Weekly Word Search: Mar 3 - Mar 7, 2025
- Ontario Métis Facts
- Mar 8
- 6 min read
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Métis Women Invent the Mackinaw Jacket
Métis women played many roles during the War of 1812, including harvesting, caring for the sick, and inventing a familiar piece of clothing: the Mackinaw jacket.
In the winter of 1812, a British commander at St. Joseph Island, Captain Roberts, realized he had no suitable winter clothing for his soldiers:
"All hopes having now ceased of the arrival of the schooner Hunter or any other vessel from Amherstburg with the clothing of the detachment, I am this day obtaining, upon my requisition to the storekeeper of the Indian Department, a consignment of heavy blankets, to make their greatcoats, a measure the severity of the climate strongly demands.”
The storekeeper of that Indian Department was a Métis man named John Askin Jr.
Roberts secured the necessary blankets from the Hudson’s Bay Company. He then commissioned Askin to enlist Métis women to make the garments:
“Within a few hours the King’s store had put on the appearance of a wholesale tailorshop for John Askin had eight or ten white and half breed women to work on the blankets, making the great coats for the King’s soldiers.”
The women worked tirelessly and completed the coats in only two weeks.
These stylish and functional double-breasted coats, deemed “superior to the regulation army coat… warmer and of finer appearance”, are now known as Mackinaw jackets. They are made of thick wool and generally have a black-and-red or black-and-white plaid pattern.
Without these “great” Mackinaw jackets and the Métis women who made them, many soldiers would have nearly frozen to death in the Upper Great Lakes’ fierce winter conditions.
This stylish creation, which has endured the test of time, is a testament to the skill and resourcefulness of Métis women in the Upper Great Lakes.
Click here to view the original story and sources.
Rosette Boucher’s Métis Memories
Rosette Boucher (nee Larammee) was born on a cold December 12, 1815 to Jaques Adam Laramee, North West Company employee and War of 1812 veteran, and Rosette Cloutier, a “half-breed woman” from Mackinaw Island in the Upper Great Lakes.
Rosette’s upbringing was grounded in her Métis community’s traditional way of life, including participating in the annual spring sugar camps common among Métis families throughout the Upper Great Lakes.
In 1828, however, at just thirteen years of age, Rosette made the treacherous voyage to Penetanguishene with her family and other members of her Métis community, after being displaced from Drummond Island following the British ceding the island to the Americans after the War of 1812.
“We came in a large bateau with two other families and a span of horses. Our family consisted of father, mother, four children—Julien, Zoa, James, and myself. James was only two years old. I was about thirteen. “
Later in her life, Rosette recounted this memory and many others of her Métis community in an interview with journalist A.C. Osborne, including those of other women, like Angelique Lepine (nee Cadotte), as well as the knowledgeable wife of the stubborn and ill-fated Pierre Rondeau:
“Pierre Rondeau, while planting potatoes, found a root of la carotte à moureau, and his wife took it away from him. While she was getting dinner he ate some and died.”
Rosette would eventually marry fellow Drummond Islander, Jean Baptiste Boucher, and have several children. Like those of her descendants, Rosette's vibrant memories continue to live on in the Georgian Bay Métis Community.
Click here to view the original story and sources.
Angelique Langlade’s Métis Humour
Angelique Langlade was one of the historic Georgian Bay Métis Community’s Métis matriarchs who, despite relocation from Penetanguishene to Drummond Island after the War of 1812, kept her Métis community’s spirit and memories alive.
Later in her life, “at an advanced age” that not even she could remember, Langlade shared her memories with journalist A.C. Osborne. Identifying herself as a “half-breed,” and despite her limited command of the English language—a reality for many from Drummond Island—Angelique’s “simple but expressive style” of storytelling was so compelling that Osborne felt the need to present it almost verbatim.
Angelique’s rich sense of humour, in particular, shone throughout her recollections in the absurdities—big and small—that she pointed out in herself and the events of her life.
