The BC Métis Federation (BCMF) is pleased to share a new article by BCMF Director of Research Joe Desjarlais, M.A., tracing northern Métis scrip into a 1903 land transaction at Buntzen Lake.

Drawing on scrip certificates held at Library and Archives Canada, Vancouver Power Company records at UBC Rare Books and Special Collections, and B.C.’s GATOR land-record system, the article shows how value derived from Métis title and rights helped acquire Crown land for one of the Lower Mainland’s first hydroelectric developments.

Highlights from the article:

So far, BCMF research has identified 48 separate Métis money-scrip instruments with evidence connecting them to the larger Buntzen transaction. … The names and scrip numbers change, but the land descriptions keep repeating.

Same address. Same office. Same date. Métis scrip. Vancouver Power’s payment.

Their names may have disappeared from later land and development records, but their place in the history of British Columbia should not.

From Christine Mercredi’s 1900 scrip claim at Fort Smith, to a Canadian Bank of Commerce offer to sell $400 in scrip for $360, to the eight Buntzen–Indian Arm parcels that can still be mapped today, the article follows how a process meant to extinguish Métis title and rights was used to assemble land for industrial infrastructure later inherited by BC Hydro—and names the Métis families who were there at the beginning.

Read the full story at Métis in BC: The Métis Scrip Behind Buntzen Lake