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Tom Monto

What is not said in the historic record - P.E. Lessard and St. Paul des Metis

Updated: Jul 6, 2022

Prosper Edmond Lessard is the namesake of the Lessard Mansion, a landmark destination listed in The Walking and Driving Guide of Oliver. Since the Guide's publication, the mansion has been demolished for construction of condo development.


The Walking Guide described Lessard's career, rising to be business partner of Joseph Gariepy in the firm of Gariepy and Lessard. "Later he struck out on his own in real estate, insurance, loans and stocks. involvement in GWG, Northwest Grain and Northwest Brewing... school board trustee, MLA, Cabinet minister in Rutherford's government...promoted French-speaking settlement as president of the Bureau de la colonisation d'Alberta.


1901 Lessard was in partnership with Joseph Gariepy. They opened a general store in Morinville. Gariepy also had had a large store at 100th and Jasper since 1892. The substantial Gariepy Block was built on that site in 1898 (demolished in 1960 for construction of a high-rise business tower).


The historical record states that by 1910 Gariepy closed down his retail store and turned entirely to real estate. He was sole or part owner of many lots on Jasper Avenue, Athabasca Avenue, and more. Lessard apparently had a more varied business portfolio, with his fingers in many different types of businesses -- real estate, brewing, clothes-production, etc. It is not recorded how many of the lots Lessard and Gariepy came to own were acquired after former owners had lost the lots to un-affordable city taxes during the WWI recession. These taxes would be decreased once powerful businessmen got their hands on the land. (Ernest Brown's description of this can be found in another blog).)


Lessard is praised for his involvement in French (Francophone) colonization. It seems the break-up of the St. Paul Metis colony (at today's St. Paul, Alberta) was part of this effort. Certainly it is well known that Quebecois immigrants lined up to get colony land when it was opened to outside settlement. Lesser known is the fact that Lessard became the local MLA there.


Garneau, the namesake of the Garneau district in Edmonton, had moved to St. Paul in 1901 to take up residence in the St. Paul des Metis colony. Seven years later, his family's ability to remain there was threatened by the greed of land speculators and the Church's growing disinterest in the continuance of the Metis colony as such.


The Church in the person of Father Therien was not happy with the climate in the reserve. In 1905, boys, upset at being punished, burned down the residential school. As there was no youth penitentiary in Alberta, any convicted of the crime would have to be sent out of the province. The boys' families were concerned the boys would never be seen again if convicted. That anyway is taken as the reason that none were found guilty of the act of arson. As well, a policeman was criminally suspect in this incident - he told the boys that they would all be hanged. This made them desperate and they escaped but were recaptured. The policeman was punished with a month in prison. (Canada's Residential Schools, the Metis Experience, vol. 3)


The Church was losing interest in working with Metis and instead having great interest in increasing white Francophone presence in western Canada. Father Therien welcomed Quebecois to come to the St. Paul area.


Meanwhile a railway was set to be built into the area. The value of land there would increase and profit was to be had if the farmers could be shifted off and the land brought under ownership of entrepreneurs who would flip the land.


In 1908 and 1909, White squatters progressively encroached on the reserve land, gradually driving away many of the Metis families.


Metis activist James Brady* described the process graphically:

1908 - settlers squatting on land around St. Paul des Metis in summer and fall leads to proposal to withdraw the colony's reserve status. 100 Metis protesters sent a petition to Ottawa opposing this proposal. Later the government claimed to have never received it. Squatters ignored warnings from government official James Bannerman and Mountie officers to withdraw from the land. They instead began invading and intimidating Metis homes and lands. Many Metis families moved away.


Dec. 1908 - half-breed commission. allotted 80 acres to each Metis family with another 80 acres being available under normal homestead requirements. [This scrip replaced the right of Metis familes to their existing farms, and made their right to land very transferable. Brady does not record how many Metis families then gave up their scraps of paper in exchange for food and drink to temporarily satiate a need, later to find themselves landless and on the road.]


April 1909 - agent of the Roman Catholic church allotted plots of land to squatters and they applied to the Edmonton lands office for these parcels despite knowing that these lands were already occupied and had been improved upon by the Metis settlers.

... Many more Metis families moved away, resulting in them being forced out and economically marginalized.


