The BC Métis Federation (BCMF) is pleased to share a new article by BCMF Director of Research Joe Desjarlais, M.A., following a single $160 money-scrip certificate issued to a Métis man in 1890 out of the federal scrip records and into the title of a Surrey homestead.

Drawing on B.C. Homestead Grant Registers, Dominion Lands records, and scrip certificates held at Library and Archives Canada, the article shows where the value of Métis scrip actually went once a claimant sold it — and why that value did not stop at the Prairie border.

Highlights from the article:

Money scrip was never cash. It was a land credit that could be bought cheap, spent at full value, and turned into someone else’s title.

In the remarks, a handwritten note states, “Paid in full scrip No. 8081 for $160.” That small notation was the clue: it showed that scrip had been used to complete payment on Newton’s land and it gave me a specific certificate number to trace.

Newton remained visible in the land record. Morin disappeared from it.

From the scrip commission that travelled into the Fort St. John area after Treaty No. 8, to Alloway and Champion paying as little as $80 for a $160 certificate, to the 56 parcels and more than 8,700 acres of Lower Mainland land BCMF researchers have now matched to scrip records across Surrey, Langley, Abbotsford, Maple Ridge, Mission and Coquitlam, the article traces how a federal credit issued to extinguish Métis land rights was converted into British Columbia real estate — and how the Métis claimants behind it were written out of the land record.

Read the full story at Métis in BC: Where the Value Went: Métis Scrip and British Columbia Land