Chelsea builder to drop Métis name from housing project

A Chelsea, Que., construction company will change the name of a line of new homes in the Outaouais municipality's Meredith neighbourhood after objections from the Métis National Council.

EXO Construction has built several different models of rustic-looking stone and wood homes under the name Métis.

Last week, the Métis National Council took out an ad in a local newspaper criticizing the choice of name.

"The Métis people are an Indigenous Nation in Western Canada not a house type in Chelsea," reads the half-page notice in The Low Down to Hull & Back News.

The ad called on the elected officials of Chelsea to step in and force a name change.

"Pro sports teams have abandoned the improper use of Indigenous names, so should the Municipality of Chelsea," the ad demanded.

"There must be some other terminology that this architect could use," agreed Clément Chartier, president of the Métis National Council. "There's got to be something else in this day and age of reconciliation."

Montreal-based architect Mario Adornetto, who borrowed design elements from early French settlers in Quebec, came up with the name.

Exo's Mathieu Farley said the name was never meant to evoke a connection to the Métis, a distinct Indigenous people and nation who were originally the mixed offspring of Indigenous women and European fur traders.

Rather, Farley said the word Métis, from the French verb métisser, was used to capture the idea of a métissage, a blending of more than one idea.

Farley said in this case, features such as stone walls and metal roofs were intended as architectural nods to what is known in Quebec as the Ancestral style.

"Taking something you'd see in Quebec City, an older Ancestral style, but with a modern spin to it," said Farley.

Nevertheless, by Tuesday, Farley said EXO had decided to drop the name.

"We want to be sensitive to the issues of the Métis people," he said. "We understand part of it, not all of it. It's a prairie story that we are somewhat informed about, but not fully."

Emilie Urbain, a professor at Carleton University's department of French who has written about Indigenous sociolinguistics, agreed there was some ambiguity around the word Métis.

But in an email, Urbain said that while it's true that the word doesn't always have the same meaning in French and English, divorcing it entirely from its Indigenous context would be insensitive.

"The use of the word in its etymological sense of 'mixed' in French in Canada, without acknowledgment of the political and more precise meaning it has acquired in the Canadian context, has recently become contentious," she wrote.

Yves Alary said he never thought of that context when he moved into his EXO-built Métis home in June 2019, and assumed the name referred to its unique blend of design elements.

"When I saw this, it was the perfect mix," he said. "I never thought about that because my understanding of 'Métis' was that it was a blend of two things together."

Alary said he would be in favour of changing the name if it was considered offensive.

Chelsea Mayor Caryl Green said the town's role in the matter is limited to decisions around compliance with architectural codes and the appearance of buildings, not their names.