“no house at Lafontaine when I first saw it”

Following their relocation from Drummond Island after the War of 1812, members of the historic Georgian Bay Métis Community became founding permanent residents of what would later grow into the Town of Penetanguishene and nearby Tiny Township. 

A generation later, many elderly Georgian Bay Métis Community members, like Lewis Solomon and Elizabeth Longlade (nee Dusome) remembered Penetanguishene’s pre-settlement era when the future town site was “mostly a cedar swamp, with a few Indian wigwams and fishing shanties”.

Others, like members of the Georgian Bay Métis Community’s Labatte family, held similar memories of nearby Tiny Township, including what would later become the village of Lafontaine. 

Renowned community political leader and Métis mail carrier, Michel Labatte, for example, would later recall to journalist A.C. Osborne that:

“There was no house at Lafontaine when I first saw it. It was first called Ste. Croix. The nearest house was my father’s, at Thunder Bay, about seven miles distant.”

Michel’s half-brother, Antoine Labatte, also shared additional details with Osborne about their Métis family’s earliest days in the area, following their unexpected landing at Thunder Bay, in Tiny Township, on a fateful Christmas eve in 1834:

“We built a place to winter in, then built a log house, and lived on the bay ever since. The old house is still standing… Camile Giroux was the next settler, about twenty years after we came.”

Community-held memories and accounts like those of the Labattes, Lewis Solomon, and Elizabeth Longlade (nee Dusome) are vivid reminders of the Georgian Bay Métis Community’s rich history in the Penetanguishene area and important role in growing a thriving community from the small military garrison and few crude buildings that first met the Métis Drummond Islanders upon their arrival.

See Our Sources

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

• Daughter of Red River Native, Toronto Star, May 8, 1942

• Upper Great Lakes Submission to the MNC Expert Panel

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