Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Fort Simpson (Aug 04/00) - Geoffrey Burtonshaw is a retired carpenter who has spent the last 15 years researching Metis family trees.

Burtonshaw is a big history buff who said he has lived through a fair amount of history himself -- he was five years old when Treaty 11 was signed.

He has spent some time in the North and said he's always wanted to take a trip to Virginia Falls.

"When I was a kid I used to read a lot about the Nahanni Valley and the Mackenzie Valley, so this trip was really a life-long dream," Burtonshaw said.

He calls Calgary home now and from there, he traces lineage and digs for the roots of Metis family trees.

"I volunteer Wednesdays up at the Glenbow (Museum)," he said. "They have a five generation chart and they build it the best that they can and I try to take it from there."

"We've traced 1,300 Red River families from the late 1700s right up until it's cut off around the 1900s," Burtonshaw explained.

"Up until the time when the treaty parties came through."

Finding the facts

One of the main sources of information comes from the treaty documents that were filled out as the parties worked their way throughout the country.

Metis were often paid in scrip instead of taking treaty.

"They had to apply for the scrip," he explained.

"In Manitoba it was 160 acres or $160 to buy land in what they called the Red River settlement."

"They only made treaties when they wanted something," he laughed. "They made treaties when the land was worth more than our friendship."

The Red River settlement was the birthplace of the Metis Nation and the subsequent rebellion.

Burtonshaw said the territory stretched from Lake Winnipeg to North Dakota until the settlement was dissected by the Canada/U.S. border at the 49th parallel.

With an arsenal of documents and records at his disposal, he says there are three usual sources he turns to first.

"There is so much information, there are these books and the baptism records from the churches and the treaty papers -- those are the three main things we use," he said.

"If you're looking to go before that, then you have to start digging through the parish records and district books and baby pictures, burials and so on."

"The Hudson's Bay archives reference is a real good source too," he added.

No small task

Searching out a family tree can be a daunting task for people new to the game, he said, because often family records and names were never written down.

"A lot of people come and say they know grandpa and grandma, but that's all they called them," he said.

"Somehow you have to get back a hundred years, so that's about five generations for young people today."

While in Simpson, Burtonshaw took a walk through the cemetery to look for names he might recognize from his studies.

"There are names on there that I've run into down here," he said.

"Villeneuve, that's a name I find all over. Also Norwegian and Greenland I see down here too."

"Dora Unka in Hay River we traced all the way back to Francois Beaulieu," he said. "I've also researched the Laffertys, the Mercredis and all those."

"My success rate is about two-thirds," he said.

For the past nine years, Burtonshaw has been publishing a newsletter listing family names and other Metis historians that he says has been helpful to hundreds of Metis searching for their ancestry.