Hyppolite Brissette’s fur trade career began in 1817 when he signed a three-year contract with the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) as a “middleman” in a canoe brigade. With that commitment, Hyppolite began a decades-long fur trade career that took him across the Métis Homeland. Hyppolite’s first journey ended at Cumberland House, an HBC post in Saskatchewan. Cumberland House was a key stop for boat brigades heading west into the fur-rich Athabasca region, known for pemmican prod

Following his apprenticeship at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Island Lake District headquarters near Lake Winnipeg, Joseph Turner Jr. briefly returned east to the HBC’s coastal port of York Factory. There, Joseph Jr. served as a labourer for only a year before moving westward again to the Cumberland District on the Saskatchewan River in 1837. The HBC’s Cumberland District headquarters, Cumberland House, was a major site of pemmican production and an important stopping point for

Joseph Turner Sr., a devoted servant of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), began his career in 1799 at the depot at Moose Factory, a key trading post on the coast of James Bay. Like many HBC employees and “factory boys” of his time, Joseph Sr. spent years traveling between Moose Factory and its connected inland posts, navigating vast distances and forging relationships essential to the fur trade. Joseph Sr. married Emma, a Métis woman whose life was equally defined by resilience

The merger of the North West Company and Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821 marked a turning point in the fur trade. For Métis fur trade employees like Henry, Pierre Guillaume, and John Charles Sayer, the merger of the two companies brought uncertainty, as positions were reduced and once important trade routes shifted. Each of the Sayer brothers experienced and navigated this changing fur trade environment in their own way. At the time of the merger, for example, John Charles S

The Métis National Council (MNC) intervened at the Supreme Court of Canada in support of Steve and Roddy Powley and the historic Sault Ste. Marie Métis Community. This intervention was presented by MNC Co-Counsel, Clement Chartier, at the Supreme Court. In its submission, the MNC states that, “the Métis community at Sault Ste. Marie is a part of the Métis Nation,” situated within a broader Métis community in the Upper Great Lakes, and “is one of the oldest and well-recognized