Breaking glass

August 11, 2025

When Inverness County honoured its healthcare workers at an awards gala in April, honorees went home with a personalized, one-of-a-kind gift created by a local artist.

Polycarpe LeBlanc, an East Margaree-based stained-glass artist, crafted two separate designs in stained glass. Each honoree was presented with a piece that reflected their home community. Healthcare staff based in Chéticamp received a view from Le Buttereau looking north to the highlands, while those based in Inverness were presented with a coastal view overlooking Margaree Island.

LeBlanc attended the Excellence in Healthcare Awards Gala, and says he was encouraged by the response to his work.

After almost 50 years with art as a sideline, LeBlanc says he’s finally able to make a living at his work. “It’s really taken off in the last year or so, so I’ve been focusing a lot more on it,” he says.

Although he’s exhibited his work in the past, including a display at the Inverness County Centre for the Arts, most of what he creates is by commission.

“Whatever I make, I’ll sell eventually, so I’ve been trying to stockpile for the summer, because I have a lot of people who come up here to see what I’ve got.”

LeBlanc has done work for the Inverary Manor in Inverness, a couple of stained-glass windows for Calvin United Church in Margaree Harbour, and a whole series of windows for a church in D’Escousse, Richmond County.

“That’s all you’ve got to do, get someone to buy one window for a church and they’ll fill the church,” he laughs. “That’s what happened last time [in D’Escousse]. We did one window, and ended up selling 15.”

He’s also done a lot of pet portraits for owners who bring him photos of their animals.

“I’m doing a brown Lab right now, actually,” he says, adding that he usually does the pets portrait style, with a background. “I’ve done many of those over the years. It’s all in the eyes, especially with a dog.”

He says the result usually gets an emotional reaction “especially if the pet has passed on.”

LeBlanc’s studio is in the home where he and his 11 siblings grew up and, given the size of his family, he has appropriately named his workplace the “Procreation Studio.”

He says he wasn’t always artistic and only happened upon stained-glass art after beginning a career in banking. With a business degree from Dalhousie University, he went to work at a bank in Wolfville in the late 70s, where he got to know a stained-glass artist and fell in love with the art.

“It’s the dancing of light with colour,” he says, explaining what attracted him to stained-glass.

“There’s a lot of reflection of the natural light that comes through the glass. The light coming through the glass is really quite magical.”

“Depending on the time and the lighting of the day, it changes all the time.”

LeBlanc says he buys each colour of stained-glass individually, draws his designs on paper to create a template that’s then transferred to the glass. He then uses a glass cutter to cut out his design.

“The cutter itself makes a score line on the glass and then that breaks, and hopefully it will break the way you want it to break,” he explains.

He says he’s broken a lot of glass over the years, and not always in a good way.

“The way stained-glass is made, it has a smooth side, which is the side you cut on, and the other side is more textured,” LeBlanc says. “So, you use the textures as part of the design, so there are different aspects to it, the colour, the texture and the light of day.”

LeBlanc moved back to East Margaree 20 years ago and took a course with InRich Business Development so that he could set up his stained-glass business, but his art still wasn’t enough to sustain him, so he worked for seven years for Canada Post, operating the post office in the community. He’s retired from that job now and he hopes his art career, like the stained-glass itself, will break the right way.