It was an affinity, a love affair with French Canada that led a Fort Kent couple 25 years ago to plan and build a home of wood and field stone, much like those in French Quebec, on the outskirts of the northern Maine town.

Roger Paradis, a history professor at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, and his Canadian wife, Roseanne, have always pursued their ties with Canada and Ile d’Orleans, the ancestral home of his family near Quebec City. And that is what they were doing when they built their home overlooking the St. John River and Canada beyond.

Paradis taught Acadian history at UMFK in the early 1970s, even before it became in vogue at many Canadian universities. He also is a collector of legends, songs and stories of former times and has a collection of more than 5,000 folk songs, enough for eight volumes.

“We’ve been happy, very happy with this place,” said the professor, during a visit to his unique home. “It’s a nice little place to come home to.”

The couple often travels the old roads to Kamouraska, Riviere Ouelle and Quebec City, which Paradis calls New France.

“We saw beautiful homes in the style of ours,” said Paradis, sitting in the dining foyer overlooking Canada across the river, near his wife’s hometown of Baker Brook, New Brunswick. “They attracted us to this old architecture, and we planned our home.

“Our original intention was to build a conventional home. We had plans drawn. Things changed, and we planned this home. It nearly caused a legal separation,” he said with a chuckle.

For just a brief moment, while traveling on U.S. Route 1 just south of Fort Kent, one can imagine traveling the same roads that the Paradises did in old Quebec.

Built high, up the side of a hill, the stone house seems almost out of place among the Fort Kent area’s older homes and newer ranch styles.

“Around here, people tend to follow trends and build ranch-type homes,” noted Paradis. “They are not practical. Homes here need steeper roofs because of snow and rain.”

His 17th century-style home, which he called “larmier,” is built of field rocks, handpicked from farmers’ rock piles around Fort Kent and Soldier Pond. “You know there are piles of them everywhere on local farms. They’re all over,” said Paradis.

The rocks of the house, small ones and big ones and even a couple of huge ones, some round, some flat, were left in their natural state. They are a variety of colors, light and dark grays, very light tan, even darker, near-black ones and white ones. They form a beautiful color scheme, wedged between reddish-brown pine window frames and roof eaves.

“It was back-breaking work [collecting the stones]. I even dropped a few on my feet. It created memories, good, bad and painful,” said Paradis, still chuckling.

“Stones are inexpensive,” he continued. “You just need the time and source for them. It also gives you an exterior that is very practical. It needs very little upkeep, and there is almost no heat loss.” He later pointed out that “the stone walls keep it cool in summer. Once heated in late summer, the stone exterior keeps the interior warm into winter. We only discovered that after it was built.”

“The masonry work was long and expensive” for the 22-by-44-foot home.

“Stones have their own charm and character. I saw it, but I had to convince the mason to not split these stones,” remembered Paradis.

He calls his home a “replica, modern, of traditional 17th century French Canadian Quebecois.” It is built with a wood frame, covered with the field stones. “It has a coping or drip-style roof, away from the sides of the house,” he said. The roof is covered with commercial split western cedar shakes, curves slightly near the bottom and overhangs the house walls by 2 feet.

“We tried to stay faithful to the style,” said Paradis. “We made some changes for modern amenities, but we tried to make a faithful representation. It is something we can identify and relate to.”

Faithful to the point that the Paradises built their home on the side of a hill, with pasturelike lawns decorated with spruce, white birch and pine and several varieties of apple trees, colorful flowers, rosebushes and driveways edged with small flat stone walls to delineate the lawns. Around the house are flat-rock walks, and there are flat-rock steps at each door.

“Acadians were noted for the orchards, flowers and trees,” said Paradis.

The home was built in 1975 and 1976 by Fort Kent carpenter Conrad Voisine, and the stonework was done by Nazaire Dionne of Clair, New Brunswick. Madawaska craftsman John Tardif made the windows.

Each window, which is split in the middle and opens sideways to the inside of the home, is made with 6-inch-square panes, 24 to each window. The wood frame is pine, stained a light reddish-brown.

The Paradis family, including their four children, now all grown, moved in before the house was complete. They were living in a lake-side camp, heated only with a Franklin wood stove. “I still remember how cold that was,” Paradis said.

The professor did some of the interior work himself. He built his own garage, away from the house, which has the same coping roof, cedar-shingle walls, rough-hewn lumber and wooden doors that swing open to the long driveway.

“Maudi, qu’on travailler [Damn, didn’t we work],” said Paradis. “We certainly could not do the same today.”

He remembers days of teaching, working at the house between classes and back at night until 11. Then it was back to the lake-side camp and up at 6 a.m. for another day.

Inside are stone fireplaces at both ends of the house on the first floor.

Seven one-piece, 6-inch-by-9-inch beams, rough hewn by hand in pine and stained a light reddish-brown, cross the ceilings from one end of the house to the other.

A brick-and-mortar archway separates the living room and small dining room. The brick wall continues across the width of the house, forming one of the walls of the kitchen.

The dining room has a plank door, with rounded top, to the front of the house. The heavy door is held by long, black, wrought-iron hinges which reach halfway across the door.

The kitchen has oak cabinets, pine shelves, and a dark forest-green hutch filled with crystal, colored glass dishes, and pottery candles. Butter bowls and molds are on other shelves.

Oak plank floors, stained a lighter color, show the wooden splines holding it together.

Separating the kitchen and dining area is a half-wall with eight hand-turned posts. The half-wall also contains a bookcase.

The living room, the width of the house on the east side, has floors of alternating 2- and 3-inch oak boards, stained dark brown. The room is furnished with a roll-top desk, a wooden hutch, a full bookcase and an organ.

The living room fireplace, 12 feet across, is built with field stone and has a thick, rough-hewn pine mantle, five feet off the floor. The front of the fireplace has a stone step one foot above the floor.

Downstairs, the master bedroom has its own 9-foot-wide fireplace with a pine mantle. Family photos adorn oak furniture in the room. The walls are wallpapered, with the lower third made from finished oak board.

An open stairway, showing the black steel frame holding 10-inch-by-3-foot planks, leads to the upstairs, where a full bath and two bedrooms are located.

The upstairs has pine walls and pine-paneled doors. A wall at the head of the stairs is made of oak-covered flooring left from the downstairs.

One bedroom contains Roseanne’s loom and an antique pine chest. The walls also have wood carvings.

Three gabled upstairs windows overlook the St. John River and Canada.

Walls are adorned with needlework, wood carvings by a St. Francois, New Brunswick, carver and paintings by Dolores Dumont of Fort Kent. There is plenty of greenery, flowers and plants throughout the house. Brass and glass lighting fixtures adorn every room, some hanging from the walls, others from the ceilings.

“We were attracted to the style,” said Paradis. “It is warm and cozy. We never regretted it.”