Elizabeth Dusome (nee Longlade) was the matriarch of a large community-minded Métis family whose service and connections have spanned generations. Elizabeth Longlade was born in 1859 into a large Métis family—eventually reaching ten siblings—within the richly interconnected Métis community at Penetanguishene. Elizabeth’s father, Louis Longlade, had been born on Drummond Island in 1816 and relocated to Penetanguishene with his parents, Charles—a War of 1812 veteran—and Josephi

The Métis Nolin family, originally from the Upper Great Lakes, have left a legacy across the Métis Homeland. This includes the Nolin sisters, Marguerite and Angelique. Marguerite and Angelique Nolin were the children of trader Jean Baptiste Nolin and his Métis wife, Marie Angelique Couvret. Raised on Michilimackinac, the birthplace of many Métis families in the region, the Nolins moved to Sault Ste. Marie in the late 1780s and quickly set down roots along the St. Mary’s River

Michilimackinac, or Mackinac Island, was “an eighteenth century nexus for the Great Lakes fur trade” where many Métis families like the Langlades, Cadottes, and Nolins emerged as leading families within the emerging Métis political consciousness in the Upper Great Lakes. Within that often male-dominated business world, Métis matriarch Madeline Laframboise was renowned for her entrepreneurial prowess and success. Laframboise was “a tall and commanding figure, and most dignifie

George Harvey was born on December 16, 1856 at Michipicoten on Lake Superior to a Métis mother, Jane Flett, and Scottish Hudson Bay Company employee, Alexander Harvey. The next year, the Harvey family moved north to Moose Factory on James Bay, where the young George spent many of his formative years deeply engrained within the region’s bustling fur trade economy and growing Métis community. In 1870, when George was just 13 years old, he was sent to Stromness in Scotland’s O

After the War of 1812, the Nolin family began to expand their connections and influence westward beyond the family’s home at Sault Ste. Marie in the Upper Great Lakes. Louis Nolin, the eldest son of Jean Baptiste and Marie Angelique, moved westward to the Red River settlement, where he became an interpreter for Lord Selkirk and the Hudson’s Bay Company. This was a crucial role, as the Red River area was a center of growing tension between the Métis, European settlers, and f

Charlotte Turner was born in Moose Factory, in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s (HBC) Rupert’s Land territory, on or about July 11, 1828. Charlotte’s father, Joseph Turner Sr., was a lifelong HBC employee, who worked for the Company for nearly 70 years. Throughout that time, he and his Métis wife, Emma, had seven children born in Moose Factory. On June 21, 1841, Charlotte Turner married James Harper, another long serving HBC employee, “a la façon du pays” (in the custom of the coun