Weekly Crossword: Jun 16 - Jun 20, 2025
- Ontario Métis Facts
- Jun 21
- 7 min read
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Protecting Métis Families’ Fishing Traditions
On June 20, 1898, lightkeeper William Baxter wrote to the Department of Marine and Fisheries from Gin Rock on Georgian Bay, near Penetanguishene, notifying authorities about a growing Métis fishing camp that refused to abide by recently imposed regulations in Ontario’s Fisheries Act:
“It was reported to me several times last summer that a half breed named William Dusome was using a seine for catching fish off this island and although I kept a lokout [sic] for him I was never able to see him using the seine but he was there much of the time. Now this summer this man has built a shanty on the island and along with three others has taken up his residence there.”
The Dusomes were one of countless Métis families across the Homeland who turned to commercial fishing both during and after the height of the historic fur trade, making it a substantial part of their livelihood and essential component of the shared Métis way of life. For many Métis families, commercial fishing was an intergenerational tradition and profession.
In some cases, like that of William Dusome’s Gin Islands fish camp, it was the eventual imposition and attempted regulation of Métis commercial fishing and other traditional economic practices by colonial governments that would lead to acts of individual and collective Métis resistance that have since become a defdining source of Métis collective pride and shared identity that continue to connect and inspire Métis people to this day.
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Métis Fishing and Resistance in Nipigon
For generations, family fishing—including commercial fishing—has been an important component of the Upper Great Lakes’ Northern Lake Superior Historic Métis Community’s traditional Métis way of life, including for the numerous Métis families living around Lake Nipigon.
The Nipigon-area’s prominent Métis de Laronde family, for example, has practiced a Métis way of life rooted in the region’s lands and waters for generations. The de Laronde’s fishing traditions are immortalized in a 1901 painting by William Armstrong, entitled Miss Le Ronde, Hudson Bay Post, Lake Nipigon, which depicts a young de Laronde family member making fishing nets at the water’s edge near the HBC post.
These important Métis family fishing traditions continued around Nipigon into the twentieth century. Lake Nipigon Métis Association founder, Patrick (Paddy) McGuire, for instance, “started working for the Hudson’s Bay Company at age 14, but soon started working on the fishing boats of Lake Nipigon an occupation he pursued for close to four decades.”
Like in other Métis communities across the Homeland, attempted imposition of government fishing regulations would eventually spark collective organizing and resistance by Nipigon’s Métis families.
A November 24, 1969 Calgary Harold article about a national Métis leadership gathering, for example, describes the ultimately successful “radical tactics” used by the Lake Nipigon Métis Association after the Government of Ontario refused to grant them a commercial fishing licence. Within the piece, Lake Nipigon Métis Association representative, Mike McGuire, explained:
“Finally, when we’d tried everything, we told them: ‘if the lake isn’t going to be good for us, it isn’t going to be good for anybody…’ We told them we’d put lampreys in it and stuff like that.”
Despite their radical threats—made to protect Nipigon’s longstanding Métis fishery from “white ‘racist’ discrimination”—the McGuires and other Métis families in Nipigon have always retained a deep and driving commitment to conservation and the preservation of their region’s precious natural heritage for future generations.
Before his passing, for example, Métis Elder and Captain of the Hunt, Phil McGuire dedicated his final years to raising awareness about protecting spawning walleye mothers—taking time each year to lift them one-by-one over the dam at the Black Sturgeon River on Lake Superior, to ensure they could reach their spawning grounds.
Phil’s “Save the Mothers” campaign remains a testament both to his personal passion and conservation ethic, as well as his Métis community’s rich and enduring fishing traditions.
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The Roussain Family’s Fishing Traditions
Like many Métis families in the Upper Great Lakes and across the Homeland, fishing has been central to the livelihood and traditions of the Roussain family for generations.
An 1861 official report to Parliament, for example, noted Charles Roussain’s commercial fishing lease north of Sault Ste. Marie: “Charles Roussain, half-breed, trader, hunter and fishery lessee; has a small clearance. 3rd. Agiwana [sic].”
A census from that same year, enumerating Charles Roussain as an “H.B.” or Half-Breed, also included a handwritten note highlighting the Roussain family’s fishing activities at their Roussainville fishing station on Mamainse Harbour, near Coppermine Point:
“[Charles Roussain] head of this family living at the Mamainse and that the man catched a quantity of fish every year which he sold on the American side.”
For several generations, the Roussains operated the fishing station at Roussainville, where they also served as lighthouse keepers.
By about 1920, however, the Roussains had moved north and permanently settled at Agawa Bay alongside members of the Métis Miron, Boissonneau, and Davieaux families. For more than 60 years, these four Métis families—and their many relatives who came and went with the seasons—fished, hunted, gardened, harvested maple sugar, cut wood, and guided tourists.
In 1967, however, government officials arrived in float planes and told the Agawa Bay families they had to leave in order to facilitate the establishment of Lake Superior Provincial Park—ultimately burning the Métis families’ homes to the ground.
While the forcible removal of Agawa Bay’s Métis families forever altered their traditional fishing economy and deep multi-generational connections to the nearby lands and waters, they have resiliently endured and continued to resist the government’s attempted erasure of their village ever since by telling their stories and ensuring that Agawa Bay’s history and the beautiful Métis way of life they shared there is never forgotten.
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Boucher Family Fishing at Michipicoten
Located at the halfway point between Fort William and Sault Ste. Marie—and on a natural water route to Moose Factory—Michipicoten was a fur trade nexus for Métis family networks and economic interests, inclusding for independent traders like the forbears of the Métis Cadotte and Nolin families, and Métis professional harvesters like the Boucher family.
Métis fishermen Toussaint Boucher and his family, for example, were critical to keeping their Métis community and the Michipicoten post fed through their fisheries.
On January 24, 1840, for instance, Hudson’s Bay Company Officer Roderick McKenzie remarked upon Boucher’s successful ice spear fishery, noting:
“Boucher speared 5 trout under the ice today, certainly at some risk to life since it is not (the ice) above 2 ½ inches thick.’ He speared three more on 30 January, 5 on 9 March, 13 on the 10th, 7 on 11th, and 6 on the 12th.”
Like many Métis commercial fisheries across the Homeland, Toussaint Boucher’s activities involved other members of his Métis family. Another Michipicoten post journal from October that same year, for example, notes:
“Boucher with his wife arrived from his fishery at Cape des Echaillon and reports having been pretty successful as he has salted 25 barrels of Trout, one barrel and a half more than was caught last year at the same place.”
Métis family fisheries, like the Bouchers’ at Michipicoten, not only promoted a shared Métis way of life across the Homeland but also served to carve out prosperous Métis niches within the fur trade economy that enabled their Métis families and communities to thrive for generations.
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Dusome Family Fishing and Resistance
Though originally from the Red River region, the Métis Dusome family relocated to the Upper Great Lakes region by the early 1830s, first to Sault Ste. Marie, then onto Penetanguishene where they were welcomed and integrated within the Georgian Bay Métis Community’s rich family and kinship networks, marrying into several of Penetanguishene’s Métis families, including the Longlade, Berger, Beausoleil, Trudeau, and Cadieux families.
At Penetanguishene and its surrounding islands, members of the Dusome family took up professions rooted in Georgian Bay’s abundant waters over the coming generations.
Francois Dusome Jr., for instance, was born in Red River in the early 1820s and later served as Penetanguishene’s harbour master in the 1890s.
Several of Francois’ sons also became well-known Métis commercial fishers. For example, an 1876 poem chronicled Francois’ son, Fred Dusome, as one of “Seven Young Fishermen” who fished together in Penetanguishene alongside members of other Métis families including the Longlade, Giroux, Gendron, and Precourt families.
In 1898, Fred’s brother, William Dusome, resisted Ontario fishing regulations that threatened his community’s collective Métis way of life and traditional fishing economy. Dusome’s fishing camp near Gin Rock on Georgian Bay ultimately became the subject of a June 20, 1898 letter to the Department of Marine and Fisheries:
“It was reported to me several times last summer that a half breed named William Dusome was using a seine for catching fish off this island and although I kept a lokout [sic] for him I was never able to see him using the seine but he was there much of the time. Now this summer this man has built a shanty on the island and along with three others has taken up his residence there.”
A generation later, a then-elderly William Dusome was still fishing the waters of Georgian Bay. In a 1921 Toronto Star article about the still-distinct Métis community at Penetanguishene, Dusome is described (though not by name) alongside his younger brother, Isidore, known by his nickname, “McKoy”:
“His big brother turned out to be a frolicsome lad of 86 summers, who was off on a jaunt across the bay guiding a fishing party.”
The enduring spirit and resilience of Métis fishing families, like the Dusomes, continue to inspire and uplift their Métis communities to this day.
