A history instructor at Red Deer College has combined her love for writing and her interest in history in her book Metis Pioneers: Marie Rose Delorme Smith and Isabella Clark Hardisty Lougheed.
The Central Alberta Historical Society will host author Doris MacKinnon who will discuss her book at the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery on November 15 at 7 p.m.
In her book, MacKinnon compares the lives of two Métis woman: an English speaking woman — Isabella Clark Hardisty Lougheed and French speaking woman — Marie Rose Delorme Smith, after the fur trade era. MacKinnon said she wanted to compare survival strategies of a French-speaking Métis woman and an English-speaking Métis woman to see whether it was more challenging for one group over the other.
“We do know a bit more about women’s roles during the fur trade but we don’t always know about their roles after the fur trade [era] ended, and how they managed to adjust to the new society in the prairies,” she said.
MacKinnon said Delorme Smith was a published writer while Hardisty Lougheed was former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed’s grandmother. Both women came from wealthy fur trade families.
Her book focuses on late 1800s and early 1900s.
“We often don’t know the roles that Métis women played in these early prairie societies,” she said.
The women were involved in many organizations that were important at the time given there were no hospitals and schools, and they were instrumental in helping raise funds and opening up their homes for organizational meetings, said MacKinnon.
As a result of incoming settlers and increased rigid racial boundaries, the two women sometimes chose to publicly identify themselves as non-Indigenous, she said.
“As a matter of survival, they sometimes chose not to identify themselves as Indigenous,” she said.
MacKinnon, who lives in Red Deer County, is a program coordinator in the School of Continuing Education at RDC.
She has written another non-fiction book on Smith focusing on her roles as a mother, a married woman and a writer.
Metis Pioneers: Marie Rose Delorme Smith and Isabella Clark Hardisty Lougheed will be released in January. The book can be pre-ordered on Amazon and Chapters.
mamta.lulla@reddeeradvocate.com
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter