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After the bison herds dwindled, a number of Métis turned to farming, settling in Saskatchewan. Today, only a handful of the houses they built remain by Graham Chandler |
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IF YOU STROLLED PAST the maple trees in front of 216 First Street in Duck Lake, Sask., the dog tied on the front porch might bark, but all in all the house would appear little different from others that line the boulevards of the small town. For unless you look behind the building's yellow siding, it's not apparent that the house holds a place in Canadian history. Built in 1894, 216 First Street is one of just a handful of Métis folk houses remaining in Canada. Under the siding, finely crafted dovetail joints marry logs that were hand hewn and squared by veterans of the 1885 Riel Rebellion, whose first shots were fired near this town. "When we moved into the house, we had no idea it had any special historical significance," recalls Ron Bazylak, who bought the building six years ago. "One day, we tried to pull a spike out of the wall. We used nail pullers, crowbars and levers, but it stayed put. We realized there was something unusual about the construction but not that it was a Métis folk house." It was an archaeologist friend who put two and two together. The Métis are descendants of unions between aboriginals and Europeans that developed during the days of the Western Canadian fur trade, which began in the mid-1600s. By the mid-1800s, the Métis had become a distinct people, with an identifiable culture that incorporated elements of both its European and its aboriginal roots and had a language of its own, known at Michif. By 1870, about 10,000 Métis lived in and around the Red River Settlement (now Winnipeg). Constituting the largest single Métis group, they derived their livelihood from the fur trade and communal bison hunts. During the next decade, however, an influx of settlers from Ontario forced many of these Métis to move farther west. Bison herds were dwindling, and they needed to find an alternative means of supporting themselves. Many turned to farming. By 1880, a substantial number of Métis had settled in what is now Saskatchewan, many in the former parish of St. Laurent de Grandin, which included Duck Lake. |
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The homes they built had a distinct architectural style. The St. Laurent folk houses, as scholars came to call them, generally had one and a half storeys and a medium-pitched gable roof. The houses usually had a central front door with windows placed symmetrically on either side. "The symmetry with which the façade is executed provides a Georgian-like architectural appearance that seems abruptly foreign to a recently transformed buffalo-hunting people," writes David Burley, an archaeology professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., in the journal Historical Archaeology. While the exterior of the houses reflect the Métis's European roots, the open interior reflects the communal life style of their aboriginal ancestors. "When one entered the ... house, one did not confront doors, formality or privacy, but came upon the range of activities incorporated with the Métis domestic sphere," writes Burley. "The interior of the house facilitated a flexible use of space, and it emulated the earlier floor plan of the expediently built wintering village structures."
Today, only eight St. Laurent folk houses remain. Two are still lived in, one has been preserved at the Batoche National Historic Site, and the remainder sit empty and forlorn in fields, silent reminders of Canada's rich Métis heritage. |
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Photography: Graham Chandler
Imaging: Athan Katsos |
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