KINDRED SPIRITS

Love, joy, family and tradition were at the heart of a self-orchestrated Métis wedding that moved everyone in attendance

- Lisa Zoschke

A Métis wedding seemed only fitting for the atmosphere and living space that my husband Gerard and I had been creating on our new property high on a hill in Penetanguishene, Ont., overlooking Georgian Bay. More importantly, we are both Métis and have a great appreciation of our ancestry, as well as historical bloodlines which we are proud of. We moved to “Hill Top Farm” in 2016, here in the “Place of the rolling white sands”—which is what the Algonquin name “Penetanguishene,” devised by the Abenaki tribe, means in English. Our first project was to build a full-size tipi. We cut our own poles, hand peeled and scraped them, and then dried and put up canvas purchased from a supplier, Nomadic Tipis. We use our tipi four seasons of the year, very often, for a variety of activities. After the construction of our tipi was complete, a friend gave me eight buckskins as a “tipi warming” present.

I immediately decided I would honour the hides by using them to make my wedding dress; I also created the Métis-inspired ribbon dresses the girls wore at the wedding.

After the tipi was completed, our little pioneer cabin was born or, rather, reborn. The old cabin came with the property, but it was in rough shape and didn’t have a floor. The wide-plank pine flooring that we installed gave the tired, old shanty a whole new look. We furnished and equipped both the cabin and the tipi with as many historical items and period pieces as we could. On our wedding day, this had the benefit of evoking a feeling of authenticity and warmth, while giving our guests a sense of what life might have been like in a simpler time.