Celebrating Métis Matriarch Elizabeth Longlade (nee Dusome)

Elizabeth Dusome was born in 1847 at Highland Point, “across the bay” from Penetanguishene into the large and deeply connected Métis family that had moved from the Red River to Georgian Bay in the Upper Great Lakes in the years before her birth.

As a “pioneer resident” of the region who grew up at a time when Penetanguishene was a “cedar swamp with a scattering of Indian wigwams and fishing shanties”, only a generation after much of the community had been relocated there from Drummond Island, Elizabeth was witness to many of Penetanguishene’s early moments, which her “keen” memory was still able to recall in 1942 for a Toronto Star interview as she neared her 95^th birthday.

In 1867, Elizabeth married fellow Métis, Charles William Longlade. Their marriage was witnessed by Charles’ sister Adelaide and Elizabeth’s brother Henry. Elizabeth and Charles were married for nearly 72 years, until Charles’ death in the late 1930s.

Together, Elizabeth and Charles built a professional life together, “he a choreman, she as a cook, in many lumber camps”, and raised a large, deeply connected and service-oriented family of their own, following in Elizabeth’s caring example, that eventually amounted to 26 grandchildren. Several of these grandchildren eventually took up their own calls to service in both the First and Second World Wars.

Though Elizabeth Longlade (nee Dusome) passed away in 1943, her memory and legacy continue to live on through the generations of her descendants who continue to follow in her loving and service-oriented footsteps.

See Our Sources

• Daughter of Red River Native, Toronto Star, May 8, 1942

• Sapper Francis Xavier Longlad

• Longlade Family VMFL

• Dusome-Clermont Family VMFL

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