Weekly Word Search: Apr 21 - Apr 25, 2025
- Ontario Métis Facts
- Apr 26
- 6 min read
Updated: May 21
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“the MNC was aware of the territories”
Despite the Métis Nation of Ontario’s longstanding public assertions related to seven historic rights-bearing Métis Nation communities in northern Ontario, the recently coined, “notion of ‘new historic communities’ has been used as a weapon against the MNO by those who disagree that these communities might be a part of the larger Métis Nation or, moreover, oppose Métis rights assertions in the province of Ontario.”
In its Final Report, the Métis National Council Expert Panel responded to revisionist attempts to rewrite Métis Nation history, such as those attempting to label historic Métis Nation communities in Ontario as “new”, while ignoring their clear inclusion in publicly available documents known to the broader Métis Nation for over a decade:
“The MNO was the first Métis government to complete harvesting negotiations with a provincial government, known as the [2004] Four Points Agreement. The Four Points Agreement led to the creation of harvesting territories, and a map which depicted Métis harvesting areas in Ontario. This map shows all the communities that were confirmed to be historical Métis communities in 2017.”
The Expert Panel further affirmed that the seven historic Métis Nation communities in northern Ontario represented by the MNO—including the extent of their harvesting-related rights assertions published in 2004—were also celebrated by Métis Nation leaders from across the Homeland, including then-MNC President, Clement Chartier, who spoke at the announcement ceremony for the 2004 Four Point Agreement:
“‘no one claimed the MNO was threatening the Metis Nation’s territorial integrity. In fact, it was celebrated.’ Clément Chartier also publicly endorsed the Four Points Agreement, and maps depicting the harvesting area were used in Métis rights presentations by the MNO. This evidence makes it clear that the MNC was aware of the territories that the MNO was claiming as historical Métis territory before 2017.”
President Chartier’s congratulatory remarks at the MNO’s 2004 Four Points Agreement announcement added to generations of documentary evidence affirming the Métis Nation’s knowledge of, acceptance, and consistent support for historic Métis Nation communities in northern Ontario.
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“a broken English patois… all their own”
Historic Métis communities in northern Ontario have been bound together by common history, culture, kinship, and political identity for generations. This includes a common language that has distinguished historic Métis communities from neighbouring peoples.
For example, the Georgian Bay Métis Community has been noted for and identified by its common language and distinct linguistic style for nearly two centuries.
In his 1901 chronicles of the historic Georgian Bay Métis Community following its relocation from Drummond Island to Penetanguishene after the War of 1812, journalist A.C. Osborne “endeavoured to gather this story from the lips of the few survivors who migrated at the time”. Several of Osborne’s accounts highlight the Georgian Bay Métis Community’s common and unique language, that set it apart from other communities around them.
For example, on Métis matriarch Angelique Longlade, Osborne noted that, “Her command of English is very limited, but her mixed dialect is so picturesque and pointed that I am constrained to present it in her own words”.
In his own account, former Métis mail carrier and political advocate, Michael Labbate, spoke to Osborne about the origins of his Métis community’s distinct linguistic style, saying: “Nothing but French and Indian was spoken at Drummond Island. I learned English at Penetanguishene, where I first heard it spoken.”
Two decades later, in 1921, a visiting reporter from the Toronto Star similarly identified unique and common language as one of the Georgian Bay Métis Community’s distinguishing features:
“Pinery Point is a wooded peninsula directly across the bay from Penetanguishene… Along its shores dwells a group of people half French and half Indian, isolated in location, distinct in habits and privileges, and fiercely resentful of intrusion on either. It is the origin of these picturesque metis or halfbreeds … they are almost all illiterate and speak a broken English patois which is all their own.”
A century onward, the Georgian Bay Métis Community’s common language, way of life, and political identity were again recognized in the Métis National Council Expert Panel’s landmark Final Report which found that the Georgian Bay Métis Community “clearly meets the threshold and is a member of the Métis Nation” as per the National Definition and contemporary Métis governance, and “strongly satisfies each of the four Sash Threads of distinct Métis ancestry... and cultural distinctiveness even through the 20th century.”
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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.
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“five days without food”
For Métis mail carriers, changing seasons brought unpredictable conditions that pushed their knowledge of the lands and waters of their mail routes to extreme limits.
Later in his life, retired Métis mail carrier Michael Labatte recounted two such harrowing early spring adventures along his mail route between Penetanguishene and Sault Ste. Marie, in which soft ice and quickly rising floodwaters created life and death survival situations:
“I was in the Shawanaga country for furs on two occasions when I could not get out, on account of floods. I was four days without food, which was cached at the mouth of the river. At another time I was five days without food, except moss off the rocks on account of floods and soft weather.”
Despite being separated from his food supply and alone on the land while most plants still laid dormant from winter, Michael Labatte’s place-based Métis knowledge and profound resiliency enabled him to persevere and live to tell the tales of his life’s incredible adventures in service to his community.
Click here to view the original story and sources.
Sugaring: A Métis Family Tradition
The spring maple sugar harvest has been an important seasonal Métis community tradition for generations. For many, the annual maple sugar harvest has involved the entire family.
In a late March 1853 journal entry, for example, Mattawa postmaster Colin Rankin noted of the Métis Langevin family that it was “Mme. Langevin and family” who “started out to their sugary”. This built upon earlier entries, including one from early January 1849 in which the Langevin family was noted as “making a camp above the fort”. By April of that year, “Langevin traded 100 lbs of maple sugar” at the Mattawa post.
Métis families on Drummond Island similarly took part in the annual maple sugaring tradition ahead of their community’s relocation to Penetanguishene. Later in her life, for instance, Georgian Bay Métis Community matriarch, Rosette Boucher (nee Larammee), remembered participating in her Métis family’s annual spring maple sugar harvest as a child, recounting, “We left Drummond Island in April, 1828, and were in the sugar camp when some of the others started.”
In nearby Sault Ste. Marie, the spring maple sugar harvest was a particularly important part of the local Métis economy, grounded in the community’s traditional River Lots along the St. Mary’s River, from which, “The half-breeds depend upon fish, from September till sugar-making.”
Every Métis River Lot family had a designated sugar bush along “the hill” at the far end of their River Lot, so that they could participate in the annual maple sugar harvest. As late as 1889, the Miron family were still harvesting sugar on their section of “the hill” decades after most of their Métis community had been displaced by recent settlers.
Many Métis families carry on their community’s annual spring maple sugar harvest tradition to this day.
