However, under the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act, this land was designated to become community pasture, thus the community lost its town.

Historically, the town was formed when Metis left the Red River area due to the actions of Wolseley’s Red River Expeditionary Force.

Other Metis moved to the area from Saskatchewan and Alberta after the Resistance of 1885.

In 1935, in the midst of the “Dirty Thirties,” the Canadian government set up the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act. The town of Ste. Madeleine and surrounding area called Pumpkin Plain was designated as pastureland. The Metis families who had their taxes paid up to date were to be compensated and relocated.

However, because of the economic conditions of the time, few families had their taxes paid. The Metis were again forced to find a new home and they lost everything they had; their homes were burned, their dogs were shot, their church was to be dismantled and the logs sold to build a piggery. The priest from St. Lazare also sold the church bell and statues. When confronted by community members he said the money would not be returned and he was using it to build another church at St. Lazare.

The plan to dismantle the church was foiled by Joe Venne and other community members armed themselves with rifles and confronted the crew sent to dismantle the church thus saving it. They then moved the family of Caroline and John Vermette into the building to protect it.

By 1938, the once vital community had all but vanished.

Today, all that remains of Ste. Madeleine are the stone foundations of the Belliveau School and the cemetery encircling the mound of grass where the church once stood. The wood from the schoolhouse was salvaged and now constitutes a major portion of the kitchen of what was the home of Yvonne and Fred LeClerc of Victor, Manitoba.

It is the story of the resistance and persistence of a group of Métis in the face of racial discrimination from their Eurocanadian neighbours and a bungling government bureaucracy.

It is a tragic story, largely told by the people themselves, oral history have traced the development and destruction of Ste. Madeleine.

The theme of homeland is an ever present one in the accounts of the five ex-inhabitants of the “Community Without a Town.” Ste. Madeleine, near the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border, was settled in the early 1900s by the Venne, Fleury, Monet dit Bellehumeur, Boucher and other families originally from the Red River Settlement.

They had moved to the Qu’Appelle Valley and lived periodically in North Dakota and Montana. Their new homeland was in the heart of the old fur trade district.

Ste. Madeleine was located north of Fort Ellice, a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post which employed many Métis labourers and freighters in the 19th century.

In the 1860s, Fort Ellice became an important “stopping place” and provisioning post for the independent Métis traders and freighters travelling the Carlton trail en route to the Qu’Appelle valley, the Cypress Hills, the South Saskatchewan river district and points further west such as Ile a la Crosse and St. Albert.

Segregated from the Anglo-Canadian business and commercial elite in Manitoba after 1870, many Métis who still resided in the old parishes along the Forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers decided to relocate.

The search for new homelands led to areas spurned by Ontarians and immigrant groups in search of prime agricultural lands.

These Métis founded new communities such as Richer, Ste. Genevieve, St. Ambroise, Ste. Amelie, Toutes-Aides and Ste. Madeleine. Mostly located on “scrub land,” the farms provided only a basic livelihood but offered independence and self-sufficiency. Cattle and horses were raised by a few of the more prosperous Métis ranchers, but most eked out a living as farmhands for white settlers, or they hauled cordwood, trapped furs and dug seneca root for a small cash income.

The poverty and dispersal of Ste. Madeleine was not unique. The experience was repeated many times in post 1870 Métis communities in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Lands were occupied and if there was any money, a $10 entry fee was paid at the Dominion Lands Office. Many Métis, however, continued to occupy their lands “according to custom” or what the Eurocanadian bureaucracy termed “squatting.”

For those Métis, official ownership or long-term occupancy was impossible. But even for “official” homesteaders who obtained title such as Baptiste Fleury and Joe Venne, the inability to pay municipal taxes and grain liens eventually also forced them off their land.

The Federal Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act (PFRA) was designed to rescue the drought and poverty stricken farmers of the Depression or “Dirty Thirties.” It was also a government “job creation project.”

In the case of Ste. Madeleine, it forced poor Métis farmers off their lands, with little or no compensation, in order to provide a community pasture for Eurocanadian farmers. According to Agnes Boucher (Cote), “vain promises were made to people to pressure them to relocate.” The victims and their descendants admit that the land around Ste. Madeleine was bad farmland but there was no excuse for the arbitrary and cruel methods used by the Municipality of Ellice in conjunction with the implementation of the Federal PFRA project.

Houses were burned, dogs were shot and the parish church was dismantled for a piggery.

Interview with Joe Venne refers to the more fundamental human rights issue: “... it was their homes. They felt they were killed, that they were dead.”

The destruction of Ste. Madeleine between 1938 and 1941 should be seen as another example of the Canadian policy of repression, assimilation and dispersal of its native peoples.

These recent cases are not documented in the mainstream histories or by white Canadians who smugly perpetuate the myth that such experiences occurred in South Africa or the Soviet Union but not in a twentieth century democratic Canada.

It is rather unfortunate that the authors did not supplement their interviews with other available research materials, specifically Métis genealogies, parish files, and government and municipal records, to further substantiate the case of Ste. Madeleine.

