Dunlevie, Gerald George | Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada

DUNLEVIE, Gerald George (1810-1887) of Quebec City was in partnership with Edward Staveley from 1853 to 1856 (see list of works under Staveley & Dunlevie). Born in Nassau, Bahama Islands, British West Indies on 1 July 1810, he was the son of Lieut. of Gerald Burke Dunlevie, a member of the British West Indies Regiment. G.G. Dunlevie arrived in Lower Canada in 1840 or 1841 where he held the appointment of army Captain and Paymaster in Montreal. By 1847 he had moved to Quebec City, and obtained his credentials as a land surveyor, and in 1852 he was working in the Crown Lands Office in Quebec as a surveyor and draftsman. It is unclear why he entered a partnership with Edward Staveley in 1853. A careful study of the architectural drawings now held in the Staveley Collection at the Archives Nationales du Quebec at Laval University in Quebec City, show that the drawings signed “Staveley & Dunlevie” are almost certainly from the hand of Staveley, not Dunlevie, and it is uncertain what contribution he made to the partnership. He may have merely acted as a draftsman, or as an engineer and surveyor, but their collaboration appears to have been brief, and ended in late 1856 or early 1857. Dunlevie continued to work as surveyor with the Crown Lands Dept. He died in Ottawa on 11 March 1887 (death notice Evening Journal [Ottawa], 12 March 1887, 1; biog. and list of works in A.J.H. Richardson, Quebec City: Architects, Artisans, and Builders, 1984, 228-29).