Weekly Word Search: May 26 - May 30, 2025
- Ontario Métis Facts
- May 31
- 6 min read
Updated: Jun 18
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“Penetanguishene was… a cedar swamp”
Members of the Georgian Bay Métis Community were among the Penetanguishene area’s earliest permanent residents following their Métis community’s relocation from Drummond Island to Penetanguishene after the War of 1812.
Many of the Georgian Bay Métis Community members who became Penetanguishene’s founding residents held memories of the town’s earliest days, including the day of their Métis families’ arrivals to the area in the late 1820’s, when even the British military establishment was scarcely more than a few crude buildings.
In the early 1900’s, for example, a then-elderly Lewis Solomon, recounted his family’s 1829 arrival and first impressions of Penetanguishene to reporter A.C. Osborne:
“We camped there in huts made of poles covered in cedar bark. There were only three houses there… The town site of Penetanguishene was then mostly a cedar swamp, with a few Indian wigwams and fishing shanties.”
While the Town of Penetanguishene and surrounding region would eventually grow around its founding Métis residents, like Solomon—with French, English and other settlers, and imposed government regulations impacting their Métis way of life—the Georgian Bay Métis Community resiliently maintained its distinct Métis identity, culture, and memories that continue to bind them to this day.
Click here to view the original story and sources.
“Half-Breeds… were Indians enough”
On May 27, 1893, Joshua Biron, an elderly member of the historic Sault Ste. Marie Métis Community, provided an official statement to Commissioner E.B. Borron about the events leading up the 1850 Robinson-Huron Treaty.
Within his testimony, Joshua Biron described negotiations between his Métis community and Anishinaabek leader, Chief Shingwaukonse, ahead of the Treaty’s signing, recalling:
“The Chief told us, that if we joined his band, became his men or soldiers – that he would work for us…only four of us agreed to join his band… all the other Half-Breeds said they were Indians enough without binding themselves to be under an Indian Chief.”
Biron’s account underscores that while there was mutual respect and connections between the Métis and the Anishinaabek, the Métis of Sault Ste. Marie clearly asserted their own political autonomy and distinct identity. That this moment remained vivid in Biron’s memory decades later speaks to the importance the Métis community placed on their self-determination.
Joshua Biron’s account and many others like it from the time affirm that the Sault Ste. Marie Métis Community has seen itself—and was seen by others—as a distinct, self-governing political entity for generations. This strong sense of Métis identity and independence continues to define the community today.
Click here to view the original story and sources.
“pioneer resident of Penetanguishene”
Elizabeth Longlade (nee Dusome) of the historic Georgian Bay Métis Community was one of Penetanguishene’s many Métis matriarchs and “pioneer resident[s]” who held rich memories of the region prior to its development by Euro-Canadian settlers.
Mrs. Longlade was “Born at Highland Point, across the bay from town,” in 1847—a generation after much of her Métis community had been relocated to Penetanguishene from Drummond Island after the War of 1812.
In a May 8, 1942 Toronto Star article, Mrs. Longlade, then 95 years old, recalled that even during her childhood in the 1840’s, Penetanguishene remained a relatively undeveloped “cedar swamp with a scattering of Indian wigwams and fishing shanties” with few settlers, similar to fellow Georgian Bay Métis Community member Lewis Solomon’s recollection of the region from a generation earlier.
Although Euro-Canadian settlers and government regulations gradually transformed the Penetanguishene area, the Georgian Bay Métis Community steadfastly preserved its unique identity, cultural practices, and shared history—memories and connections that continue to unite them to this day.
Click here to view the original story and sources.
“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.
Click here to view the original story and sources.
Breaching Crown-Métis Allyship in Penetanguishene
As Georgian Bay Métis Community member, Lewis Solomon, later recalled to journalist A.C. Osborne, when the Métis of Drummond Island first arrived in Penetanguishene, the future town site was home to only a small British military garrison with few permanent residents or structures:
“We landed at the Barrack’s Point, near the site of the garrison, and where the officers’ quarters were erected… There were only three houses there: a block-house, the quarters of Capt. Woodin, the post Commander; a log-house covered with cedar bark for the sailors near the shore; and a log-house on the hill, called the ‘Masonic Arms,’ a place of entertainment kept by Mrs. Johnson.”
Despite the alliance between the British and Métis, which was critical to preserving the Upper Great Lakes from American invasion during the War of 1812, the British increasingly began to ignore their Métis allies and the promises made to them once the Métis had relocated to Penetanguishene.
This included excluding Métis in Penetanguishene from receiving “presents”—a diplomatic tradition used by the Crown to maintain relations and alliances with Indigenous nations in the Great Lakes region prior to treaty-making—something the Métis in Penetanguishene knew their relatives in Sault Ste. Marie were still included in.
In response, in 1840, “Half breeds residing in the town of Penetanguishene” sent a petition to their Crown allies as a distinct Métis collective, raising the issue of growing inequity between the Métis at Penetanguishene and other Upper Great Lakes Métis settlements, citing that they did “not share in any advantage in presents issued to the Indians as a number of the half breeds, from the Sault St. Marie and other places on the shores of Lake Huron.”
Rathan than provide “the same advantages that persons of the same class derive”, as the Métis of Penetanguishene had requested in their petition, in 1842, the British formally moved to end the annual present-giving practice with their former Métis allies in Penetanguishene through the Mode of Excluding Half-Breeds, which prohibited “presents being issued to small bands, as they are at Drummond Island and Penetanguishine [sic]… preventing the improper class of half-breeds from receiving presents at Manitoulin Island and Penetanguishine [sic].”
Despite the Crown’s 1842 attempt to reduce the Métis community at Penetanguishene from political allies to governable British subjects through the Mode of Excluding Half-Breeds, the Georgian Bay Métis Community has resiliently maintained its distinct Métis identity, way of life, political consciousness, and sense of community for generations since.
