Chartrand, Alma (01)

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Title:	Chartrand, Alma (01)
Subject:	Chartrand, Alma, Michif-French, St. Laurent, Genealogy, Folklore, Traditional Lifeways
Description:	This interview of Alma Chartrand is part of a larger body of interviews conducted by Father Guy Lavallée with the Métis residents of St. Laurent, Manitoba. St. Laurent has had an interesting history and a unique Métis culture. The traditional language of this community is Michif-French or Métis-French, a very distinct dialect of Canadian French which has Cree and Ojibway syntax. Michif-French was once the object of fierce ridicule by Francophones—Breton French and French Canadians (Canayens)—who considered it as a “bad” form of French. Father Lavallée donated this body of interviews known as the “St. Laurent Oral History Project” to the Gabriel Dumont Institute. All told, there were approximately 65 interviews collected for this project. Not all the interviews conducted appear on this website. The Gabriel Dumont Institute only included those interviews for which we could obtain copyright. The Institute thanks George Ducharme and Lawrence J. Barkwell of the Manitoba Métis Federation for working to obtain copyright in order to share these interviews with the public. A full set of these interviews rests with both the Gabriel Dumont Institute in Saskatoon and the Manitoba Métis Federation in Winnipeg. Father Guy Lavallée conducted these interviews for his MA Thesis (in Sociology) in the late 1980s. Later, in 2003, he reworked and published his thesis under the title, “The Metis of St. Laurent, Manitoba: Their Life and Stories, 1920-1988.”
Date:	September 10, 1987
Type:	Audio
Date of Copyright:	June 2, 2009
Coverage:	St. Laurent, Manitoba

Related Categories

Oral History, Audio Files
Michif-French Interviews—St. Laurent, Manitoba, 1987