hear Jack and Fériole playing the fiddle on the porch, their tunes drifting across the yard. My father and his brother would help out in the garden, surrounded by music, laughter, and the quiet rhythm of a life rooted deeply in the valley.
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Along the way, we also meet the Landry sisters who, according to Ira LeBlanc, “sewed at the mill while singing all day long,” scarcely ever leaving their home in Memramcook — a quiet nod to our Landry cousins, and to other cousins in Louisiana, bearers of the same musical thread, handed down through time and carried south by the long currents of history.
Les menteries à Donatien
(Polka à Donatien Gaudet)
It was Donat Lacroix who introduced us to this piece, which he himself had learned from Donatien Gaudet. Donatien, a Father of Sainte‑Croix at the Memramcook Institute, was a small man with a deep voice. This piece belongs to the oral tradition of menteries, where the voice alone is enough to bring a character to life and carry the story from one generation to the next.
