On #NationalIndigenousPeoplesDay - I wanted to share the story of Jane Flett MacKay, the matriarch you in the the centre of this photo, a remarkable Edmontonian, whose story may not be one you know. #yeg #yegheritage 
She was born in 1857. Her father was from the Orkney Islands in the far north of Scotland. Her mother was a member of thr Geich’in First Nation, in the Mackenzie Delta.
In 1874, Jane married William Morrison MacKay, a Scottish physician who was working as a Hudson Bay Company doctor. Eventually, he became Chief Factor of Fort Chipewyan. Jane became his nurse and surgical assistant.
According to one story, Dr. MacKay had to treat an HBC employee who’s been gored by a bull and had a huge abdominal wound. “You’re better at this work than I am,” he told Jane. “You sew him up.”
Once, when her husband was away on HBC business, she saved the life of another man who’d cut an artery in his foot with an axe. Jane stopped the bleeding and stitched up the wound.
The MacKays worked as partners - and then, in 1898, he retired from the HBC and the family moved to Edmonton, where he opened a thriving medical practice. But Jane’s life got more complicated here. The family, worried about racism, tried to hide her history.
They told people she was descended from a Siberian princess. William took her older daughters to society balls and functions, rather than his wife. After William died in 1917, things got worse.
When Jane fell ill, a white doctor refused to treat her, because he’d heard she was Indigenous. But she was tough. She lived until 1947 - outliving her husband by 30 years, dying at 90, having seen the world into which she was born utterly transformed.
Today, Edmonton’s historic McKay Avenue School museum building is named for William Morrison MacKay. (The stone mason spelled his name wrong when he engraved it, and the misspelling stuck.) But I’d like to think the building is named for Jane, too.
Jane Flett MacKay’s story represents, in microcosm, so much of the history we have lost. (I’m grateful to the @Albertadoctors /AMA website, where I found most of this information.) In this #NationalIndigenousHistoryMonth, I wanted to share her tale with you. #yeg #yegheritage
