The columnist's great-grandmother Flora Parenteau, in her later years, measures hide for moccasins in an undated family photograph, and great-grandfather Samuel Parenteau in 1916 in his military uniform graces the cover of Audrey M. Breaker's anthology of family stories. PHOTO BY JOLYNN PARENTEAU
Nov. 16 is Louis Riel Day, commemorating the Father of the Metis’ life and legacy. Across Canada, people are gathering together to share stories, music, meals and dances in a weeklong celebration of Metis history.
This Metis Week, and with Indigenous Veterans Day on Nov. 8 preceding La Zhoornii poor lii Salda (Michif, Remembrance Day) just passed, I am thinking of my own forefathers.
What were their priorities? What brought them joy? What worried them? What did they imagine and hope for the lives of their children’s future generations, if they did give thought to us?
Snapshots of my paternal ancestors’ history are captured in cousin Audrey M. Breaker’s anthology A Place to Call Home: The Fathers and Grandfathers of the Paddle Prairie Metis Settlement.
My great-grandfather Samuel Parenteau was born Oct. 2, 1898 in Saskatchewan. At 17, Samuel served four months in the Canadian military with the 197th Battalion known as the “Vikings of Canada,” a unit based in Winnipeg in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War, before his father Joseph caught up with him and had him discharged for serving underage.
What would drive a boy to run away to join a war? Was it the promise of steady pay, adventure however treacherous, or a sense of patriotism? Were Samuel’s friends also enlisting? One Canadian First World War recruitment propaganda poster implied an obligation to “join your chums,” another advertising “Come now! Pay begins at once.”
On May 11, 1916 and soon to be 18 years old, Samuel enlisted with the Royal Regina Rifles, this time alongside his father Joseph. An experienced ranch hand and horseman, Sam was assigned to the cavalry division to train war horses for the duration of the war.
Following The Great War, 24-year-old sweethearts Samuel Parenteau and Flora Anderson were married on Dec. 11, 1922. Eight children followed, including this writer’s grandfather Ambrose.
Samuel provided for his growing family as a rancher in Montana, labourer in Saskatchewan and building the highway between Banff and Jasper. In 1943, the family was invited to join the Paddle Prairie Metis Settlement, a newly founded community in northern Alberta. Along with their horses and cattle, the Parenteaus made the 800-kilometre journey from Rocky Mountain House by train, river barge, horse and wagon to reach Paddle Prairie, where they settled.
“My grandmother Flora always wore a flowered dress, and an apron. Only on Sundays or special occasions, did she wear more formal dresses,” writes cousin Audrey M. Breaker in her book, Surviving and Thriving in the North: The Mothers and Grandmothers of the Paddle Prairie Metis Settlement. “When you dropped in to see her, she was usually in the garden hoeing, or baking bread, or sewing, or knitting, or patching something. She was always busy.
“Her supermarket was the land, the rivers, and the Boreal forest, where she gathered the berries and the plants for medicine. Her sons provided the meat from the animals of the forest for nourishment, and the hides for moccasins and gloves.”
Samuel lived just to age 60, and Flora to age 72. Their lives were portraits of hard work, dedicated to raising up their large family. I like to imagine them hosting kitchen parties in their log home, dancing to the fiddle with their neighbours on Saturday nights.
Breaker dedicates her patriarchal family anthology in honour of our fathers and grandfathers, “ordinary men, with vision and foresight, who created a thriving community, a place where they were proud to raise their families, and provided a good life for them, and gave them a place to call home. Pimatisiwin; in Michif, we had a good life.”
Her stories of Paddle Prairie’s matriarchs Breaker dedicates to “the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and those yet unborn, so they will know who they are, who their mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers were … and how they shared their ways of knowing and the wahkohtowin (Michif, kinship) of the community.”
As part of Metis Week festivities, Thursday in Edmonton the Metis Nation of Alberta will host its Stories of Hope premiere, a documentary screening and book launch of the same name. This writer will take the stage for an author’s reading to share my personal story, Parenteau on the Prairies, which is published in the Stories of Hope anthology.
My hope for each of us is that we explore our culture, learn about our heritage, practise our ancestors’ language and continue to share our stories. In doing so, may we make our grandmother and grandfather ancestors very proud. Kaayaa chi Waaniihkayaahk; in Michif, Lest we Forget.
JoLynn Parenteau is a Metis writer out of Miywasin Friendship Centre. Column feedback can be sent to jolynn.parenteau@gmail.com
