“worked for myself since I was fourteen”

In addition to being a key figure in Upper Great Lakes Métis political advocacy during the mid-1800s, signing Métis petitions in both Penetanguishene (1840) and Sault Ste. Marie (1850), Michel (Michael) Labatte was also a successful lifelong Métis entrepreneur.

Later in his life, Michel Labatte would speak about his entrepreneurial beginnings to journalist A.C. Osborne: “My father was married twice. I was the eldest of the first family, and worked for myself since I was fourteen years old.” 

Labatte’s career of independent business was long and diverse. 

In addition to being a volunteer in the local militia, Michel Labatte was a successful Upper Great Lakes guide who collaborated with other Métis guides like Lewis Solomon, a contractor who “was sent by the Government to clear the land where Waubaushene now stands” where he also “planted potatoes and sowed grain”, and a “fireman for three summers on the steamer Gore, commanded by Captain Fraser, who married a daughter of Hippolyte Brissette,” and his Métis wife, Archange L'Hirondelle who came to Penetanguishene from the prairies in the 1840s. 

Michel Labatte is perhaps best remembered, though, for his work as a Métis mail carrier, traversing the vital three-hundred-mile communication route between Penetanguishene and Sault Ste. Marie, often with “a sleigh and two dogs in fifteen days – snow three feet deep.”

Even as an elderly man, Michel Labatte’s lively spirit endured. A.C. Osborne captured this spirit in his preface to Michel’s narrative, where he couldn’t help but note that, “For a man of his years (over 85), Michael is vigorous and alert, and his memory is apparently intact.”

See Our Sources

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

• Given up for Dead

• 1840 Métis Petition from Penetanguishene

• 1850 Métis Petition from Sault Ste. Marie

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