In the late 1700s, the North West Company and Hudson’s Bay Company began establishing fur trade posts in the Lac la Pluie and Rat Portage areas—present day Rainy Lake and Kenora.
Daily post journals recorded many of the activities in the region. This included fishing by local Métis.
Like many Métis communities in the Upper Great Lakes and farther west, Métis in the Lac la Pluie region were actively employed in commercial fishing activities that were essential to provisioning regional fur trade posts.
Of seventeen names associated with fishing in Hudson’s Bay Company post journals between the 1820s and 1840s, for example, six are identified as Métis. This includes members of the Auger, Chatelain, and McKay families.
Nicholas Chatelain, who later led the Métis in signing the Treaty 3 Half-Breed Adhesion, was described in the Hudson Bay Company’s 1825-26 Lac la Pluie district report as a particularly active and “good fisherman”.
William McKay was similarly described in the same Hudson’s Bay Company record as, “a superior fisherman”.
Commercial fishing remained an important part of Métis life around Lac la Pluie and Rat Portage throughout the fur trade period. That tradition continues today within the Northwestern Ontario Métis Community.