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 Brissette, an HBC employee whose career with the Company had seen him travel extensively throughout the Métis Homeland—from Cumberland House to Fort William, Ile a la Crosse, and the Bow River—before arriving to his posting at Lesser Slave Lake.
Archange and Hyppolite were married on January 5, 1826. Because there were no priests so far west, their “country marriage” was officiated by the HBC postmaster.
They remained at Lesser Slave Lake until 1828 when Hyppolite was assigned to Fort Pelly in eastern Saskatchewan. Here Archange and Hyppolite lived and worked among other Métis traders, including Pierre Guillaume Sayer, who Hyppolite had previously worked with during his first HBC posting at Cumberland House.
In 1836, Archange and Hyppolite relocated once again to the Red River, where they gave birth to their first daughter, Josephine, in 1838.
Following Josephine’s birth, Archange and Hyppolite moved once again—this time to Penetanguishene. There, the young Brissette-L’Hirondelle family joined the long-established Métis community in the Upper Great Lakes, putting down roots in Georgian Bay, where Archange soon developed a reputation for being “rather clever.”
In Penetanguishene, Archange and Hyppolite raised ten children—becoming integral members of the Métis community in Penetanguishene and across the Upper Great Lakes for generations to come.