Christine McCarthy

Christine McCarthy is a Business Development and Indigenous Relations professional at Midwest, with nearly 20 years in the energy sector. Raised on her family’s historic farm in Treaty 7 territory, she draws on her deep personal and family connections to Indigenous communities to build meaningful relationships and to advance Truth and Reconciliation.

I met my partner, Shane Leadley (Métis), eight years ago. Together, we have three children—my biological daughter and my two stepchildren. I helped administer the documentation for Shane’s children, now ages 16 and 19, to obtain their Métis status, and they are now registered with the Métis Nation of Alberta.

Their Métis heritage comes through their great-great-grandmother, Madeline Bernadette Pelletier, who married on October 20, 1925. Her husband, Jean Marie Gosselin—who went by the name John Frank—was born in 1900 in Roche Percee, Saskatchewan. Madeline was born in 1906 in Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, within Treaty 4 territory, which holds a deep history as a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post and an area of early farm development beginning in the 1880s.

With my mother’s connection to Indigenous communities, my partner and stepchildren being Métis, and my own upbringing on a farm in Treaty 7 territory—where I often explored the coulee and found carvings in rocks, tools, arrowheads, and the remains of buffalo and other animals in the grasslands—I’ve developed a deep appreciation for the history and culture rooted in this land.