Saugeen challenge town by-law

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Natives on the Bruce Peninsula in souther Ontario are challenging a nearby township's bylaw permitting the sale of some shoreline property that may never have been surrendered.

The Saugeen Ojibway First Nations filed a notice of application with Ontario provincial court Feb. 1 to quash Keppel Township bylaw 220-1993.

The bylaw allows the 253 property owners whose lands adjoin a shore road allowance to sign "quit claim deeds", documents requiring to sell or develop properties along a short section of the Georgian bay shoreline.

The Saugeen Ojibway contend the Keppel bylaw was passed in bad faith because the township gave no prior public notice of the Nov. 24, 1993 vote. The group also maintains the township has no power to authorize the signing of quit claim deeds.

The shore road allowance, a 20-metree wide section of land once reserved for road development, was also never surrendered by the Saugeen Ojibway, said Ralph Akiwenzie, Chief of the Chippewas of Nawash at nearby Cape Croker.

"This kind of thing has gone on for decades. We know we have been kept from realizing our rightful claims by things done behind closed doors."

But the Ojibway have no basis for a court challenge, Keppel chief administrative officer Bob Hewines said. The township is not required to give public notice on council votes of this nature.

"That's the way we do business here," he said.

The federal government handed ownership of the shoreline allowance to the province, which in turn gave it to the township in 1913 for future roadway development, Hewines said. But surreys in the 1950s decided that land was too rocky for construction, and built the road on the land ward side of the properties bordering the allowance.

The bylaws lifts the ban on selling or developing the shoreline allowance to compensate land owners who lost property to the new road.

But the Saugeen are not buying that line, tribal claims research co-ordinator Darlene Johnston said. The Ojibway never agreed to surrender the land nor were they ever compensated for it, even though Crown documents maintains the land along the shore was given up in 1854.

In fact, the surrender of entire Bruce Peninsula, some half million acres north of Owen Sound and Southampton, Ontario, is in question, Johnston said.

The band's case will be heard in provincial court May 20.