The Métis flag will fly once again at St. Albert Place this Friday as St. Albert celebrates its 15th annual Métis Week.
Students and dignitaries from Lois Hole Elementary, Campus Saint-Jean, city council and the Métis Nation of Alberta will gather at the St. Albert Place flagpoles Nov. 15 at 1:30 p.m. to raise the blue and white Métis flag in celebration of Métis Week.
Métis Week runs from Nov. 10 to 16 and is a chance for Métis residents in Alberta to share their history and culture with others. It coincides with the anniversary of the death of Louis Riel, the Métis leader who founded Manitoba and was executed on Nov. 16, 1885, for leading a resistance movement against Canadian encroachment on Métis lands.
The event will feature speeches, a voyageur song performed by Lois Hole Grade 2 students and free bannock, said organizer Sharon Morin.
Métis Week is an important time to showcase historic heroes to Métis children and remind others about the role the Métis played in Canadian history, Morin said.
“This is all part of our history of Canada,” she said, and it’s something to celebrate.
Our history
Celina Loyer, who is Métis and works at the Musée Héritage Museum, noted it was the Métis around Big Lake who lobbied Father Lacombe to come to this region, and the Métis who made up virtually all of St. Albert’s population for its first 20 years or so.
“They were running the businesses, they were running the farms, they were living on the river lots.”
Morin noted it was a committee of Métis residents who enacted St. Albert’s first bylaws in 1863, which covered everything from murder to horse theft to driving a sleigh without bells on. Renowned buffalo hunter Abram Salois was on that committee, and one of his descendents was learning Michif (the traditional language of the Métis) at Michif Cultural Connections today.
St. Albert’s first military force, the St. Albert Mounted Riflemen, was made up almost entirely of Métis residents who sought to defend this community against Riel’s 1885 North-West Resistance movement, Morin continued. St. Albert would host the first meeting of what is now the Métis Nation of Alberta in 1932, and later be home to Thelma Chalifoux, the first Métis woman appointed to the Senate.
St. Albert first celebrated Métis Week back on Nov. 16, 2004, the Gazette archives show. Back then, the Michif Institute had spent its first year as a museum in Juneau House, and events like the Métis Spring Festival (established in 2009) were a distant dream.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report, St. Albert’s healing garden and the renewed Founders' Walk have all raised the profile of Métis and Indigenous culture in town, Morin said. Today, she’s seeing more and more schools taking an in interest in Métis history and more people self-identifying as Métis.
St. Albert has long been home to the Métis, with Métis culture playing a vital role in the city’s history and future, Mayor Cathy Heron said in an email.
“The City is honored to celebrate Métis Week every November and we look forward to this year’s festivities.”
Morin said she would think of her mother, the late Thelma Chalifoux, and of the many others who had worked to promote Métis culture over the years as she watched this year’s flag raising.
