“jolly youth of some 75 years”

The Toronto Star’s 1921 article, Strange Old Legends Surround Penetang, shares colourful stories about several of Pinery Point’s Métis residents, who it strongly encourages “are worth meeting”. One of those Métis residents is Isidore “McKoy” Dusome.

Isidore Dusome was the son of Francois Dusome Jr., whose Métis family had relocated to the Upper Great Lakes from the Red River around the early 1830’s, 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, Labatte, Trudeau, and Cadieux families.

“McKoy”—a nickname taken “from a Scotch trader who sojourned in that locality”—was described by the Star as modest “youth of some 75 years”, who was proud of his Métis family and “with many ‘golly’s’ described the virtues of his ‘big bruddah’” William Dusome, who had once resisted Ontario fishing regulations that threatened his community’s collective Métis way of life and traditional fishing economy.

In contrast to “the terror of Penetanguishene” Paul Vasseur who was also described in Strange Old Legends Surround Penetang, there wasn’t “anything fierce or grand” about McKoy, the “short, jolly youth of some 75 years”, because “he chuckles too much and says ‘by gar’ and ‘golly’ too often between his chuckles.”

True to his upbeat and good-hearted nature, even when McKoy “launched a tirade” about a recent storm that had flattened his garden, it was “marred by chuckles” and a lighthearted assessment that it was “a bad thing for me, by gar!”

See Our Sources

• “Strange Old Legends Surround Penetang”

• Dusome-Clermont Family Vignette

• Francois Dusome Jr.’s Death Certificate

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