Society hopes to build Metis museum

Page 11

Annoyed by small inaccuracies found in current Metis history, an Edmonton society wants to open a museum in the near future to give people a better background of Metis history currently found in Canada.

The museum would exhibit historical Metis artifacts and be a resource center, according to Gordon Poitras, the main founder of the Louis Riel Historical Society.

He helped form the society in 1986 following an exhibition of Metis history at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary.

"We just weren't satisfied with it," he said. "It looked more like an RCMP display...a lot of people don't know what they're doing when it comes to Metis (displays)."

Besides holding historical exhibits, the society's museum would also be a resource center.

"We would like to have speakers that could go out to the schools and speak about what a Metis really is. We could appear at multicultural events," he explained. "I would have been ashamed to call myself a Metis with some of the things I was taught when I went to school."

Currently there are no predicted costs for the museum since it is just in the planning stage, said society president Sheila Hayes.

it will be a year-and-a-half to two years before the size, costs, location and uses are outlined.

Once planning is completed, the society will seek funding from corporate foundations, and municipal, provincial, and federal levels of government to build the museum.

Hayes, elected society president in 1987, previously developed a personal interest in Metis history and hopes to publish a book of her findings.

She has been tracing her family tree since 1984, following a discussion of her roots with her first cousins.

"I became interested in history because there was not much material on it during my school years, she said.

"I also researched areas and not only people. I was surprised at the impact that the Metis had on the development of the West."

Through preserved family records, "half-breed scrip" files and various documents found in Manitoba and Ottawa, Hayes traced her family roots to the late 1700s, when they lived in the St. Francis Xavier region just outside of Winnipeg.

But she reached beyond that, discovering that her first French ancestor landed in Canada in 1667.

"In my search, I've met people that I didn't know were related," she said, including many elders.

Her book will concentrate on the scene surrounding her ancestors in Manitoba -- the buffalo hunts and the fur trade -- and weave it with a description of early voyageurs and the competition that existed between the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company.

"I'm still working on two or three chapters," she said.

"It takes a lot of time because I want to have it as accurate as possible."