Weeds have taken over the front lawn, exposed electrical wires hang from the ceiling and slanted steps with brown paper bags left over from squatters is what the fiveplex on 103rd street now looks like.
The house, which caused a stir in the community during the last municipal election, is the same one the Lac La Biche County Council purchased earlier this summer and became know to people in the community as the “drug house.”
But the home that now sits on the property, unoccupied, didn’t always have such a bad reputation and was once a home many Lac La Biche residents relied on only 50 years ago.
The home used to belong to Lucienne and Robert Langevin, who raised their 11 children and foster children over the years.
Bought by the Langevins in 1959, parents of current County Councillor Aurel Langevin, the couple opened their door to children in need and also rented out rooms to boarders.
“We didn’t know we were poor at the time but we did know that there was a lot of love in that home,” said Simonne Holzer, sister to Aurel Langevin, who now lives in St.Albert.
The first foster children to walk through the Langevin’s front doors were Joyce and Joan Desjarlais, who were only 4 and 5 years old at the time. The Langevin’s would see several other children come under their care over the years but the two Desjarlais girls would stay with the Langevins the longest, said Holzer.
Simonne and her ten other siblings would help their mother with the foster children on a daily basis by bathing them, feeding them and giving them a warm place to sleep each day.
But tragedy struck the Langevins household when the father, Robert, died in 1963 from a heart attack.
“He died while having his breakfast at the kitchen table. My grandmother found him with the cigarette still burning in his hand,” said Monica Smith, the granddaughter of Lucienne Langevin.
Smith’s grandmother took her husband’s death hard but managed to stay positive for her children and her foster kids, said her granddaughter, who noted that her grandmother now had to support 11 children and foster children financially by herself.
But a small amount of government funding and some funds from people boarding in the house allowed Lucienne to continue her work as a foster parent.
Night after night, she would wake up to knocks on the front door from people looking for a place to stay or the police with another foster child that needed a home, said her daughter.
“I don’t know how she did it, but she loved kids so much,” said Holzer, who remembers one weekend in 1966 when her mother had 26 foster children in her home at one time.
In addition to looking after children, Lucienne Langevin would also feed almost 35 kids lunch on a daily basis for free.
Years passed and Lucienne’s children grew up and either went off to work, went to school or started lives of their own. With more room in her large home, Lucienne would rent out more rooms but would also invite her grandchildren to say with her.
“I remember her calling our house and saying “Come into town and stay with me.” She would just enjoy having us around,” said Smith, adding that she remembers playing hopscotch on the front sidewalk and remembers helping her grandmother weed the huge vegetable garden on the side of her home.
“There were a lot of happy times in that home and Christmas’s were always crowded, with 40 to 50 people in the home at one time with my brothers playing music for everyone,” said Holzer.
Eventually Lucienne’s health would stop her from looking after children at the age of 73 and her retirement from fostering children made her “sad that she couldn’t look after kids,” said her daughter.
The house was given to one of the Langevin son’s after Lucienne had to be put into a home and she would die just before her 83rd birthday.
The home was never a fiveplex when the Langevin’s owned it, but it was transformed by the previous owner without a business license, said Maurice Brousseau, Community Services Director for LLB County.
“There are several safety code violations with this fiveplex,” he said.
Langevin family members are sad to see their grandmother’s home in such bad condition and say she would be disappointed to see it in its current condition and to hear about “its bad reputation,” said Smith.
“The house went from being a safe place to somewhere that isn’t safe to be in,” she said.
The building inspector is scheduled to inspect the current house later this week, and the health inspector is also scheduled to review the fiveplex next week.
The results from the two inspections will be put forward to the current council on November 30, where they will have to decide what should be done to the home.
