This Land Is Not Your Land What if someone told you that your home really belongs to the people who lived there 150 years ago? It’s happening in Canada.
On the fields where his family grew blueberries and vegetables, Bal Batth grapples with an uncertain future for land he’s tended since he was 8. (Kyrani Kanavaros for The Free Press)
RICHMOND, British Columbia — No. 6 Road cuts through lush farmland and new money near Vancouver, long and straight past fields and vegetable plots, greenhouses and a turkey farm, industrial yards, a golf course, and fenced-off mega-mansions. Bal Batth has lived in a modest, two-story house here since 1974, when he was 8 years old. His parents bought seven acres after immigrating from Punjab, India, by way of England. By day, his father was a paramedic. On days off, his parents farmed blueberries and vegetables. “My kids were born here. There’s a whole history here,” Batth, 59, told me while sitting in a living room with walls covered in family photos. This article is featured in Canada. Sign up here to get an update every time a new piece is published. He always hoped to pass the property down to his children, as his mother and father did for him. In October, though, Batth received an alarming letter in the mail from the Richmond mayor’s office. The letter announced that a ruling by the Supreme Court of British Columbia could “negatively affect the title to your property.”...
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