Abbotsford isn’t usually synonymous with interesting. The growing, medium-sized city is built upon agriculturally rich land, with farms dominating the outer edges. The slow pace of the city (especially the public transport) gives it a laid-back atmosphere that some may refer to as boring. Boasting its berries and retirement homes, Abbotsford may be an acquired taste for more than 150,000 people that call it home. Despite not having the same global fame as its neighbour Vancouver, Abbotsford is rich in hidden stories. Passed on through family tales and folded into local history books is heritage that cannot be found elsewhere — not even the internet at times. (Crazy, I know.)
I talked with some knowledgeable community members to learn more about the hidden stories that made Abbotsford into the place we know it to be today.
Part I: The People of the River
Keith Thor Carlson is a history professor at UFV and a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Indigenous and Community-engaged History. He has worked with the Stó:l? communities in the Fraser Valley since 1992. When he was a grad student at UVic, Carlson did a co-operative education work term for the federal government filing Indigenous land claims. “I thought naively that meant you were working to help Indigenous people on their land claims. That’s not how it worked at all. It was totally you were working against Indigenous people on their land claims … I got a real sense of how the government sees Indigenous people as an obstacle to development — an obstacle to everything that has to be overcome,” said Carlson. After that, Carlson reached out to work directly with First Nations communities and has been focusing on Indigenous history ever since.
As Carlson explained, “Stó:l?” translates to river. “[The Stó:l? people] are the people of the lower Fraser River. [From Yale, which is] where the rapids become so tough in the Fraser Canyon that you can’t go further, down to the mouth of the Fraser River is the Stó:l? region,” Carlson stated. Carlson said that the Abbotsford campus of UFV is located on Matsqui territory — one of the approximately 27 different Stó:l? tribal communities along the lower Fraser River.
“[Matsqui are] a community that was devastated by smallpox back in the late 18th century … An epidemic that started in Mexico and then spread through intertribal networks all the way up into British Columbia. But the survivors of all the Stó:l? communities consolidated — so there would be a few survivors from this village and that village and that village, and they would move to be with their relatives and [wherever] was the most defensible or protected place they could be,” Carlson said.
The risk of attack from the people on the North Coast who did not have the epidemic drove the Matsqui away from their village, and inland. Carlson explained that “They moved away from the water to be protected because the winding tributary river that leads up to that site was too short, so the big canoes of the ocean-going raiders couldn’t make the turns. So the Matsqui people were safe up at the top of that hill.” Therefore, as Carlson elaborated, the origins of human settlement in Abbotsford are based around a safe place of refuge.
A land of lessons
As Carlson explained, many landmarks found around Abbotsford have significance to the Stó:l? community that is passed on through cultural sharing. “The Matsqui people, the Stó:l? people here, have transformer stories that talk about how the world came to be the permanent way it is … The world was very chaotic and dangerous in the past that the people could transform into animals, or animals could transform into people and they had magic powers that could hurt people. And so what happened is the transformers come through, and they take that chaotic world and they make it recognizable — they make the world that we see today. They make it ‘right’ — this is the word the elders use. And so, at various points throughout the Fraser Valley, are transformer stones.”
Carlson explained that transformer stones are people who were transformed into stones to “teach a lesson to convey history.” Carlson also mentioned that an important Stó:l? transformer stone is buried under a dike on the Fraser River. It is the site of the first Matsqui person — a beaver.
Another transformer stone is in the Aldergrove Regional Park — just a few kilometres away from UFV. Carlson discussed how a geologist may see the giant rock as a remnant of glacial activity, but the Stó:l? people “[will] tell you there was, and still is, a village right there beside the park. And in that village was a man who had the ability to tell when enemies were coming. And the way he could tell was that he would start to sneeze.” The transformers noticed this and wanted the story to remain so people would always stay wary of dangerous visitors. The man was transformed into the gigantic stone that stands in the park today, and is now called “meqsel” (or “nose” in the Stó:l? language), as Carlson explained.
A relationship defined by consumption
However, the dynamic of the community greatly changed when people from different parts of the world began to take interest in this region.
