Distinguished Visitors – The Rich, the Famous and the Infamous
Metis has attracted its fair share of the rich and the famous. A handful of the wealthy have had their homes on the near shore, like Sir George Stephen and Herbert Molson. Widow Jane Redpath was one of the richest women in Canada in the 19th century. Pam Dunn (the granddaughter of industrialist Herbert Holt) was reputed to be one of the wealthiest women in Canada when she died in 2008.
Grey Owl (Archie Belaney) made a visit to Metis early in his career as a speaker, conservationist and “Pretendian”.
Prime ministers, like Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Arthur Meighen all made appearances in Metis, but did so with little fanfare. Grey Owl’s rise to fame began in Metis after his very first public lecture. Novelist John Buchan passed through, as did Princess Alice and her princely husband, the Earl of Athlone. Pierre Trudeau paid the community a visit with his three sons in tow, even though he was spectacularly lost when he did so.
Princess Alice and Governor General the Earl of Athlone at the train station in Mont-Joli in 1942.
Pierre Trudeau visited Metis in 1984.
War made several Metisians famous. W.H. Clark-Kennedy was one of 64 Canadian recipients of the Victoria Cross for bravery in World War I. He wore his heroism with humility – preferring to fish for smelt from the weir in Baie-des-Sables than pomp and circumstance. The Duke of Portland was a titled summer resident, his important role in British intelligence operations during the Second World War known to few. Tony Bethell was one of a handful of survivors of the ‘great escape’ from Stalag Luft III in 1944. Jack Price endured two of World War II’s infamous events, the fall of Hong Kong in December, 1941 and the Japanese prisoner of war camps, where he and several other Metis residents, C. Douglas Johnson and Peter MacDougall, were incarcerated for more than four years.
Lady Byng, was a frequent guest of Elsie Reford, sharing with her a love of plants.