Trutch’s shameful legacy

Unceded: Understanding British Columbia’s Colonial Past and Why It Matters Now
by George M. Abbott (Foreword by The Honourable Steven Point)

Vancouver: UBC Press [Purich Books], 2025
$29.95  /  9780774881159

Reviewed by Ron Verzuh

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When Vancouver City Council, in consultation with the Musqueam Indian Band, renamed Trutch Street on June 17, 2025, anyone wondering why the change occurred need go no further than George Abbott’s Unceded.

As Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim explained, “The legacy of Joseph Trutch is one of harm. He was openly racist and actively worked to erase the rights of Indigenous peoples.” And he was not alone among BC’s early colonial leaders or some in modern times.

Author George Abbott meticulously researched this disturbing political past to shed light on that legacy as governments and First Nations continue the quest for truth and reconciliation partly through land claims negotiations.

Trutch Street’s new legal name is šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm St. which translates as Musqueamview Street. It will appear in official city records, maps, and some government databases. The renaming is at least a slight reparation for decades of racist land thievery by BC’s top officials in collusion with federal Indian Affairs Branch deputy superintendent Duncan Campbell Scott and others who subscribed to Trutch’s policies.

Trutch and Scott are not the only ones who believed that “only white, actual settlers could make good use of agricultural land.” In fact, one of the few good guys in this sordid history of illegal government land grabbing is BC’s first colonial premier Sir James Douglas.

“Trutch’s beliefs were far from unique,” Abbott writes. “He was aided and abetted in his mission by prominent colonial and post-Confederation BC politicians such as Amor de Cosmos, John Robson, and Frank Barnard, whose message was remarkably consistent: settler interests must prevail.” Colonial governor Frederick Seymour joins the group. “Seymour even shared Trutch’s remarkable capacity to find virtue in miserly reserved allocations.”

The crux of the disagreement centred on Trutch countering Douglas’s proposal to allow extensions of First Nations’ reserve land. Under his leadership, he used “lies, bullying, subterfuge, or cash – to undermine and reverse what Douglas had promised.”

This is the ugly side of BC history, a side we know well. But the seeds planted by Trutch and others still bear fruit through images of First Nations communities unwilling to make productive use of the land.

Abbott records the efforts of First Nations leaders to argue for extensions of reserve land so that they could develop workable economies. But always they were fighting against the early mindset fostered and promoted by Trutch: “only white, actual settlers could make good use of agricultural lands.”

“We have felt like men trampled on, and are commencing to believe that the aim of the white man is to exterminate us,” argued Chief Peter Ayessik of the Hope (Chawathil) First Nation. “Eighty acres per family is absolutely necessary for our support,” he concluded. He then added a veiled prediction that less than that could “create ill feelings.”

Ayessik’s comments were echoed time and again as successive BC governments failed to upend the Trutch legacy of reducing reserve land, not expanding it. Reserves elsewhere in Canada were substantially larger than those in BC, but when the Canadian government offered to “remedy that disparity” the province steadfastly resisted the proposal.

Abbott spent long hours in government archives to research this account of BC’s shameful legacy. He also spent years in various government ministerial posts, including a stint as minister of aboriginal relations and reconciliation. Most recently he has served as a BC treaty commissioner.

He makes no apology for his criticism of public policy or the governments that perpetrated its damage. He also offers some hope: “Despite the prejudices and injustices that stain our history,” he concludes, “British Columbians and Canadians can learn from our painful history and offer renewed hopes for reconciliation in a troubled world.”

Abbott dedicates his book to his grandchildren with an apology about “the wicked social and environmental problems my generation has left your generation to solve.” He adds, “Don’t hesitate to call Grandpa if you think I can help!”

NOTE: The B.C. government seems to be following the tradition underlined in Unceded as it plans to appeal a recent court decision regarding the Cowichan First Nation in the Richmond, B.C., area.

On August 12, The Globe and Mail reported on August 12 that a Supreme Court judge “found that in centuries past, the Cowichan Nation, an Indigenous group on Vancouver Island, had an annual summer village on the Fraser River, on territory that is now in the City of Richmond, where they fished for salmon.”

Justice Barbara Young “concluded that title was never extinguished and as a result, the Cowichan Nation – comprised of several First Nations – has title to 800 acres of land, a parcel that includes land currently held by private landowners.” B.C. plans to appeal the decision.

Is the NDP government about to repeat the mistakes of Joseph Trutch and others who followed his century-old indigenous land claims policies?

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Ron Verzuh is a writer and historian. [Editor’s note: Ron has recently reviewed books by Barry Potyondi, Brandon Marriott, Harpreet Sekha, The Simon Fraser University Retirees Association, Bill Arnott, and R.D. Rowberry for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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