At various points along the Trans Canada Trail, signs, plaques and other beacons mark places that were originally inhabited by some of the country’s many First Nations. Throughout Western Canada, less built up by the stone, brick, concrete, and longer established histories of the older provinces, these indegenious roots appear much more readily. Almost every major point along the Iron Horse Trail in Alberta, a repurposed rail line, has a sign that denotes the site as the home of a once prospering First Nation’s settlement displaced by the arrival of the railway. In downtown Winnipeg near The Forks, where the Assiniboine and Red River’s meet, plaques and pavillions remember the signing of Treaty#1(dated 1871)where, under intense attack, Louis Reel helped to secure rights for the 7 First Nation’s that originally inhabited the region. At the trail head Pavillion in Fort Qu’appelle, Sk, one will find the Fort Qu’appelle Museum and what remains of the actual building where the region’s Indigenous tribes were coerced under threat into signing Treaty #4(dated 1874), known as the Qu’appelle Treaty. The trails around Saskatoon, part of what is known as Treaty #6 territory(dated 1876), remember the Plains Cree, Assiniboine, Saulteaux and other tribes that first called the city site home before being displaced by the railway and other colonial development.
These were the first treatise signed between the First Nation’s and colonizing forces in Canada’s history, and largely in the name of establishing the trans continental railway. While land agreements had been established in the older provinces before the country’s formation in 1867, Canada’s west was largely unmapped by the newly formed government, and still primarily home to an extensive list of different Indigenous tribes before the lands were taken . Much like in the eastern part of the country these western indigenous tribes had been establishing settlements and pathways on the lands for thousands of years before the railways, finding the optimal points for travel, shelter, and resource gathering, points that all became necessary for establishing the rail lines, the trans canada highway and eventually the Trans Canada Trail.
To say the sometimes millenia old pathways created by Canada’s First Nation’s are the foundations for the trans national trail would be an understatement, and the Trans Canada Trail foundation aims to improve recognition of this fact with land acknowledgements and interpretative signage regularly being added to various trailheads and pavillions.
More information about truth and reconciliation along the TCT can be found on the Trans Canada Trail website here: https://tctrail.ca/indigenous-reconciliation/