“five days without food”
- Ontario Métis Facts
- 6 days ago
- 1 min read
For Métis mail carriers, changing seasons brought unpredictable conditions that pushed their knowledge of the lands and waters of their mail routes to extreme limits.
Later in his life, retired Métis mail carrier Michael Labatte recounted two such harrowing early spring adventures along his mail route between Penetanguishene and Sault Ste. Marie, in which soft ice and quickly rising floodwaters created life and death survival situations:
“I was in the Shawanaga country for furs on two occasions when I could not get out, on account of floods. I was four days without food, which was cached at the mouth of the river. At another time I was five days without food, except moss off the rocks on account of floods and soft weather.”
Despite being separated from his food supply and alone on the land while most plants still laid dormant from winter, Michael Labatte’s place-based Métis knowledge and profound resiliency enabled him to persevere and live to tell the tales of his life’s incredible adventures in service to his community.
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