2010 Legislative Session: Second Session, 39th Parliament
HANSARD
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The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

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Official Report of
DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

(Hansard)
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TUESDAY, MAY 25, 2010

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 18, Number 7

Statements
(Standing Order 25B)

HERITAGE SITES IN NORTH DELTA AREA

G. Gentner: This weekend along North Delta's River Road two tributes commemorate the heritage aspects of our community. In Annieville the Trinity Lutheran Church celebrated its 100th-year anniversary, while one kilometre downstream the Sunbury Neighbourhood Association had its annual Victoria Day garden party.

By the panoramic riverfront I stood in a recently excavated crater located between makeshift construction fencing. It occurred to me that I was standing on B.C. protected archaeological sites DgRr-2 and DgRr-6, respectively known as the St. Mungo and Glenrose Cannery sites.

North Delta is home to one of the oldest and most significant archaeological sites in British Columbia, evidence of a settlement that predates the pyramids, Stonehenge or the occupation of Scotland. Habitat occupied the foreshore 250 years before the red and yellow cedar came to the Lower Mainland, and their tools and ornaments were made not of wood but of stone and bone.

They were intensive fishers and fished on water where we today call Richmond and South Delta. When they first occupied this land, the ocean was ten metres below present levels. As glaciers melted upstream, the Fraser in its infancy cut its way with fresh water and silt, creating a delta with new marshlands and bogs that created berries and medicinal herbs.

DgRr-2 and DgRr-6 are recognized heritage sites of extreme importance. It is ironic that underneath the excavation lies 8,500 years of authenticity of B.C.'s very First Peoples' cultural adaptation to a changing land and climate, now ripped apart for a freeway.