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Many identities, all remarkable

When she was 16, Marie Rose Delorme Smith was sold into marriage by her mother to a whiskey trader who was nearly two decades her senior.

When she was 16, Marie Rose Delorme Smith was sold into marriage by her mother to a whiskey trader who was nearly two decades her senior.

The woman of French-Métis ancestry was born in Western Canada during the fur trade era, a challenging time of great changes.

Despite being traded into marriage for $50, Smith harboured no bitterness about her fate but went on to raise 17 children, establish a boarding house, take a homestead in Southern Alberta, and serve as medicine woman and midwife before dying at age 99 in 1960. Most remarkably, Smith, who had been educated by nuns in St. Boniface, Man., was able to publish several articles in the early ranch periodical, Canadian Cattleman.

The fact that a Métis woman born in 1861 could write about her life made her a great subject for a biography, said author Doris Jeanne MacKinnon of Red Deer.

“We want to know about people in the fur trade, but there isn’t that much documentation left. We particularly don’t know much about Métis women of that era, but she was able to write in French and English and left records.”

Using Smith’s own writings — including diary entries, articles and fictional stories — and interviews with her surviving family members, MacKinnon turned the history thesis she wrote at the University of Calgary into the book, The Identities of Marie Rose Delorme Smith: Portrait of a Métis Woman, 1861-1960.

Her 195-page biography, published by the University of Regina Press, is now nominated for the Publishing in Education Award at the Saskatchewan Book Awards.

“I am excited, especially because it’s in the category it’s in,” said MacKinnon, who wrote the book to be readable for anyone, but would like school districts to make it available in libraries as a student resource.

MacKinnon, who has a PhD in history and teaches management and ethics at Olds College, found her subject and the changing environment of the Western plains during the late 1800s and early 1900s fascinating.

Smith, whose extended family members rode with Louis Riel, was clearly proud of her Métis identity, which came through in her writings. MacKinnon said Smith and other Métis women often acted as “cultural brokers” between aboriginals and non-aboriginals trading and travelling on the Canadian Prairies.

Her book can be ordered for $34.95 from Chapters or from www.dorisjeannemackinnon.com.

lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com