Weekly Crossword: Mar 17 - Mar 21, 2025
- Ontario Métis Facts
- Mar 22
- 6 min read
Updated: May 21
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Maple Sugaring on Métis River Lots
Historically, the Métis at Sault Ste. Marie had a diversified economy grounded in their community’s River Lots, as well as in the lands and waters of their surrounding traditional territory.
Métis families at Sault Ste. Marie engaged in a wide range of land- and water-based occupations, which included fishing, trapping, and maple sugaring, in addition to other income-earning endeavours.
In 1891, Stipendiary Magistrate E.B. Borron highlighted this diversity by noting that, “half-breed families were particularly numerous,” at Sault Ste. Marie. “They lived in log houses and when not employed by the Hon. Hudson Bay Company or others—as voyageurs, boatmen, couriers or laborers would eke out a subsistence by hunting and fishing or in various other ways.”
The spring maple sugar harvest was a particularly important seasonal cornerstone of the diverse traditional Métis economy and life at Sault Ste. Marie, highlighted in the 1859 Report of the Fishery Overseer for the Division of Lakes Huron and Superior: “The half-breeds depend upon fish, from September till sugar-making.”
Every Métis River Lot family had a designated sugar bush along “the hill” at the far end of the lots, so that they could participate in the harvest.
As late as 1889, the Miron family were still harvesting sugar on their section of “the hill” decades after the community had been displaced from their River Lots at Sault Ste. Marie.
Even with the loss of their River Lots and a continued influx of settlers, many Métis families continue to carry on the maple sugaring tradition around Sault Ste. Marie today.
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Métis Spring Traditions in Mattawa
In addition to Métis family ties and a vibrant culture of music and dance rooted in the fiddle and jigs, as early as the 1840s, Métis families in the Mattawa area maintained a strong traditional Métis economy and way of life, similar to those of other Métis communities in the historic North-West.
Spring was a particularly important time of year for many Métis families. In early January 1849, for instance, the Langevin family was noted as “making a camp above the fort” at Mattawa, referring to a traditional harvesting camp. By April that year, “Langevin traded 100 lbs of maple sugar” at the Mattawa post.
The following day, the industrious Langevins began clearing land nearby with the intention of farming. Not two weeks later, Mattawa postmaster Colin Rankin noted that “Langevin and one of his men sowing, the others are plowing.” Their successes were made clear in the 1861 census, which noted that the Langevins “farm exclusively and live comfortably by it.”
Many of the Langevins’ land-based harvesting endeavours also involved the entire family. In a late March 1853 entry, for example, Postmaster Rankin noted that it was “Mme. Langevin and family” who “started out to their sugary,” not M. Langevin.
Many of these important spring traditions carry on within the Mattawa Métis Community to this day.
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Filling the Ice House
Métis communities throughout the Homeland practiced a way of life that followed the seasons, nourishing themselves with what the lands and waters provided.
Filling the ice house was an important spring tradition in many Métis communities to help store perishable foods for the warmer months ahead. Ice houses preserved meat, fish, vegetables, and grain throughout the warming spring months and during the summer heat and helped keep food away from hungry animals.
As winter turned to spring, families would chop blocks of ice from frozen waterways to fill their well-insulated ice houses.
The small Métis fishing village of Killarney, on the eastern shore of Georgian Bay, was one of many Métis communities that made use of this important food-related practice. As noted by one traveller to the region in the 1800s:
“There was a small shop, a fish-packing and ice house, two or three shanties, then a large tent occupied by a half-breed family, the father a fisherman, with sons who aided him, and two pretty daughters.”
While modern refrigeration has largely made ice houses a thing of the past, Métis communities across the Homeland continue using their resourcefulness and knowledge of the changing seasons to preserve as much of the harvest as possible.
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Sharing Seasonal Métis Knowledge
Across the Métis Homeland, Métis communities’ deep seasonal knowledge has enabled them to practice a distinct way of life and sustain themselves from the lands and waters of their traditional territories for generations.
However, many newcomers to their territories, such as Ontario settler families, didn’t possess the same knowledge and skills and often struggled to survive within their new homes. St. Joseph Island settler, Christy Ann Simons, was one such newcomer.
Speaking of her early days on the island and her family’s lack of place-based knowledge, Simons later recounted, “St. Joe was beautiful, regardless of difficulties, but then it was no garden.”
Fortunately, despite the hardships they faced at the hands of encroaching settlers, St. Joseph Island’s Métis inhabitants generously shared their knowledge with Simons and her family:
“We children were so delighted with the trees. We had never seen evergreens before. We begged the half-breeds to tell us the names which we soon learned – Cedar, Spruce, Balsam, Hemlock, Tamarack, also Birch with its white bark was a never ending delight, ground hemlock, Balm O Gilead.”
In addition to helping the Simons family learn the island’s native plants, their Métis neighbours also shared their knowledge of how to work with different species, such as cedar, so that the settler family could build a new life for themselves with the materials the island provided—just as the Métis had done for generations:
“Now we were secure in our home… The roof was cedar bark. The half-breeds had shown how to prepare cedar bark for roofing.”
Accounts like Simons’ not only speak to the deep place-based and seasonal knowledge held within Upper Great Lakes Métis communities but also the important values they carried—such as generosity and taking care of your neighbours—that had enabled them to prosper together for generations.
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“I was thinkin of de ice”
Métis mail carriers like Louis Miron and Michel Labatte carried harrowing tales of service and survival. Many reflected on navigating the unique dangers of traveling vast distances in all seasons using their deep knowledge of the lands and waters of their mail routes.
The beginning of springtime, in particular, presented numerous dangers for Métis mail carriers, as the warming weather brought unpredictable and quickly changing ice conditions that could place mail carriers into life-and-death predicaments at any moment.
Long after his retirement, Métis mail carrier Louis Miron shared one such springtime tale with Edward H. Capp, Rector at St. Luke’s Pro-Cathedral, Algoma, for his annals of Sault Ste. Marie:
“I remember one day we leave Killarney early in de morning, de day was fine an de sun she high above in de heaven. Everybody was happy but me and I was thinkin of de ice. How she stan us? we haf no dogs wid us. Only my uncle an me was togeder. Well we start out early ‘cross de lak and work our way ‘long and everywhere we strike de pool, but I not think much of dat till ‘bout five mile out I was busy thinkin of something else and forget altogeder I was on de lak I heard someding crack. Den, I tell you, I not forget no more, but we both jump at de same tam, and when my uncle he come down again he go clean thro’.”
Drawing upon his life’s experiences and knowledge of the precarious ice conditions, Miron quickly jumped into action, using a long pole to save his uncle from the frigid waters before sending him onward to safety:
“What I do? No courir, he not ready for dat. We haf de long pole an I run dat pole ond to him and he grab it, and little by little he work his way on to de solid ice. We no say a word, we just work, an when he get out he tak de sleigh an’ start for de town as fas’ as he can do. Dat kep’ him from freezing, and when I get der too, we was all right.”
Such stories speak to the immense seasonal knowledge of Métis mail carriers and their deep commitment to serving their communities despite the ever-present dangers and high personal costs.
