Many Métis communities across the Métis Nation Homeland had a distinctive way of building and designing their homes.
Métis in the Upper Great Lakes, for example, including Sault Ste. Marie and Georgian Bay, generally lived in detached wooden houses built from cedar bark and logs.
A home of the prominent Métis Cadotte family, for instance, located on Mackinaw Island, was described as, “Made of logs covered in cedar bark.”
It is thought the materials used in these houses took inspiration from First Nations’ wigwams. Métis community members, Angelique Longlade and Louise Solomon, for example, recounted constructing wigwams made of cedar bark upon arriving in Penetanguishene after their community’s relocation from Drummond Island.
Similarly, Métis Hudson’s Bay Company employees from the Abitibi-Inland Métis Community were also recorded living in wooden houses. As surveyor William E. Logan described:
“There is a small quantity of cultivated land about the house. The soil is gravelly. There are a few wooden houses in the vicinity for the servants or voyageurs of the Company all inhabited by halfbreeds.”
Further north, at Moose Factory, Métis also constructed their homes using the woodworking skills they developed while employed at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s coastal port.
The house that William and George McLeod built for George at Moose Factory in 1889-1890, soon after his marriage, utilized shipbuilding techniques that would have been familiar to those used in their employment for the HBC.