History
Dieppe obtained town status on January 1st, 1952. Today, it is a union of many smaller parishes and villages such as Lakeburn, Léger's Corner, Saint-Anselme, Fox Creek, Dover, and Chartersville, villages originally founded by Acadians always ready to take on new challenges.
Before the arrival of Acadian pioneers, the southern region of New Brunswick was inhabited by descendants of the Algonquin native people. It is also said that the first men to set foot in the Dieppe area were Mi’kmaqs.
The first Acadian settlers arrived on what is now Dieppe territory in 1730. In 1746, Paul Honoré Melanson and his family settled in Ruisseau des Renards, which later became Fox Creek. The LeBlanc and Boudreau families settled in Chartersville in 1776. Saint-Anselme and Le Brûlis du Lac, later called Lakeburn, were settled in 1820.
Originally called French Village, the community was named Leger’s Corner in 1910, after the construction of a bridge over Nacadie (Hall’s) Creek.
In 1952, Leger’s Corner was incorporated as a village under the name Dieppe to commemorate the Canadian soldiers killed during the landing of allied troops on Normandy beaches in Dieppe, France, on August 19, 1942.
In 1948, Lakeburn was amalgamated with Dieppe, which four years later officially became a Town. The villages of Saint-Anselme and Chartersville and the local service districts of Fox Creek-Dover were next amalgamated to the Town of Dieppe in 1973.
The first mayor of the City of Dieppe was elected in 1952. Adélard Savoie, a very involved and committed Acadian, was also a lawyer and former MP for Northumberland County. The name Savoie also brings to mind the delegation of four Acadian emissaries who were invited to France in 1968 by the president of the French Republic, General Charles de Gaulle. This first Acadian mission to France also included two other Dieppe residents, Gilbert Finn and Euclide Daigle, as well as the late Dr. Léon Richard from Moncton.
M. Savoie’s successors at City Hall were:
- J. Alphée LeBlanc
- Régis LeBlanc
- William Malenfant
- Clarence Cormier
- William Malenfant
- Yvon Lapierre
- Achille Maillet
The main Acadian families who founded the villages from which Dieppe was born are the following:
- Arsenault
- Babineau
- Bastarache
- Belliveau
- Boudreau
- Bourgeois
- Bourque
- Breau
- Cormier
- Daigle
- Darois
- Doiron
- Gaudet
- Gauvin
- Gagnon
- LeBlanc
- Léger
- Maillet
- Malenfant
- Melanson
- Savoie
- Surette
- Thibodeau
The population of the City of Dieppe has gone from 3,500 people in 1952 to approximately 18,000 in 2006. It is made up of French and English speaking residents in a proportion of four to one. Dieppe is the only francophone city in the province to offer services in both official languages of Canada and New Brunswick (the latter being the only officially bilingual province in the country).
As of 2004, the City of Dieppe covers an area measuring approximately 60 km2. As a result of its population growth rate, Dieppe is constantly increasing in size.
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