Rooster Town: The History of an Urban Métis Community – UM Today

October 15, 2018 —

The latest offering from University of Manitoba Press is on McNally Robinson’s bestseller list, and it hasn’t even been officially released yet.

Indeed, the official launch of Evelyn Peters’s Rooster Town: The History of an Urban Métis Community, 1901–1961, will take place at McNally Robinson Booksellers on Oct. 19 at 7 p.m. (If you can’t wait, on Oct. 18 at 10 a.m., the U of M’s Archives & Special Collections will launch the book and the Rooster Town Online Archive, a repository of all the research compiled during this project.)

In 1901, 15 Métis families moved to Winnipeg’s southwest edge. The city’s housing shortage meant these families could either find poor quality housing within the city or build their own places. They chose the latter, building small, two-room homes to accommodate their large families.

There were a number of Métis communities on the edges of urban areas in Manitoba, including Melonville, Smokey Hollow, Bannock Town, Fort Tuyau, Little Chicago, Mud Flats, Tintown, and La Coulee.

Read More: http://news.umanitoba.ca/rooster-town-the-history-of-an-urban-metis-community/