First Nation remains opposed to development plans for 'sacred' Abbotsford mountain

The city has failed to appropriately consult with the local First Nation and plans could jeopardize culturally important sites, critical species, and the ongoing use of the mountain by the Semá:th people, council was told Monday at a second public hearing on the controversial proposal.

Meanwhile, the largest landowner has declared that a commercial area at the heart of the plan will never be built.

The McKee Peak area encompasses a largely undeveloped peak on the southwestern bulk of Sumas Mountain. Plans to build homes in the area date back to the 1990s and in 2017, after adopting a new citywide plan, Abbotsford city hall embarked on a process to lay out how and where thousands of new homes would be built in the area.

The plans are partly a result of worries that backtracking on older development promises would expose the city to political or legal risks. In recent decades, an extensive trail network has been created on private lands in the area. The plan also seeks to strike a compromise with landowners: the city would grant landowners permission to build hundreds of homes, while setting up a process through which much of the trail network will be preserved and turned over to the public. The city and developers also say that the creation of hundreds of homes will increase the supply of housing at a critical time.

But the McKee Peak area is considered sacred by the Semá:th First Nation people. Although their reserve sits in the floodplain at the bottom of the mountain, the Semá:th have long collected plants on Sumas Mountain and used the forests and cliff and hillsides for cultural and spiritual activities. Several cultural sites including Thunderbird Caves, a series of spectacular rock outcroppings and caves, are located in the core McKee Peak area. There are other cultural sites in the area, including those whose locations have been kept private. It’s also home to several at-risk species—including the phantom orchid, western painted turtle, and mountain beaver (which is not actually a beaver).

Monday’s meeting made it clear that the Semá:th position on the plan hasn’t changed from March, when a representative announced that Semá:th was opposed and that the city was failing to meet its obligations under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

On Monday, Eva Janzen, a natural resource technician for the Semá:th, reiterated the First Nation’s opposition to the plan. She pointed to the importance of the peak, and what the Semá:th have said was a lack of collaboration to shape its future.

The city has said consultation has been a “priority,” that it applied for and received a Stó:lō Heritage Investigation Permit, and that seven meetings between Semá:th and the city had taken place related to the development of the plan.

But Semá:th believes it deserved to have been more included in the entirety of the planning process.

“Sema:th First Nation remains committed to being decisionmakers on issues and land management decisions on their traditional territory. This means there must be a government-to-government relationship between the nation and the City of Abbotsford and at this time that expectation is not being met.”

Sasha Tuttle, a Semá:th member and senior researcher with the Stó:lō Research and Resource Management Centre (SRRMC), pointed to the private cultural sites. Tuttle said the city could have engaged with the SRRMC to identify such sites, but that while an officer had been invited to a 2019 engagement event, there were no records of additional meetings.

Both Tuttle and Janzen suggested that development on the mountain and vastly more people on the mountain will also increase negative impacts on places like Thunderbird Caves, which has been previously vandalized.

Tuttle also suggested that if the creation of more housing was the chief public benefit, it would be better addressed through increasing density within Abbotsford’s established city core.

The Semá:th opposition was cited by other residents speaking at the hearing. Jon Rainer Fehrenbacher asked how the city could follow through on the plan while still seeking to reconcile with Indigenous communities.

“We live in a world where we have Orange Shirt Day and Indigenous reconciliation day and we point to our Indigenous neighbours and say we are trying to live in reconciliation with them and we’re trying to fix the wrongs of the past…But then we do things like this.

“We have our Indigenous neighbours come out very clearly and they say ‘we have culturally important sites that we need to be consulted on and we do not approve of this plan,’ and then to just say nothing, to just walk right by it like it’s not a problem, that is not a way to live in a society where we are reconciling with our colonial past.”

The village problem

Council will make a decision on the fate of the plan in two weeks.

In addition to the Semá:th opposition, concerns about the impact on nature and trails, and questions about how new suburban homes will alleviate the housing crisis, councillors will also have to factor in warnings that one of the key concepts in the plan will never be built.

The McKee Peak plan envisions the creation of “McKee Village” a higher-density commercial and residential hub across from what is now the Auguston subdivision. The village brings density and some neighbourhood cohesiveness to what is otherwise a plan for sprawling residential subdivisions. The village is key to the plan’s central idea for the McKee Peak to co-exist with the Sumas Mountain trails, with the village serving as a home base for recreation enthusiasts.

But the people who would be in charge of actually building the village say it won’t happen.

The land slated for McKee Village is owned by Auguston Town Development Inc. (ATD), builders of the nearby Auguston subdivision. ATD has its own plans for its 140 acres in the McKee planning area: it has proposed the creation of a much denser housing and office community it’s calling the “Abbotsford Tech District.” That proposal would be much denser and spread over a smaller space. It also conflicts with both the existing citywide plan for Abbotsford, and the proposed McKee Peak plan. (There are separate concerns about the feasibility of the tech district concept and other high-density projects in the Auguston area.)

Gavin Dew, the spokesperson for the tech district, says the McKee Village concept “is commercially unfeasible and will never be built,” adding that the concept was created with little consultation with those who own the actual land.

Of course, the commercial feasibility of any building project can change depending on a variety of factors, including the long-term belief on the part of developers that a denser, more-profitable arrangement is politically possible.

Council could decide to call ATD’s bluff and hold firm, believing that if the company won’t build McKee Village it might eventually sell the land to someone who will. ATD, meanwhile, could decide that a future council will be more amenable to its proposal, and that it can afford to wait four years, eight years, or even longer for attitudes to shift. Dew has said ATD has no intentions to sell the land.

After six years of planning, two public hearings, and plenty of debate, council is set to finally make its decision on June 26. Since Abbotsford began considering new neighbourhood and infrastructure master plans following the adoption of a new Official Community Plan in 2016, council has yet to reject any of the proposed documents.

If they reject the McKee Peak plan, it will mark an abrupt pause in the city’s attitude toward development on its Sumas Mountain fringes. If it approves the plan, council will set in motion a new future for McKee Peak. The consequences of that future, though, will take years to shake out.