Some Couchiching residents oppose new golf course

Some Couchiching residents are angry the band’s council has ignored pleas to preserve sacred Pow-Wow grounds in order to build a new golf course.
“We met with them and suggested they not move the Pow-Wow grounds; that they build around it,” said Elmer Mainville Jr., a Couchiching resident and member of the Traditional Pow-Wow committee which has written letters to the band’s council in opposition to the course’s location.
While construction plans include moving the Pow-Wow grounds further east, the committee has argued the sacred grounds cannot be relocated for development reasons, only for spiritual ones.
“That land was blessed and that ceremony was witnessed by the community elders and community members,” argued Mainville.
The Pow-Wow committee has been opposed to the course’s construction since plans to move the grounds were introduced more than a year ago, he added.
“[The chief] said he has yet to hear anything negative and all the comments are positive yet we’ve been against this for a year,” Mainville argued. “You can’t move the Pow-Wow grounds, it’s like you can’t move a church.”
“In a way, I think it could have been done in a different kind of way,” noted band elder Bill Yerxa. “I think the golf course was a go-ahead thing long before they got to this stage.
“We had a meeting out there with the elders from the community and outside the community,” added Yerxa. “The elders said the grounds should not be moved but it seemed to be a formality they wanted to do.
“Yeah, they met with the elders but did they listen to what they had to say,” he charged.
Meanwhile, there’s some concern the band’s annual Pow-Wow, attended by First Nations’ people from across the country and which has grown substantially over the past four years, may be cancelled altogether.
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t advance but they should take the fact the elders advised us that it shouldn’t be moved,” said Yerxa. “There are a lot of the younger generation just starting to grab on to things.”
Band members also have voiced other concerns with the course’s construction.
“As a committee, what we’re concerned about is the Pow-Wow grounds but there are many other concerns,” said Mainville, who also questioned the band’s environmental assessments for the course and the loss of valuable fishing and hunting grounds.
“There’s some people who fish in that area and it’s good hunting ground for deer. There’s going to be a pile of deer guts on the ninth hole, on the green–it could happen,” he warned.
“And the current environmental assessment is only a fill-in-the-blanks environmental report.”
Meanwhile, both the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources are beginning to wonder whether any environmental assessments were carried out for the course.
Neither claim to have been contacted to carry out an assessment before course construction began even though it is the usual procedure, especially with the course straddling Frog Creek and bordering Stanjikoming Bay.
“In terms of rules and regulations, a reserve is federal land so the Department of Fisheries and Oceans would be responsible for that,” said Jeff Wiume, assistant district manager for the MNR here.
“I think we’re going to have someone here call the Fisheries and Oceans and say listen, somebody’s got to look at it,” he added.
But the DFO hasn’t carried out the assessment either, and is now looking into whether the Department of Indian Affairs approved the project anyway.
“I still haven’t been able to track down whether there was an environmental assessment done or not,” noted Earl Jessop, a fish habitat biologist for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Kenora.
“It’s not absolutely necessary for anybody to come to us unless it’s going to harm fish habitat but normally with a project like this, it’s a good idea,” added Jessop.
“I did recall [project manager] Shane Jourdain called and asked about a bridge across the creek but he never said anything about a golf course.
“Shane was supposed to send a copy of the screening report and that was over a week ago,” he noted.
Neither Jourdain nor Couchiching Chief Chuck McPherson could not be reached for comment by press time.