Sumas Lake Reclaimed

As I sit incredulous, terrified, heartbroken, but also resigned to news that the Barrowtown pump station might fail and release even more water into the Fraser Valley, I can’t help think of a story I wrote a few years ago.

I had the honour of talking to Ray Silver about the 33,000 acre lake that was drained in the 1920s to make way for more settlers and more farmland. The story was printed in Raspberry Magazine and the link is on my page.

This is a short excerpt:

Silver was born in 1929 in his parent’s house located just up the slope and across what is now four lanes of traffic from what used to be the bottom of a lake. He hadn’t witnessed the draining. The last water was squeezed out of the marshy wetland in 1924, five years before his time. But he’d been told stories.

"Millions of salmon spawning. Fish. Sturgeon. Everything. The lake provided for the natives. That was their SuperValu."

The lake was also their highway. They paddled on the wide glassy water body and down tributaries to the Fraser. Silver’s people visited their neighbours via the lake for countless generations, and they followed the cycles of fish, game and waterfowl.

… Silver described how [the settlers plan] impacted his people. "They came and told the native people they were going to drain the lake. Our people got worried about it right away. They were downhearted. The old people talked and one of the big chiefs said, ‘The white men are crazy. There is too much water out there. They’ll never drain it. Don’t worry, it’s too big.’”

The article starts and ends at the rest area on the highway, across from Silver’s home and the ending haunts me now:

I wanted to tell them all about the lake. I wanted them to know about the pump house that keeps the river from inundating the reclaimed land — that it is always the first spot in the eastern Fraser Valley to get power restored after a storm. I wanted them to know that the lake, although almost forgotten, could still return.

I craned my neck up at the sign again and wondered if it was tall enough to withstand a true reclamation of Sumas Lake.

Photo by Nancy Hildebrand in Abbotsford on Nov. 16 (AM) gives some perspective on Sumas Lake past and present. (Ray Silver's place would be down below tree line on the left)