Many members of the Upper Great Lakes Métis Community utilized their knowledge of the lands, waters, and local peoples to maintain meaningful employment as guides and interpreters. Lewis Solomon, a member of the Métis community at Penetanguishene, was one of those guides. Lewis was born on Drummond Island in 1821 and later moved to Penetanguishene during the community’s relocation in 1829. As a young adult, Lewis pursued “a tolerably fair education” that afforded him a “c

Louis Riel’s execution by Canada on November 16, 1885, cast a long shadow over Métis communities throughout the Métis Homeland, including Métis communities in the Upper Great Lakes and northern Ontario. Since the Red River Resistance of 1869/70, southern Ontario had been an epicentre for anti-Métis racism. Like Prime Minister John A. Macdonald’s federal government, the Ontario provincial government—led by Premier Edward Blake—was dominated by English-speaking Protestants that

Archange L’Hirondelle, the Métis matriarch of the Brissette-L’Hirondelle family, grew up in the fur trade world around Lesser Slave Lake, in what is now northern Alberta. As a “half-breed” woman, Archange was raised around the Hudson’s Bay Company post in a region that was home to a growing community of Métis families and retired HBC traders who settled together in the area after their contracts expired. It was there that Archange met her future husband, Hyppolite Brisset

While Métis people hold diverse spiritual beliefs, many Métis in the Upper Great Lakes— like other Métis communities throughout the Métis Nation Homeland—practiced the Catholic faith. An 1893 visitor to Killarney, for example, described the community as consisting of “many half breeds at Killarney, mostly French and Roman Catholic, and there is a small Roman Catholic church.” With few churches in the Upper Great Lakes during the early 1800s, Métis travelled long distances

The merger of the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821 saw a more permanent, year-round Métis community grow on the northern shore of Lake Superior, particularly at Fort William—a location that had long been the home of the “Great Rendezvous”. A distinct Métis community soon became established at Fort William. By the time the government was preparing for the Robinson Treaties in the late 1840s, the distinct Métis community at Fort William was clearly identi