BC Métis Federation vice-president reflects on decades of hard work in the Terrace area
Long before Rene Therrien became the Vice-President of the BC Métis Federation, played the fiddle for former-Prime Minister Paul Martin or worked to make seniors’ lives better in Terrace, he was living on the side of the highway southwest of Winnipeg in Richer — population 400.
“I remember, we were raised on a road allowance, it’s a log shack and nobody owned the land because it’s the highway, and that’s why people used to say ‘Métis, they’re road allowance’ because they were raised on the road,” Therrien said.
The Canadian government’s colonial policy effectively extinguished Métis title to land and impoverished road allowance communities became common in western Canada.