Remaining Metis land and holdings were targeted by a syndicate of a surveyor, a local trader and a former agent of the Church. This syndicate targeted illiterate Metis to fraudulently purchase their un-patented land. In two cases, federal intervention lead to fraudulently purchased land being returned to Metis homesteaders Mr. Hamelin and Mr. Dufresne." (James Brady, St. Paul Half-Breed Reserve, found on-line in Metis History Review, which is copied from the Gabriel Dumont Institute Virtual Musem website.)


Lessard's apparent involvement in the take-over gave him standing among the new arrivals and he ran for and won the seat in the next provincial election. This despite still living in Edmonton - in a grand mansion on 100th Avenue and 119th Street. The Lessard mansion was declared a Municipal Historical Resource, but was demolished in 2005 to make way for a condo complex.


As a Liberal MLA, he sat for the short-lived district of Pakan (named after the Pakan townsite, which in turn was named after a local Native chief. The townsite is near the old Victoria Settlement.)


The Metis reserve was officially cancelled a month after the election. (Dobbin, p. 43)


But well-established Metis families such as Laurent Garneau's had pull and energy to fight. They learned of the syndicate of a Dominion land agent, a former official of the Church and a local trader, which was assisted by local priest Father Therien. The Metis exposed the syndicate's manipulations that were intended to dispossess the Metis families in the old Metis settlement. The revelations apparently forced a full investigation (although I can find no evidence of the royal commission that is mentioned in some reports). The members of the syndicate were forced to move away.


Eventually by federal order, the land was restored to Metis families just before the 1911 federal election. (Dobbin, p. 44)


But the Metis community was decimated, and many sold out and moved away. (Although the Garneau family stayed at least until Laurent's death in 1921.) Soon the town was mostly Quebecois.


As the 1913 election approached, the Pakan district was abolished.


MLA Lessard ran for re-election in the new St. Paul district, centred on the town that he had helped change to Francophone white settlement. He was opposed by Laurent Garneau. Garneau in 1913 apparently was fighting to seek justice for the dispossessed inhabitants of St. Paul des Metis. The district had few voters -- Lessard received 441 votes to Garneau's 350 votes.


The "scandal ridden and disputed" election, as Murray Dobbin described it, resulted in Lessard's re-election.


I searched for newspaper reports of this "scandal." A search in Peel's Prairie Provinces website for 1913 yielded:

Edmonton Bulletin coverage of complaint by Henry Tessier in the 1913 election listing corruption among election officials in Lessard's favour (EB, June 9, 1913);


Edmonton Capital article Sept. 15, 1913 reported that Judge Beck had found all charges against Lessard to be without foundation.


Edmonton Bulletin (Sept. 16, 1913) reported that the Judge had rejected the protest on technical grounds, such as a page missing from the petition, money for the protest being put up by the defeated candidate Laurent Garneau not by Tessier himself, etc.


Thus Lessard was allowed to retain his seat. If only half the things that Tessier accused Lessard's team of doing were true, it seems the election could have easily gone to Garneau.


Lessard ran for re-election in 1917. His opponent this time was James Brady, running for the Conservative party. James Bradyis the subject of the biography One-and-a-half Men. James Brady, grandson of Laurent Garneau, had grown up in St. Paul. His family, as one of the better established families, had joined with the Garneau family to repel the attempted dispossession. His family apparently stayed there at least into the 1930s. (Dobbin, p. 50) (James Brady and another Metis man Absolom Halkett went into the bush in 1967 and were never seen again - there is suspicion of murder. The 2020 book Cold Case North by Michael Nest, Deanna Reder and Eric Bell, discusses the case.)


Lessard doubled his vote from the previous election. Brady also did better compared to Garneau's 1913 tally. Lessard took the seat with 66 percent of the vote.


Lessard ran for re-election in the 1921 election but this time met a strong opponent, a member of the then-powerful United Farmers group. Laudas Joly of the UFA took the seat this time and in 1926.


Despite his conniving record, the Lessard neighbourhood bears his name.


Thanks for reading.

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*James Brady is the subject of Murray Dobbin's book One-and-a-half Men, presenting the lives and political struggles of Metis activists James Brady and Malcolm Norris, a son of early Edmonton businessman John Norris.



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