“The Stó:l? word for you and I, for people who have come from elsewhere in the world to settle here, is Xwelitem. Xwelitem translates as people who are so hungry they are starving.
“That was first used when Simon Fraser, the very first explorer to come into this territory, left all of his supplies up above the North Canyon — because he couldn’t take them through; the canyon was too rough. And so he arrived down here with no food. And if you’re a Stó:l? person travelling in the past, you always bring food in your canoe to where you were going. So hosts would have food to give you, but guests would bring food with them.
“We have this word now that continues to resonate with the Stó:l?, because it’s hungry people who were first hungry for food and then hungry for their children. They took [them] to residential school, took them away. And then hungry for resources — they would cut down forests, take the gold, take the land, and so that term continues to resonate,” Carlson said.
Part of this legacy are stories that can be difficult to tell. Between UFV and the Fraser River is the Matsqui prairie — a low-land area that the Matsqui traditionally used to hunt ducks and geese, trap, and gather plants. Most of this land was part of the original promised First Nations reserve, “but the government took that reserve away without compensation,” Carlson explained. “It was reduced from 9,600 acres down to just 80 acres … It was eventually made a little bit bigger, until it got up to a couple hundred acres, but never anything near the size it was.”
Carlson said that the land was instead given away to a developer that put in the dike system allowing for the area to have the fertile agricultural land that Abbotsford is known for today. Carlson states that “We need agriculture, but they did that without Matsqui consent. What was most troubling, was that the way they put the dikes, they bypassed the First Nations community. So when the flooding of the Fraser River happened, those dikes ended up protecting the white farmers’ property, but actually flooded the Matsqui peoples’ village site. So it actually destroyed their lands in two ways.”
“When I think of us as settlers in this part of the world, and we try to think of how do we fit in, how do we create a respectful relationship with the Stó:l? people, I think we need to start with that idea of what is the legacy of what those settlers who came before us have done to create a relationship which is defined by consumption,” Carlson said. Abbotsford is known and loved for the fertile soil that creates an agricultural community, but many of us don’t think about the forces, sometimes unpleasant, that shaped the community into the place we see in the current day.
Part II: “Abbotsford”
I also met up with Natalia Deros, a UFV alumni and programs manager at the Trethewey House in Abbotsford. The Trethewey House is a designated heritage home that is 101 years old this year.
“[The Trethewey House] doesn’t just tell the stories of the Trethewey family, who were really significant to the history of Abbotsford, but also it tells a story of the beginning of Canada — or the beginning of B.C. The Tretheweys were a very major family in lumber production, and so was B.C. — the way it is now really comes from a lot of history of natural resource production,” said Deros.
However, part of this is also recognizing the land that the Trethewey House is built on — as with the rest of the city. “It is an old house on land that would have been Stó:l? land … even telling that uncomfortable story I think is important too,” Deros said.
The homeless settler
Though Indigenous people have lived on this land for centuries, the first Xwelitem to settle into Abbotsford was far from the typical image of a rich European explorer. “The first settler that we know of in downtown Abbotsford was a squatter named Mr. Freeman who lived in a tree trunk,” explained Deros. Though Mr. Freeman may have managed to get comfortable living in his tree trunk, it wouldn’t last. Deros elaborated that John Maclure bought the land, which he thought was the perfect place to set up the Canadian Pacific Railway. Mr. Freeman didn’t give up without a fight, and managed to fight back using “squatter’s rights” for a year until MacClure paid him off with $100, according to Deros.
Deros mentioned that “It’s interesting because you can still see to this day the results of actions of certain people about 100, 150 years ago … I do find it interesting that the first settler in Abbotsford was technically a homeless person. There’s some irony there, in regards to that his tree was probably close to Jubilee Park where there have been a lot of discussions around homelessness and what to do. And so, I think there’s an irony that our history has always been home for people who may choose to live in different ways — not that it’s always a choice.”
Integrated, but separated
One of the things Deros noted sets Abbotsford apart was that “It was 13 or 14 villages that became one — many villages to city.” One of these notable villages was Clayburn, which Deros said was known as a company town and for its production of clay bricks. “Maybe because of all the little villages [with] different characteristics, but there are very strong communities in Abbotsford, I think. And with that comes some really great character and really awesome initiatives and a sense of identity and caring. But it still sometimes seems a little separate.”
