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

Joseph Turner Jr. was born into the Métis world of the coastal and inland fur trade posts of western James Bay in 1816 and was baptized alongside his siblings, Elizabeth and Philip, at Moose Factory on June 30, 1822. Joseph Turner Jr.’s father, Joseph Sr., had worked at the Hudson’s Bay Company depot at Moose Factory and its connected inland posts since 1799. Like many of the Métis “factory boys” who grew up at the fur trade posts of James Bay, Joseph Sr. had a long career wi

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

While some members of the Nolin family moved further west to Red River in the last years of the 1810s, others remained in Sault Ste. Marie in the Upper Great Lakes where they continued to play important roles in their Métis community for generations to come. Adolphus and Marie Madeline Nolin, for example, remained in Sault Ste. Marie and married into the Sayer and Corbiere families—both prominent Métis families in the area. They eventually settled onto the same River Lots t

As Métis boys who grew up learning from their fur trader father in the vibrant fur trading posts of the Upper Great Lakes, Henry, Pierre Guillaume, and John Charles Sayer were destined to join the fur trade themselves. By 1811, Henry, the eldest Sayer brother, had joined the North West Company (NWC). Henry’s younger brother, John Charles, had also joined the NWC by that time and was working in the Lac La Pluie District by the mid 1810s. The youngest brother, Pierre Guillaume

From the earliest days of the Métis Nation, Métis communities and their leaders have recognized the value of maintaining a unified voice across the Métis Homeland—from the Upper Great Lakes westward—and have consistently achieved shared victories for all Métis by standing together as one. Early examples of Métis organizing and collective advocacy across geographically distant Métis communities for the shared benefit of all are numerous. In 1816, for instance, Métis from a