Naomi Mitchell is packing boxes.

And every few seconds she stops and pauses, over a toy truck, a brooch, or a scrapbook, and recalls a memory.

Mitchell, a retired secondary school teacher and SPCA volunteer who’s nearing 80, has lived in this comfortable cottage on the Semiahmoo First Nation for nearly 30 years.

Sure, she and her neighbours have been under a permanent boil water advisory since 2005, but with the well out front, Mitchell says she’s managed just fine.

Her two sons spent part of their childhood here. Her grandchildren come to visit.

Mitchell laughs as she points out her granddaughter in a photo on the White Rock pier. It was the day she climbed up on the railing and dove in, what she calls a “rite of passage.”

“Thank god I got my memories,” Mitchell says.

Because now, it appears, her time is up.

“The thing is, it’s how it was done. Not that it was done. It’s how it was done,” Mitchell tells me, as we sit in her cozy kitchen, with her now-adult son Jason looking on.

Because Naomi Mitchell, like nearly 40 of her neighbours, some also seniors, has few rights here. She’s a non-band member living on a reserve, not under any kind of official lease, but an informal month-to-month tenant arrangement.

For years, she’s paid no more than $457 a month.

And now the family that owns the land, along with the Semiahmoo First Nation’s Chief and Council, she says, have basically decided for her, it’s time to go.
 

The plan for clean water

The story of the Semiahmoo First Nation (SFN), is a story of a people who live steps away from what have become some of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in the Lower Mainland.

Since 2005, the entire reserve has been under a permanent boil water advisory. And nearly half of the band members and their families no longer live on the stunning strip of coastline just yards from the U.S. border.

But that could be about to change.

This year, the SFN broke ground on sewer and water connections that will finally hook the reserve up to the City of Surrey’s system, and bring in a safe drinking water supply.

The project , expected to be finished in late 2019 or early 2020, is funded through a $10 million grant from the federal government through Indigenous Services Canada (ISC).

And it’s a project the Semiahmoo Chief, Harley Chappell, calls “monumental.”

“We’re raising the standards in this community,” Chappell says. “We’re going to do what’s right so my children and grandchildren don’t have to absorb and adopt some of the struggles, we’ve had.”

But according to ISC, that grant only covers costs for band members, which means non-band member tenants like Naomi Mitchell are left out.

Less than a month after the ground breaking, on April 2, Naomi Mitchell says she received a memo from the Chief that outlined her costs: $50,000 to connect to the system; up to an additional $60,000 for a lift station; $25,000 for a property boundary survey; and an explanation that leases would be based on a “fair market value appraisal.”

The memo gave non-band residents two weeks to decide if they were going to opt in, and two more weeks to come up with the money. Otherwise, it read, they’d be required to leave by June 15.

I ask Mitchell how she reacted when she read it for the first time.

“Fear,” she says. “Then I became angry. Then I became bitter.”

Her eyes well up. Then she looks resolved.

“I’m almost 80. Who’s going to give a pensioner $50,000 as a loan? No, it’s not fair.”
 

Reserve tenants say it’s about trust, transparency

Naomi Mitchell isn’t the only tenant who felt blindsided by the notice.

Nicole Brideau’s father, Teo, who’s also nearly 80, has lived on the reserve for some 45 years. Brideau says her Dad moved an old A-frame onto the property, then added onto the house. Nicole was born and raised on the reserve. Her Dad still pays $404 a month.

Brideau, who was born and raised on the reserve, and grew up alongside the Chief’s family, calls the ultimatum “completely heartbreaking.”

She explains the SFN leadership told tenants back in 2017 to begin saving up for the investment, but there was never a concrete number. Brideau says she did her due diligence by checking with contractors, who estimated $10,000 on the high end. Both she had her father saved that money. But it wasn’t enough.

“I think it’s all about them wanting us off the land,” Brideau says, explaining that she’s lost trust in the Chief and Council. “They don’t want us there. That’s why they made it so unreachable.”

“Is it about the water?” I ask Naomi Mitchell in her kitchen.

“No. It’s not about the water. It’s not about the sewers,” Mitchell says. “It’s about the money.”
 

Semiahmoo Chief: This is where we’re at

Harley Chappell, who’s been Chief for just over two years, says he understands the frustration felt by long-time tenants like Mitchell, but insists his hands are tied, the timing was dictated by the grant and the contractor, and the boil water advisory prevents the SFN from offering tenants any guarantee of a new lease.

“We need to know and we need to know now,” Chappell says. “And that’s the reality of our project.”

“Looking at what you’ve laid out here,” I ask, “would you say this is a good deal?”

“It’s not a deal or not. It is what it is. The costs are what they are,” Chappell says.

“Would you pay it if you were one of the non-band members?” I ask.

“No. Probably not,” Chappell admits.

While the Chief insists the up-to-six figure bill for tenants is about bringing in safe water, and not about pushing them off the reserve, an audio recording from an April 16 meeting between non-band members and the SFN leadership seems to indicate why some tenants might believe it’s actually the later.

In the recording, made and given to CTV News by a tenant at that meeting, a band member multiple tenants identify as someone close to the Chief says: “I don’t even want them here…that’s what I’ve been saying forever. I just want them gone.”

Those comments, Chappell says, do not reflect how he feels.

“It’s not about kicking people off,” Chappell says. “It’s about raising the standard in our community,” adding that bringing in a drinkable water supply should have been done decades ago.

The Chief says none of the 40 or so tenants have taken him up on the offer.

When I ask him about plans for the homes and the land the tenants will leave behind, he’s non-committal.

Chappell later quietly admits to me off camera he believes the situation could have been handled better.
 

The peace is gone

Back at Naomi Mitchell’s on Upper Beach Road, Mitchell takes a break from the packing and sorting.

She brews a cup of tea, then heads out to a chair perched on her back lawn, which still overlooks the idyllic Boundary Bay, if you can ignore the dump trucks driving by, and the sound of the diggers in the distance.

Her dog Elsie, a rescue, hovers nearby.

In just a few weeks, Mitchell tells me she’ll be leaving for Kamloops where she plans to live with her niece, until she can get back on her feet again.

She says she’ll miss her two sons, who will do anything they can to help, but can’t take her in, and she’ll also miss her garden, she jokes, perhaps even more.

“Would you stay if [the Chief] let you stay?” I ask.

“No,” Mitchell says. “It’s toxic. The peace is gone. The harmony is gone. I don’t think it can ever be brought back again.”