Saugeen First Nation members work on changing the lettering of the former Sauble Beach welcome sign to reflect the re-allocation of the land to the First Nations community on Tuesday.Cheree Urscheler/The Canadian Press
The Supreme Court of Canada has decided not to hear an appeal of lower-court rulings that deemed a stretch of Sauble Beach, Ont., to be within the local Saugeen First Nation reserve, despite arguments the case could have broad implications for property owners caught up in Indigenous land claims.
The top court’s announcement, made on Thursday, caps a 30-year legal battle waged by the Saugeen First Nation. This Indigenous band on the shores of Lake Huron had long held that it was owed an additional strip of Sauble Beach, one of the longest freshwater beaches in the world and a destination for hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.
In 2023, an Ontario Superior Court judge agreed with the Saugeen, whose claim was also supported by the federal government, that the reserve boundaries the band believed it was promised in its 1854 treaty with the Crown had been misdrawn on the official map.
The ruling, upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal last year, handed the First Nation an additional 2.4-kilometre stretch of coastline in this cottage community. Much of Sauble Beach’s 11-kilometre sandy shore, which is about a three-hour drive from Toronto, was already reserve land. But this northern section was owned by the town, and a small number of private landowners.
Saugeen First Nation Chief Conrad Ritchie said word the appeal would not go ahead was a cause for celebration for his approximately 1,800 members, after decades of trying to have the band’s interpretation of its treaty upheld.
“I think that it’s just a recognition that that was land our ancestors had preserved for our people,” Mr. Ritchie said in an interview.
The announcement puts an end to challenges from the local municipality, called the Town of South Bruce Peninsula, the province and a handful of property owners stripped of their land in the case.
In their submission seeking leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, lawyers for the town and some of the private landowners said this was the first reported decision in which private property had been handed over in a First Nations case since Canada’s 1982 Constitution guaranteed treaty rights.
They warned that the decision raised issues that “strike at the very heart of Canada’s constitutional order, and will be increasingly brought into focus as Indigenous land claims over private property work their way through the courts over the next decade.”
Earlier: First Nation wins Sauble Beach land claim through Ontario court
Ontario also opposed the Saugeen land claim and had asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, saying the case raised questions about how to reconcile conflicting interpretations of First Nations treaties, many of which were drawn up after oral agreements with Indigenous leaders in the 19th century.
But lawyers for the First Nation and the federal government had argued that the top court should not hear the appeal, saying the case boiled down to a very specific dispute over the boundaries of this reserve.
Mr. Ritchie, the Saugeen chief, said the beach will remain “status quo” and still welcome all the Frisbee-throwers and sun-worshippers that flock to its shore each year, as it has for the three summers since the original ruling.
But he said the long-standing “Welcome to Sauble Beach” sign, altered this year to say “Welcome to Saugeen Beach,” could be replaced by a permanent marker that might rename the beach again and incorporate his people’s Ojibway language. He said he hoped it would help educate visitors about the history of the land.
He also said he hoped for a new and better relationship with the town. The First Nation, which does not have access to the municipality’s property tax or parking revenues, must now fund the cleaning and maintenance of the beach itself. But he declined to discuss the beach’s finances.
As is normal, the Supreme Court did not provide reasons for its decision. To go ahead with a case, the justices must determine whether a potential appeal presents unresolved issues that are of national importance. The top court says No to more than 90 per cent of applications to have a case heard.
The First Nation, the town and the private landowners are now expected to begin a second legal process to determine what compensation, if any, they are owed − and who pays whom. This second phase of the trial is also meant to sort out what the First Nation is owed for having been denied the beach for more than 170 years.
No cottages were involved in the land claim, which applies only to a stretch of dunes and sand along the shore. The once privately owned parcels that were added to the reserve include patches of beach used for parking and a former family-owned french-fry shack, the Crowd Inn, that had operated since 1948.
David Dobson, who ran the takeout stand founded by his father and uncle until the 2023 ruling stripped him of his beachfront plot, said in a e-mail that the final result is bittersweet.
“On the one hand there may now be an end in sight, but on the other hand, I feel there has been a huge injustice done, not just to me, but all of Sauble Beach,” Mr. Dobson said.
He spent years researching the tangled case, which involved reams of complex historical evidence about the treaty, changes made to the agreement after it was signed, the survey and the official map, all dating back 170 years.
Mr. Dobson, who for financial reasons abandoned the legal battle for his ownership of the land, argues the agreement did not entitle the Saugeen to any more beachfront.
In 2014, a proposed settlement that would have handed title to the First Nation but seen the beach managed by a joint town-band committee was scrapped after a local election put a new mayor in office who vowed to fight the land claim.
The town’s current mayor, and its lawyers, did not respond to e-mails requesting comment on Thursday before deadline.
The broader legal landscape for First Nations is shifting as various cases asserting treaty and title rights make their way through the courts.
Earlier this month, a landmark B.C. ruling established title for the Cowichan Tribes, of Vancouver Island, over 800 acres in Richmond, in a case legal experts expect to eventually hit the Supreme Court of Canada. The court did not rule against private landowners but said land titles held by Richmond and the federal government in the area were invalid and ordered negotiations.
With a report from David Ebner