Friday, April 19, 2024 
Friday, April 19, 2024
October 23, 2020
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.
