Métis Awareness, Louis Riel and the Road Allowance People: Display

The Red River cart in the Chilliwack UFV library's display cabinet is a custom-made gift from the Chilliwack Métis Association to the University.

Red River carts have become of visible symbol of Métis culture, but at one time the carts were an important part of life. Métis traders used the two-wheeled wooden carts, pulled by a horse or an ox, for carrying goods and furs in the Red River region before steam boats and railways replaced them. The highly versatile carts could be pulled apart to float down a river or used as a temporary shelter.

“In times of uncertainty, Métis people would live in the carts,” said Patrick Calihou, the Métis carver who custom-built the university’s cart. “You put a cover over it, bent sticks with some hides over it. You’re on the edge of the road, what are you going to do?”

Calihou makes his living recreating Metis culture. “Carving Red River carts is a way for me to honour those who came before us and those who will follow us,” he said.

The gift from the Chilliwack Métis Association to UFV is the culmination of partnerships between the library, UFV’s Indigenous Affairs Office, the Indigenous Student’s Centre and the Chilliwack Métis Association.

“The Chilliwack Métis Association governance board and elders honour and supports the university’s commitment to Indigenous educational programs, inclusive of Métis-specific courses,” said Louis De Jaeger, president of the Chilliwack Métis Association.  

Shirley Hardman, UFV’s Senior Advisor on Indigenous Affairs, had an idea about a metal silhouette of Métis leader Louis Riel and a quote from Riel, combined with an image that would convey the poverty of the Road Allowance People, a real Red River cart, sacks and household stuff in the cart, a baby in a cradleboard, an old tarp, a Métis sash, old suitcases, a metal pail, a Métis flag, sand on the road, rocks in a ditch, tumbleweeds in the foreground. It was all to paint a picture of poverty and struggle, a context for what life was like for Métis people in Canada who were not allowed to own property, and who lived in ditches and road allowance shacks. The plan included potential events, like moving Métis Day Awareness event to Chilliwack from Abbotsford, a possible Métis author reading, a library book display, a Métis awareness library event… Most of these ideas have been realized in the Chilliwack library’s main display cabinet, in the book display in the library, in hosting Métis Day Awareness in Chilliwack, and in an author talk on Métis governance. Shirley wanted people to learn about the Road Allowance people, about whose history very little is known.

Josephine Charlie, the cultural and events assistant for UFV's Indigenous Student Centre, made the cradleboard, including researching and beading the design. Josephine regularly leads craft events in the Chilliwack library and in other campus locations. 

It began with Shirley Hardman, UFV’s Senior Advisor on Indigenous Affairs, finding an image of Red River carts online. There was no clue as to who had created this painting or where it might have come from. Through a reverse image search we found that our painting was titled Red River Carts at HBC Post Pembina, by W. Frank Lynn, 1872. The image was intended to set the tone: poverty, struggle, Road Allowance People [1].

Knowing who created the painting and what it was called led us to the cover of a journal: The Beaver: Exploring Canada’s History, February/March 1993. The Beaver didn’t own the painting, but directed us to the Hudson Bay Company’s Global Art Collection, a collection started in 1670, and now containing more than 3,200 works. It wasn’t there.

Lynn’s biography in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography stated that his paintings could be found at the Glenbow Museum (Calgary), now the Archives of Manitoba, the offices of the Hudson’s Bay Company (Toronto), the "Archives de l’Archevêché de Saint-Boniface, the Provincial Archives of Manitoba, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.”[2]  We reached out to the Manitoba Museum, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Centre du patrimoine, Saint-Boniface, Manitoba, and the National Gallery of Canada. No one had this painting.

We found another article, in the Spring 1978 edition of The Beaver, titled Washington Frank Lynn: Artist and Journalist, which stated that the painting was in the HBC Collection. That led us to Amber Fundytus, manager of HBC Heritage Services, who said she was familiar with the painting and would look for it. She didn’t find it. “What a mystery this is turning out to be! We do not have the painting (or any record of it, for that matter)…” she wrote. At the end of August, 2019, Amber conceded defeat: “I remain unable to track down the whereabouts of this painting — a frustrating fact. As it was once in the HBC Collection, as per The Beaver credits, I can tell you that we would have been happy to (give you) permission (to) use (it) if we still maintained it as part of our corporate collection..."

Frank W. Lynn was an artist and journalist from an era when photography had been invented, but was not yet common. Lynn, who was born in England, came to North America in the 1860s, returned to England and then came back to Canada, where he spent the rest of his life, according to a biography in The Beaver. He traveled the Red River and stopped at Fort Pembina, painting that fort in 1872.[3] That painting depicts the fort, built in 1850, on the west side of the Red River, just north of the border. After 1870, the fort operated as a store and post office until the mid-1880s, according to Lynn's biographer, Virginia Berry, then vice president of the Winnipeg Art Gallery.[4]

Eventually, Lynn traveled down the river on supply boats to Fort Garry and cooked his own meals over an open fire while camping in Winnipeg. He wrote, sketched and painted, and his words and at least some of his paintings survived, but none of his sketches did. “The paintings… portrayed the country and the life of the people more objectively than Lynn was able to do in words,” wrote Dr. Berry in the 1978 Beaver article. “The Grey nuns, the steamboat and the Red River cart, the teepees and settlers’ buildings, the varied costumes of the mixed society – all add to the realistic detail of life at Red River…” she wrote, praising Lynn’s use of colour and “gradations of shade and tone, especially in skies and landscapes… Although somewhat primitive, the figures usually are not wooden and often move successfully. Many details, from the carefully differentiated flowers and foliage in the foreground to small genre scenes in the distance, add depth and interest to the whole. For the most part, Lynn has arranged the elements with clarity and spaciousness.”

The whereabouts of Red River Carts at HBC Post Pembina, by W. Frank Lynn, 1872 remains a mystery. If we couldn’t find it, we couldn’t print it nine feet wide. I let Shirley know, and she said: “can’t you and your husband paint it?” In theory, we could, but it was a huge undertaking. the original is lost so we don't know its dimensions, but a similar work by Lynn is 61 x 86.6 cm., oil on canvas.

The painting in its reinterpreted form is a copy of the original. The orientation was changed from landscape to portrait to better fit the display cabinet. Artist Randy Lamont blocked out the forms and sketched outlines projected onto the canvas, and started painting.  Any work of art has a life and changes over time. The colours may have been brighter when the painting was originally created. That the figures are somewhat “wooden” is no fault of Randy’s, as his skill is such that he copied the original faithfully. Randy was challenged by the size of the canvas, as well as having to fill in extra space created where we changed the shape of the original. Even so, the painting is eerily like the mysterious lost work.

Lisa Morry

Chilliwack Library

UFV alumnus Chris James of Smoothlines Welding, cut out Randy Lamont's file of the Louis Riel silhouette.