A new book, Metis Pioneers: Marie Rose Delorme Smith and Isabella Clark Hardisty Lougheed, compares the lives of two Métis women after the fur trade, during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
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.
Author Doris Jeanne MacKinnon compares the survival strategies of the two women — one from the French-speaking free trade tradition and one from the English-speaking Hudson’s Bay Company tradition — who settled in southern Alberta.
Published by the University of Alberta Press, the 584-page book is described as the “compelling tale of two women’s acts of quiet resistance in the final days of the British Empire.”
The book is available in paperback by ordering online from Indigo or Amazon, and the ebook and PDF versions will be released in March. For the time being, it is not in Chapters or Indigo stores.
The author was interviewed last week on CBC Radio’s Homestretch.
