ONTARIO MÉTIS FACTS

Every Mother’s Day, Métis families and communities across the Homeland take time to honour and celebrate the Métis matriarchs in their lives, past and present. This annual tradition stretches back generations. A May 1942 Toronto Star article, for example, celebrated a very special Mother’s Day for Georgian Bay Métis Community matriarch, Elizabeth Longlade (nee Dusome) of Penetanguishene: “Sunday, Mother’s Day, will be the 95th birthday of Mrs. Charles Longlade, pioneer resi

Métis mail carriers demonstrated the significant personal sacrifices many Métis made in the Upper Great Lakes and throughout the wider Métis Homeland to serve their communities. Having recently celebrated his 85th birthday, Charlie Davieaux “...sat smoking his pipe while reliving many of the adventures of the early days in Algoma…” with the Sault Star in 1948. These “adventures,” however, reflected the dangerous, sacrificial nature of being a Métis mail carrier in the early 1

During harsh winters across the Upper Great Lakes, land-based knowledge and ingenuity could be the difference between life and death for Métis mail carriers. In a 1948 Sault Star article, Charlie Davieaux reflected on a particularly dangerous trip across Lake Superior in the early 1880’s. Charlie, his father, Hyacinthe, and a third man had found themselves trapped in the narrow end of open water, completely surrounded by “fields of thickly packed ice cakes.” The trio used th