Viriginia Barter is a Toronto based historical writer and researcher, and publisher of the “Spencer Family Newsletter”, chronicling stories of the social history of the fur trade. She has given numerous presentations on her Metis family history and most recently she was a guest speaker at the 2006 North American Fur Trade Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. Her Metis family history, “Searching for the Silver Fox” will be published this coming year as part of an anthology by Wilfred Laurier University Press, “The Long Journey of a Forgotten People: Metis Identity and Family Histories.” Currently Virginia is employed as a full-time historical researcher for the Metis Nation of Ontario. She also holds a Bachelor of Commerce Degree from the University of Guelph.
“One day I came across a National Film Board documentary called, “The
Fiddler’s of James Bay”. One of the Cree Fiddle players in the film
was from Fort George on the eastern shore of James Bay. In the film he explains
- in Cree - how his great grandfather had come there with the Hudson’s
Bay Company. Then he held up a picture and pointed to his great grandparents
- and they were my great grandparents too! So that’s what launched me
on this extraordinary discovery of Metis family history.”