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He has faced questions about this possibility from police investigators and journalists. A media report has also led the town, including members of his extended family, to believe it all began with the cherry of his father’s cigarette.

TVA quoted the building’s night watchman on Friday as saying he believes the blaze was caused by a lit cigarette in the section of the building where Paul-Etienne Michaud lived.

An emotional Jean-Andre Michaud said in an interview Saturday at his farmhouse that he’s not buying the argument his father might have started the fire, even though he acknowledged his dad was, at times, a determined smoker.

“My father smoked a bit, but would he get up in the middle of the night to go for a smoke?” he said as a tear rolled down his cheek inside the house where his father was born, just outside town.

“No, it’s impossible… It would be a bitter pill to swallow to start saying, ‘Look, your father started the fire’…

“It’s not my father, leave me in peace, damn it.”

Jean-Andre Michaud discussed his father’s lifelong smoking habit, which he said only amounted to about a pack of cigarettes per week.

But he also described how his father, well-known in the family for his stubborn streak, would sometimes go to great lengths to get his fix.

He said his dad had been caught lighting up inside the seniors’ residence a couple of times shortly after the building became smoke-free a few years back.

Jean-Andre Michaud also said his dad had his own makeshift smoking shack in the residence’s parking lot: an old, rusted jalopy.