Some historical inaccuracies, such as a reference to (Bishop) Tache at Batoche in 1885, are inexcusable.

On the other hand, the use of photographs effectively illustrates the themes of kinship and community that were inherent to Métis society.

In terms of oral history methodology, there were many “leading questions.”

The inquiry is also more sociological than historical. There is, however, an effective use of a cross-examination in the interview with the French-Canadian Lazare Fouillard, son of the late Ben Fouillard of St. Lazare, one of the municipal councillors denounced by the Métis.

Interestingly enough and much to his credit, Lazare Fouillard acknowledges the injustices and discrimination of those years. He candidly admits that the ultimate objective of PFRA was “to drive out the Métis.”

People used to say: “Let’s get them bloody Breeds out of there and have some work.”

Fouillard comments, however, that “today we don’t think that way ... Things are different now.”

'Necessity' also led to the relocation of the Métis community of Ste. Madeleine in the late 1930s.

The Métis people lost their land because it was designated under the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act (PFRA), passed by Parliament in 1935 to try to solve the problem of drought and serious soil erosion across the prairies.

The act was not aimed at any one group; rather, it was part of a large-scale agricultural scheme.

However, the combination of the legislation and the situation of the Métis people of Ste. Madeleine resulted in their relocation and dispossession at the same time as other non-Aboriginal prairie farmers were given new land.

Ste. Madeleine was settled at the turn of the century by Métis homesteaders who had left the Red River Settlement in 1870 or returned to Manitoba following the conflict of 1885.

Between 1915 and 1935 the community grew to about 250 people. Many of the residents worked as itinerant labourers on neighbouring farms.

Ken and Victoria Zeilig interviewed a number of elders from the community. They write that the Métis people retained a strong bond with Ste. Madeleine, a bond still present nearly half a century after relocation.

Although it was never articulated, the implied bond was homeland.

This was where the Metis people could be themselves, away from the backbreaking labour on white farms, menial jobs on the fringes of town society, and ever-present discrimination.

As one old-time resident in nearby St. Lazare [said], "They were good servants!"

In Ste. Madeleine, though, the people were masters of their own fate; they were subservient to no one; they served themselves.

The legislation that resulted in the Métis of Ste. Madeleine being relocated was not designed for that purpose. The PFRA was intended to be a solution to what agriculturalists saw as a chronic problem: too many prairie farms were working too much marginal soil.

The result, especially during the 1930s drought, was accelerated erosion and soil loss.

The solution was to seed this land as pasture in order to retain moisture in the soil. A land survey was carried out, and Ste. Madeleine was designated as an area to be converted from marginal farmland to pasture land.

When new pastures were created, official policy was "to resettle farmers on lands that are located close to existing or proposed pastures, permitting them to take advantage of these grazing facilities."

People were not moved if at all possible.

Under the act, people were entitled to full compensation provided their tax payments on their land were up to date — a problem for many Métis people who eked out a living working for other farmers. Better land would be offered in exchange, and families would be given assistance to relocate.

If they had not paid taxes, under the law, the Métis people were squatters on their land, and were forced to move without compensation.

Their houses were burned, their church was dismantled, and by 1938, the once vital community of Ste. Madeleine had virtually vanished.

Many of the Métis people interviewed about the move say they were told about the relocation by local municipal officials, not representatives of the federal government.

Many cannot remember whether federal officials even came to talk to them.

Lena Fleury said the people were given little explanation other than that the land "was going to become a pasture. They [are] going to put cattle in there."

Since little has been written about this relocation, we think it important to describe its effects, especially in the words of the Métis people who were relocated.

Lazare Fouillard remembers that in the 1930s the Métis people were hungry, even starving. His father was on relief. However, his memories of the relocation were bitter:

They burned their houses. But then, you know why they burned the houses. That was the dirtiest part of the '30s when they did that. Everybody wanted jobs. They wanted the PFRA to bring jobs in....The people around here. They wanted jobs.

Fouillard says the Métis people were considered second-class citizens at the time, and there was a feeling that they could be pushed around.

"Oh, I think there was that element that they said, 'Let's get them bloody Breeds out of there and have some work. Let's give them a few bucks and chase them out of there'."

Once the Métis of Ste. Madeleine were evicted, few had a place to go. Louis Pelletier says he went back to the community and found ashes where his house once stood.

Every house was down after everybody moved out. Of course, there was nothing in them. Houses were no good, I guess. They might as well be burned.

But we were supposed to get the same kind of house we left behind....All I got was $25. Some got $100; some got maybe $200 or $300. I don't know. Some probably got quite a bit.

While the PFRA did not single out Métis lands, the fact that the Métis people were considered squatters, combined with the desperate conditions everywhere on the prairies in the 1930s, appears to have ensured that, once removed from their land, they were given little thought.

The community drifted apart, and people resettled where they could.

Ste. Madeleine continued and still continues to have a hold on it's descendents.