Deros commented that another aspect that differentiates Abbotsford is the diversity. For example, the large South Asian population was partially “engineered” by Mr. Trethewey. “He brought in workers from Punjab specifically and had boarding houses … From there on, they brought their families here.”
The increase in diversity coincided with when Abbotsford was beginning to become a bigger city. “[It’s] cool to think of Abbotsford being this kind of global representation,” said Deros.
Part III: The Present
Both of the interviews touched on losses encountered because of the rapid progression Abbotsford is facing as a community. As Deros mentioned, artifacts like buildings can embody stories.
“I think that spaces that tell stories are really important. It gives an identity; it can tell a story of where our community started and where it went,” said Deros.
However, many of these buildings are being torn down as they are getting older — such as the recent decision to replace a longstanding historical tea house in downtown Abbotsford.
Why does history matter?
Carlson stated that history is not something solely for observing the past. “If we do history thoughtfully it should speak to contemporary issues and help to provide answers to contemporary problems.”
An example of this is Carlson’s work on the lynching of Louie Sam. Carlson was approached by Stó:l? elders to help uncover part of an oral tradition about a tree in the Sumas community. Carlson said “[It was] a big cedar tree — ancient, huge, gigantic cedar tree. And it was referred to by some of the elders as the ‘hanging tree,’ but the elders didn’t remember what was hanging there.” This lead Carlson to the case of the lynching of Louie Sam — the only lynching, groundless killing by a mob to occur on Canadian soil in recorded history.
Louie Sam was 14 years old and came from a broken family. Carlson explained that an American was having an affair, and he murdered the husband of the woman he was meeting. Louie Sam was “a perfect target if you’re a really nasty person who’s trying to put blame on somebody else,” Carlson said. Louie Sam was arrested and held overnight until he could be sent to get a translator. However, the actual murderer didn’t want Louie Sam to be able to say that it wasn’t him. A group of men that knew the murder victim, James Bell, arranged for around 100 Americans to dress up as women and paint their faces in Coast Salish ceremonial paint. Carlson explained, “They come across the border into Canada on Sumas Prairie — Whatcom Road area — and they take the boy away from the police, and then they lynch him on a tree, and they kill him. And this [happened] in Canada.”
Because it was winter and the ground was frozen, the boy’s body was taken back to Sumas and wrapped in blankets to be hung in a tree (to avoid animals like coyotes). “So it was the hanging tree, but it wasn’t where he was lynched — it was where his body was kept until it was ready to be buried,” Carlson explained.
Due to the publicity Carlson’s research publication brought to the story, the Government of Washington State invited Stó:l? elders down to Olympia into the legislative building and issued a formal apology. Carlson states that “[The] Louie Sam story is one that I think kind of has that potential to be a tragic story that we can make something positive come out of it now for the present period.”
Moving Forward
The region around Abbotsford has transformed dramatically over the course of time — eventually becoming a city where diverse people come together. Many of the changes the city has faced may have come from forces that are not often recognized and discussed.
Carlson said that he has hope in the new generations, noting the absence of “built-in prejudices that were just common in my generation, which were even worse in my parents’ generation … When I see the change over the past 30 years that I’ve been working here, there is a lot more dialogue, a lot more understanding.”
Carlson also mentioned that being on a university campus allows for the unique opportunity to look at problems in an interdisciplinary lens. “That demographic where you’re a student, you’re in this privileged spot where you get to take a history class in the morning and a chemistry class in the afternoon, or a business class and then a sociology class, where you’re actually seeing all these different ways of answering these questions and bringing them together in ways that the outside world isn’t explicitly doing,” Carlson said.
Abbotsford is made up of countless stories that cannot be found from a simple Google search. If we could hear the stories of everyone that passed through this town, we would hear stories dramatically different from one another. Whether a resident or traveller, we should all learn about the footsteps laid out before us, and preserve the stories that are embedded in the land itself.
