Métis Youth Entrepreneurship | Ontario Métis Facts

Métis youth have a long history of entrepreneurship, often leading to long and successful careers as independent businesspeople and Métis community leaders.

One such young Métis entrepreneur was the Georgian Bay Métis Community’s Lewis (Louie) Solomon. While “it was the fond hope of the family that Louie would succeed his father in the Government service as Indian interpreter,” Lewis would later recall that it was his early experiences joining his father on work assignments that gave him his first taste of what would become a lifetime of entrepreneurship:

“I remember… several gentlemen, starting for a trip to Manitoulin and the ‘Sault’ accompanied by my father as interpreter, myself … I was attendant on Lord Morpeth and Lord Lennox. I was obliged to look after their tents, keep things in order and attend to their calls. Each had a separate tent. My first salute in the morning would be, ‘Louie, are you there? Bring me my cocktail’… When Lord Morpeth asked me what he should pay me for my attendance I said, ‘Whatever you like, I leave that to yourself.’... He gave me the handsome sum of two hundred dollars, besides a present of ten dollars in change on the way down, which I was keeping in trust for him.”

Lewis would go on to build a “jack-of-all-trades” career, in professions as diverse as interpreting, captaining ships, and guiding visitors across the waters of Georgian Bay of which he was deeply familiar—and through which he served as one of his Métis community’s first ambassadors—believing in the value of earning what was “mine by merit”.

Fellow Georgian Bay Métis Community member—and occasional guiding colleague—Michel (Michael) Labatte similarly started his entrepreneurial journey as a Métis youth, later recalling: “My father was married twice. I was the eldest of the first family, and worked for myself since I was fourteen years old.”

In addition to being a volunteer in the local militia, Michel Labatte built a career as a successful Upper Great Lakes guide, an independent contractor, a “fireman for three summers on the steamer Gore”, and a Métis mail carrier who traversed the vital three-hundred-mile communication route between Penetanguishene and Sault Ste. Marie.

It was through his deep connections throughout the Upper Great Lakes that Michel Labatte became a prominent Métis political advocate, eventually signing Métis petitions in both Penetanguishene (1840) and Sault Ste. Marie (1850).

Lewis Solomon and Michel Labatte’s legacy of Métis youth entrepreneurship continues to this day.

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