A Métis Mail Route Routine

For generations, Métis mail carriers served as vital linkages between Métis communities, maintaining important family and political connections across vast distances during all seasons. Facing such harsh and unpredictable conditions, maintaining a consistent personal routine was an essential part of Métis mail carriers’ ongoing resilience and success—especially in the depths of a harsh Upper Great Lakes winter.

Later in his life, retired Métis mail carrier Michael Labatte spoke to journalist A.C. Osborne about his former nightly wintertime routine along his mail route between Penetanguishene and Sault Ste. Marie:

“Dig a hole in the snow with my snow-shoes, spread spruce boughs, eat piece of cold pork, smoke pipe and go to sleep.”

Labatte’s recollections not only demonstrate the value that Métis mail carriers placed in maintaining consistency within their ever-changing environment, but also of the intimate place-based knowledge they carried of the lands and waters of their Upper Great Lakes mail routes that enabled them to persist no matter the conditions they faced.

See Our Sources

• The Migration of Voyageurs from Drummond Island to Penetanguishene in 1828

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