Skeena.
4 candidates, one seat.

The City of Terrace says the city and its surrounding lands lie in the traditional territories of the Tsimshian First Nation. Before European settlers arrived, it says, the Tsimshian galts’ap (villages) of Kitsumkalum and Kitselas, on the banks of the Skeena River west and east of present day Terrace, were the dominant communities. Kitselas calls its people the Gitselasu, People of the Canyon, and says they have lived in their territory for close to 5,000 years. Kitsumkalum calls itself an original tribe of the Ts’msyen and says its connection to the land, rivers and coast goes back to time immemorial.

Parks Canada designated Kitselas Canyon a national historic site in 1972. It estimates that people have settled the canyon for 5000 years, and says two permanent Tsimshian villages stood there in the 19th century. They gave the people control of trade between the coast and the interior, including trade with the Hudson's Bay Company. Parks Canada adds that Gitlaxdzok was a fortified village, which makes it unique on the north coast.

The Nisg̱a’a Lisims Government says the Nisg̱a’a people have lived in the Nass River Valley since before recorded time and names the river K’alii-Aksim-Lisims. BC Parks sets out the Nisg̱a’a account of a volcano whose lava flow covered the valley bottom, redirected the Nass River and destroyed two villages, and says 2000 Nisg̱a’a people died. BC Parks estimates that the lava spilled from the crater 250 years ago, and BC Geographical Names gives the date as c1750. The Province established the Nisga'a Memorial Lava Bed Park on 29 April 1992, and BC Parks calls it the first park in British Columbia to be jointly managed by a First Nation and BC Parks.

The Haisla Nation writes its people’s name as x̄á’isla and says it means river mouth dwellers or downstream dwellers. The Nation says its people have lived on their unceded territory since time immemorial, and that harvesting oolichan, a fish rich in oil, has been a key part of its diet and economy and was historically a major trade item. BC Geographical Names records that Kitimat Mission was established on Kitimat Indian Reserve 2 in the 1890s, in a village that Tsimshian neighbours called Gitamaat, meaning people of the snow. The Kitamaat Post Office opened on 1 March 1900. The Province places Kitamaat Village 10 km south of Kitimat.

The Haisla Nation says the Indian Act of 1876 changed its way of life and that its people were confined to a single location, c̓imáuc̓a. It reports that on November 10, 1893 a Kitamaat Council resolution declared that anyone holding a Feast or Potlatch would be fined $140. In 1916 Chief John Bolton applied for a small piece of land in the Kitimat Valley that held ceremonial meaning for the Haisla, and the request went to the Farmers’ Institute on January 14, 1918. The Nation says the settlers there rejected it. In 1956 the book Tales of Kitamaat made Haisla oral stories available in writing beyond the community for the first time.

The Nisg̱a’a Lisims Government dates the land question to 1887, when Nisg̱a’a Chiefs travelled by water to Victoria and Premier William Smithe turned them away on the steps of the legislature. In 1913 the Nisg̱a’a Land Committee sent a petition to the British Privy Council in London. Chief Frank Calder was elected to the British Columbia legislature in 1949. In 1973 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the Calder case that the Nisg̱a’a had held Aboriginal title before settlers came, and the judges split evenly on whether it continued. The Nisg̱a’a began negotiating with Ottawa in 1976, British Columbia joined in 1990, and the Agreement in Principle was signed on March 22, 1996.

The treaty was initialled on August 4, 1998, and on November 7 the Nisg̱a’a Nation voted to ratify the Final Agreement and adopt the Nisg̱a’a Constitution. The Final Agreement came into effect on May 11, 2000, which the Nation describes as the end of a 113-year journey, and from that date the Indian Act ceased to apply to Nisg̱a’a people. The Nation lists 2,019 square kilometres of land and $196.1 million in 1999 dollars among what the treaty and related agreements provide. The Province notes that it was negotiated outside the B.C. treaty process and became the first modern day comprehensive treaty in British Columbia.

The treaty provides for the Nisg̱a’a Lisims Government, four village governments (Gitlax̱t’aamiks, Gitwinksihlkw, Lax̱g̱alts’ap and Ging̱olx) and three urban locals for citizens who live outside the Nass Valley. The Nation reports that the 28-kilometre Kincolith Extension of the Nisg̱a’a Highway, which joined Ging̱olx to the road network, was completed in December 2002. The upgrade of 90 kilometres of Highway 113 to a paved, two-lane road was complete in 2005. The Nisg̱a’a Museum opened on May 11, 2011 and holds artifacts returned to the Nation under the Final Agreement.

The City of Terrace says Tom Thornhill arrived in the area in 1892 and is the namesake of Thornhill, across the Skeena River. Ed Eby staked land in 1907 downstream on the Skeena River and set up a riverboat landing with a store and hotel, which became known as Eby’s Landing. George Little acquired 435 acres between 1907 and 1911, land that now makes up much of downtown Terrace, and offered the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway free land for its station. The City says the completion of the railway in 1914 replaced the riverboats with trains, and that Terrace, with its station, became the dominant community in the valley.

