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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - A Dettah man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to setting fire to his wife's home and badly damaging the residence while in a "fit of rage."

Jimmy Beaulieu, 46, who pleaded guilty to arson in NWT Supreme Court, set the fire in a crawl space using an oil pan.

"He set the fire in a fit of rage," said defence attorney Dan Rideout. "Mr. Beaulieu did not intend to harm any person."

Crown prosecutor Shannon Smallwood said on the night of Aug. 2, 2008, Beaulieu was at the Raven nightclub and spoke to his estranged wife, whom he was not supposed to have contact with and he admittedly consumed alcohol, despite court conditions against it.

At 2 a.m. on Aug. 3 Beaulieu went to his wife's house and woke up two youths inside.

"He was mad ... he told them to leave and then told them to find a lighter," said Smallwood.

The fire spread through the crawl space and caused extensive damage to a bedroom in the home, said Smallwood.

It took firefighters half an hour to respond to the fire, but by the time they arrived it had burned itself out. The two youths, aged 16 and 12, escaped unharmed.

Before firefighters arrived, Beaulieu attempted to start a second fire in the home by turning on the kitchen stove and spraying it with a substance which was not identified in court, but it did not ignite.

Rideout said Beaulieu had a difficult childhood and his parents once left him and his sister alone for three days. When they returned they were no longer together.

"I know I have an alcohol problem and because of that my anger got the best of me," Beaulieu told the court. "I'm emotionally sick and I want to deal with my disease."

Beaulieu's estranged wife told the court she didn't understand why some in the community seem to blame her for her husband's actions.

"I hear 'poor Jimmy'," she said.

During sentencing Justice J. Edward Richard said he hoped anyone in the community assigning blame to Beaulieu's wife "will consider carefully the words of Jimmy Beaulieu in court today ... he says he takes full responsibility for what he did."

Beaulieu has a criminal record that Richard described as "limited."

Richard sentenced him to 15 months in jail for the arson conviction. Beaulieu was also convicted on two charges for breaching court conditions for which he received three months each to be served at the same time as his arson sentence, making his total jail sentence 15 months.