In one example of playful self-deprecating humour, the then-elderly Angelique Langlade couldn’t help poking fun at herself about her age—and perhaps her failing memory—in her broken English, saying: “I not know how old I be—ha-a—I no chicken—me.”
When she similarly couldn’t remember her exact age when her family was relocated from Drummond Island to Penetanguishene, Langlade playfully brushed it off, saying:
“I tink bout seven, ten, mebbe thirteen year ole when we come Pentang. Mebbe some day God tell me how ole I be when I die.”
Yet, Angelique’s humour enabled her to clearly recall a particular priest’s amusing mistake that left a particularly interesting mark on her family—two sisters with the same name:
“Ma fadder, mudder, Charlie, Louie, Pierre, two Marguerites, Angelique, dats me, an Delede, all come in big bateau from Nort shore. Priess mak mistak an baptise two Marguerites.”
Despite forced relocations, restrictive government policies, and countless personal hardships, Angelique Langlade’s rich sense of Métis humour remains one of the many enduring bonds that connects the Métis in the Upper Great Lakes to this day.
Click here to view the original story and sources.
The Nolin Sisters’ Educational Legacy
The Métis Nolin family, originally from the Upper Great Lakes, have left a legacy across the Métis Homeland. This includes the Nolin sisters, Marguerite and Angelique.
Marguerite and Angelique Nolin were the children of trader Jean Baptiste Nolin and his Métis wife, Marie Angelique Couvret. Raised on Michilimackinac, the birthplace of many Métis families in the region, the Nolins moved to Sault Ste. Marie in the late 1780s and quickly set down roots along the St. Mary’s River thanks to their mother’s family connections.
After their brothers, Louis and Augustin, moved to the Red River in 1819, many of the remaining Nolin family members, including Marguerite and Angelique, moved westward—first to Pembina, and then north to Red River. There, the Nolins quickly became notable figures in the growing Métis community in Red River.
Marguerite and Angelique soon gained prominence in Red River, for example, by establishing the first girls’ school on the prairies in 1829. There, Marguerite and Angelique Nolin educated many young Métis women, including a young Josephte Siveright, the future mother of Métis leader and martyr Elzear Goulet.
The Nolin sisters’ involvement in shaping the minds of young Métis at Red River deepened their family’s roots throughout the Métis Homeland and contributed to their lasting legacy within the Métis Nation. The impact the Nolin sisters left on their Métis communities can still be felt in the generations of Métis women who came after.
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Madeline Laframboise: Métis Entrepreneur
Michilimackinac, or Mackinac Island, was “an eighteenth century nexus for the Great Lakes fur trade” where many Métis families like the Langlades, Cadottes, and Nolins emerged as leading families within the emerging Métis political consciousness in the Upper Great Lakes.
Within that often male-dominated business world, Métis matriarch Madeline Laframboise was renowned for her entrepreneurial prowess and success. Laframboise was “a tall and commanding figure, and most dignified deportment”, fuelled by her “vast deal of energy and enterprise."
Madeline emerged as the successful owner of a string of trading posts around Mackinac Island, for which she was later described as being “no ordinary woman—probably for succeeding in an exclusively male trade.”
Madeline’s enduring entrepreneurial spirit and drive to succeed in a male-dominated field was likely inspired by the death of her French fur-trading father, after which she and her sisters married traders, and eventually became successful in their own right.
Madeline was an important matriarch in the Upper Great Lakes Métis world, standing as godparent to many Métis children, and recorded as a distinguished guest at a Métis wedding in 1819.
Madeline’s position both as a matriarch and a businesswoman also made her a key figure within broader Métis kinship networks throughout the Homeland. Madeline’s nephew, Joseph Laframboise, for example, later moved to Red River, where his daughters and granddaughters became matriarchs of the Fisher and Dumont families—both well-known names within Métis communities on the Prairies.
Madeline Laframboise’s entrepreneurial spirit and tireless drive to succeed have left a lasting legacy, and serve as an inspiration for Métis women from the Upper Great Lakes-westward to this day.
