The president of the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan says as far as he is concerned the bell that appeared at Back to Batoche Days last summer is the real thing.
A CBC documentary, which aired last week, draws into question whether or not the bell currently being shown around the country by Billyjo Delaronde is indeed the real Bell of Batoche.
The documentary speculates Delaronde’s bell may actually be from a church in Frog Lake, Alberta.
However, MNS President Robert Doucette says for more than a century everyone has believed the bell, once housed in a Millbrook, Ontario Legion Hall, is the Bell of Batoche and he has little reason to believe otherwise.
“If you ask me, that is the Bell of Batoche,” he says. “You know for over 120 years the people of Millbrook claimed that was the Bell of Batoche and then over 20 years ago when the Métis repatriated it, they kept saying it was the Bell of Batoche.”
The documentary also poses the theory that the real Bell of Batoche may be in a museum in nearby Duck Lake but Doucette says he remains unconvinced.
“For me, the Bell of Batoche came home that day. That is the Bell of Batoche and how are we ever going to prove that those three or four shards of bell in that Duck Lake museum are the actual Bell of Batoche? They’ll never be able to do that.”
The St. Laurent Church in Duck Lake, and the bell within it, were largely destroyed by a fire in the 1990’s.
The remains of this bell are in a Duck Lake museum.
The MNS President says he would be more than happy to have Delaronde and his bell at the Back to Batoche Days festival this year if organizers can make it happen.