The day lawyers submitted paperwork to the Supreme Court of Canada, another group quietly set up ladders in the dead of night to change a sign symbolic in a decades-long legal dispute in an Ontario beach town.
The red retro-lettered sign at the end of Main Street in the town of South Bruce Peninsula read “Welcome to Saugeen Beach” when sun seekers woke up on Canada Day this week to look out at Lake Huron.
The sign had previously ushered people to “Sauble Beach,” a tourist hotspot since the 1920s. Sporting restaurants and cottages, and town and private land are squeezed between two sections of reserve territory belonging to Chippewas of Saugeen First Nation.
The band declared victory at the end of 2024 when the Ontario Court of Appeal sided with Saugeen First Nation, saying the federal government had breached the treaty it signed in 1854. It ruled that roughly 2.2 kilometres of shoreline land incorrectly surveyed in 1855 should be returned to the First Nation.
No mention of the fact the it was the Saugeen Peninsula long before it became the Bruce Peninsula. Or that Queen Vicky declared the Saugeen Peninsula the property of the Saugeen people “in perpetuity” to reward their service in the war of 1812. Or that the federal government has tried to lay all this on the Town of South Bruce Peninsula which didn’t exist in any form when the treaties were written. Or that a previous council had good relations with SON and were working on a deal before the racist hicks in the area elected a bunch of shit heads that launched decades of legal fights to the tune of something like $6 million.
Them changing the sign in the middle of the night on Canada day eve is the funniest thing ever. Good on them for the brilliant idea and excellent execution.
The next lawsuit will be the band suing the town when the beach gets closed for poor water quality because everyone over there shits in a hole in the sand and it all trickles out into the lake.
