News and Features
How the Squamish First Nation is Reshaping Vancouver
By Gary Mason published May 1, 2012
As head of the Squamish First Nation, Gibby Jacob is in a position to reshape the city. And he fully intends to.
It’s not where you’d expect to find the headquarters of one of the richest organizations in B.C.— in a nondescript module by the railway tracks in North Vancouver, the odour of diesel fuel from the nearby Mosquito Creek marina in the air. The only hint of the operation being run out of the building with its faded, blood-red awning is the young aboriginal man dragging on a cigarette outside a one-person security post. Welcome to the nerve centre of the Squamish First Nation.
In the distance, across Burrard Inlet, you can see the five sails of Canada Place and the shimmering glass towers of downtown Vancouver. It’s a view that Gibby Jacob, 60, the hereditary chief of the Squamish, takes in every day when he steps out on the deck for a smoke. “Our history is everywhere around here,” he says. “We had so much taken from us. It’s impossible to look across those waters and not think about that. It’s a daily reminder of all that is owed us, of all that we had to give up.”
Jacob’s forbearers made their home on the sloping shore of what is now Kitsilano. In 1913 they were evicted by the government of the day, put on scows, and towed to the North Shore or up Howe Sound. Behind them, their houses were burned. The Squamish First Nation came into being on July 23, 1923, when 16 tribes united under one name in a bid to become powerful enough to stop the hegemony of European settlers. In large part, it was a response to the evictions and burning 10 years earlier.
Jacob’s father, Alfred, born in 1910, was a hand-logger before he became a commercial fisherman near the end of his life. Mother Lena cleaned homes for white people up and down the Squamish valley. She made baskets and worked in the fish canneries at the foot of Gore Street in Vancouver. Jacob was the last of nine children. Growing up on the Capilano reserve, he recalls, “We were poor, but we didn’t know we were poor. You noticed that the white kids had nice runners and all that stuff, but that didn’t matter much when you were a kid. We were happy just to have runners.”
When he started playing lacrosse, at age 10, there was no equipment beyond sticks and balls. “The white kids had all the gear and everything, and we had nothing. So we got beat up pretty good. We’d come home on our bus and we’d be bleeding and black-and-blue from being cross-checked and slashed, but nobody ever cried. That was the rule. Sometimes it hurt so much you could barely breathe. But nobody cried.”
Jacob’s life, more than most, has been a book of sorrows. A brother and sister died before he was born. He lost a sister, brother-in-law, niece, and grand-nephew when M Creek washed out in 1982. Ten years ago, two sisters died within six months, both from aneurysms. But the worst was to come. “That girl,” he says, pointing to a framed photo of a happy-looking eight-year-old. “That’s my late granddaughter, Leanne.” Jacob’s voice catches. “It’s hard to talk about even now.”
In August 2003, Leanne was returning from a camping trip with her mother and stepsisters. When the van pulled into the driveway, her stepfather emerged from the garage with a gun. He put two bullets into Leanne’s head before turning the gun on himself. “I don’t know how low a snake’s belly is, but I was down there,” Jacob says. “And my poor wife. It just about killed her. We cried for a long, long time. It still haunts me.”
