The Sumas risk of the ‘perfect flood’

Excerpted from Before We Lost the Lake: A Natural and Human History of Sumas Valley, by Chad Reimer, published in 2018 by Caitlin Press, Qualicum Beach, B.C.

The issue of Semá:th (First Nation) rights and compensation is further complicated by the historical status of the lake bed itself. When the Sumas reserves were set up, this was not dry land but water, and thus reverted to the Crown. Sumas Lake and valley fell within the Railway Belt, so the

Crown in this case was the federal government, which then and now is constitutionally obligated to protect the interests of Native people.

The federal government permitted the provincial government to destroy a lake under federal jurisdiction; then, in 1923, Ottawa sold the exposed lake bed to Victoria for $1. The Semá:th were never consulted, and Indian Affairs did nothing to protect the band’s interests. From the historical perspective at least — and quite possibly in legal terms — the federal government did not fulfill its obligations.

The recent claims of the Semá:th band show us that the story of Sumas Lake is not over, that we are still living with its presence. The waters themselves tell us this as well, for the environmental conditions that created and sustained the lake are still there. Twice each year, spring and winter, the waters of the Sumas and Fraser River watersheds try to return to their natural place on the Sumas Valley floor. The machinery and technology used to keep these at bay have become more effective with each passing decade, and the flood threat has receded in the local imagination.

This sense of security is faulty. A study released on the anniversary of the 1894 flood concluded that there is a one-in-three chance that a flood at least as big will occur by the year 2045 — and it may even be bigger. The 1894 flood was not the perfect storm of legend; it would have been higher if the Fraser and Thompson Rivers had peaked at exactly the same time, rather than a few days apart. All bets will be off if and when the perfect flood does happen, for not even the experts can predict whether the defences guarding the Sumas and Fraser valleys will stand firm or not.