Little had a townsite surveyed in 1912 and proposed the name Littleton, which was apparently rejected because another Littleton already existed. BC Geographical Names records that the Terrace Post Office opened on 1 January 1912, and quotes a reference book saying that Little looked at the terraces rising above the Skeena and chose that name. Terrace became a village municipality in December 1927. The City says it was called the Cedar Pole Capital of the World for the telephone and power poles it supplied.

In 1942 the army came to Terrace as a military base, followed by the Royal Canadian Air Force in early 1943. The City gives 3000 as the number of soldiers and 3000 as the number of construction workers who arrived with the army. Wartime projects included a highway west to Prince Rupert and east to Hazelton and a community water system. The Province opened the 40-bed Mills Memorial Hospital in 1961 to replace a 10-bed Red Cross hospital. BC Geographical Names records that Terrace was re-incorporated as a district municipality on 1 January 1960 and as a city on 22 January 1987. Coast Mountain College says it was established in Terrace in 1975, and its Terrace campus stands on the unceded territory of the Kitsumkalum First Nation.

The Kitimat Museum and Archives records that on December 30, 1950 the British Columbia government and the Aluminum Company of Canada, known as Alcan, signed a power agreement. It let Alcan lease the region’s land and water for 50 years and flood up to 300 square miles for hydroelectric power. In return Alcan would provide a large payroll, a smelter and a new town in northern British Columbia, and it proposed to spend up to $500 million. Between 1951 and 1954, 6,000 construction workers built the dam, tunnel, powerhouse, transmission line, smelter and town.

The Museum says Kitimat was the first planned community in British Columbia. The plan came from the American architect and town planner Clarence S. Stein and the New York planners Mayer & Whittlesey, and it separated pedestrians from vehicles around open green spaces. Work began on the Nechako neighbourhood first, then Kildala, and the city centre was done by 1956. BC Geographical Names records that the Kitimat Post Office was re-established on 8 May 1952 and that the District of Kitimat was incorporated on 31 March 1953. The Museum adds that it was the first town without residents to be incorporated in British Columbia.

The Haisla Nation records a different effect of the project. It says Alcan’s arrival in the 1950s disrupted the x̄á’isla way of life, displaced their land, diverted rivers and put limits on traditional fishing.

The Province says Kitselas and Kitsumkalum have been in treaty negotiations with Canada and British Columbia since the early 1990s, and that Kitselas entered talks in 1993. They negotiated at a common table but the result is two separate treaties. Negotiators signed agreements-in-principle, which set out the main terms, with each Nation in 2015. Chief negotiators initialled the Kitselas Treaty on June 24, 2024 and the Kitsumkalum Treaty on June 25, 2024, which marked the end of the main negotiations. Eligible Kitselas voters approved their treaty and self-government constitution on April 10, 2025. At Kitsumkalum on November 1, 2025, 625 of 705 eligible voters cast ballots on the treaty and 569 voted yes.

On April 15, 2026 British Columbia introduced the Kitselas Treaty Act in the legislature as the first step in the Province’s formal approval, called ratification, and says it aims to introduce a Kitsumkalum Treaty Act in 2026. The Province says the parts of such a law that bring a treaty into effect are put in force later by regulation, and that Canada must also pass its own law. The Canadian Press reported on May 28, 2026 that Minister Spencer Chandra Herbert said the Act would not come to a vote until the fall. It reported that a coalition of the Lax Kw’alaams and Nine Allied Tribes said the treaty would affect large parts of their territories.

On April 28, 2026 the Haisla Nation asked the Province and Canada to pause ratification of the Kitselas Treaty until overlapping territorial issues are addressed. The Nation says it supports the right of all Nations, including Kitselas, to pursue treaties. The Province’s page on the Haisla, updated May 7, 2024, lists the Nation in Stage 4 of the B.C. treaty process, negotiating an Agreement-in-Principle, with a Haisla Incremental Treaty Agreement completed in September 2015.

LNG Canada says it made its final investment decision in October 2018. On June 30, 2025 it reported that it had loaded a first cargo of liquefied natural gas at its export facility in Kitimat. LNG Canada says the facility stands in the traditional territory of the Haisla Nation, and that it will first export from two processing units with a combined capacity of 14 million tonnes per year. It lists a contract worth CAD$500 million with HaiSea Marine, a joint venture of the Haisla Nation and Seaspan, for harbour and escort tugboat services.

Cedar LNG, a partnership of Pembina Pipeline Corporation and the Haisla Nation, describes itself as the world’s first Indigenous majority-owned LNG project and its facility as a proposed floating plant in Kitimat. It says it received an Environmental Assessment Certificate from British Columbia and a Decision Statement from the federal government in March 2023.