Billyjo Delaronde stole and hid the Bell of Batoche—ripped from the Metis in 1885, and held in a legion—for 22 years before giving it up. Now, in a way, it’s missing again.
Just when you think the mystery behind the Bell of Batoche has finally been put to rest, something unexpected happens to kick up a hornet’s nest of new questions. And those questions usually involve former Métis leader and activist Billyjo Delaronde.
Let’s start from the beginning.
Fast forward 105 years later to 1990, and CBC’s Dan Bjarnason is reporting on the bell in Millbrook, Ont. In Manitoba, Yvon Dumont, the Manitoba Métis Federation president from 1984 to 1993, and Manitoba’s first-ever Métis Lieutenant Governor, is watching the report—as is his young, curly-haired political protege from Duck Bay, Man., Billyjo Delaronde.
But as an old-time Millbrook resident and Legion member explained to the CBC camera: “We got it. You tried to wreck the country and we stopped ya. And we got the bell. It’s ours. Can ya get it any plainer than that?” He’s also prone to self-serving self-flattery. A “Métis Mission Impossible,” a “gentleman’s dare,” and an “act of repatriation”—he’s used all these phrases over the years to describe his break-and-enter. He’s a divisive figure, even among the Métis; he is either demonized by his political enemies, or strongly promoted as a noble, saintly figure by his supporters And his story about the break-in—and who was involved and how the bell was taken—has also changed over the years.
But Delaronde, his accomplice and the Bell of Batoche—or the Bell of Frog Lake, depending on who you talk to, more on that later—finally did make it back to Winnipeg. Indeed, in yet another twist in this story, there are some questions as to the bell’s authenticity. According to Professor Fred Shore, a Métis historian at the University of Manitoba, the weight of historical evidence, including a 2014 CBC documentary and its endorsement by the director of the St.
And while many may now question the wisdom or efficacy of making Poitras the sole legal owner of what may very well be the Bell of Batoche, this new legal ownership could trump legal efforts from residents of Frog Lake to gain possession of the bell for their community.
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