They Called These Mountains Home

It is over a hundred years ago. The door swings open and you’re struck by the sound of ragtime music coming from the battered phonograph. Out walks Ewan Moberly, husband, father, rancher, hunter, trader and Métis. He speaks to you first in Cree, then in English.

To support their large family, the Moberlys raise milk cows, and grow barley and vegetables. To feed their livestock, they harvest hay from sloughs and transport it by wagon to the homestead. In the smokehouse, they store bear meat and hang whitefish from the roof. Supplies of canned goods, beans and raisins, purchased by selling furs at Fort Edmonton, add to the larder.

The trip to Fort Edmonton and Lac St. Anne can take up to three months if travel conditions are difficult. With no roads or railways, Ewan and the other homesteaders of the Upper Athabasca must be self-sufficient. Their lifestyle is a combination of agriculture and traditional native hunting and trapping.

To be Métis
…is to embrace two worlds. During the fur trade, Europeans from the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company married Aboriginal women. Their wives provided companionship and helped ensure the traders’ survival. Their children were known as Métis.

Ewan’s mother, Suzanne Cardinal Karakonti Moberly, was a well-known and respected Aboriginal woman. His father, Henry John Moberly, was of British descent and a Hudson Bay Company factor for Jasper House between 1855 and 1861.