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François Orr

François Orr was a member of the Fort McKay Native Band and was born into a hunting and trapping tradition. He and his family lived in the Fort McKay community, and worked a forty kilometre trapline supported by two line cabins. Mr. Orr was one to blend new technologies with old traditions, as he employed the use of snowmobiles for the pulling of toboggans while checking his trap sets.

Though he worked his trapline for about twenty-eight years, François Orr lost the trapline and the land it was on because oil was discovered beneath the area where he did his trapping. When the oil industry first entered the area, there were indications that it would become the dominant industry in the region. Mr. Orr could sense the changes coming. Within seven years of the petroleum industry’s arrival in the area, his family’s trapline, trapline cabins, and a section of the stream adjacent to the trapline were gone. He and his family were compensated monetarily for the loss of the land they had worked on for much of their lives.

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