** posted on behalf of Ruby Langan, PSAC BC Regional Council Coordinator for Aboriginal Members **
On September 26, 2007, Manitoba legislature passed a bill establishing a statutory holiday on the third Monday in February as Louis Riel Day. Louis Riel was a leader of the Métis people, an Aboriginal people with their own culture, language and heritage. Their ancestral homeland, is now in the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia and the Northwest Territories and parts of the north-west of the United States.