The sign says Saugeen Beach but a Supreme Court of Canada challenge looms in land dispute

The day lawyers submitted paperwork to the Supreme Court of Canada, another group quietly set up ladders in the dead of night to change a sign symbolic in a decades-long legal dispute in an Ontario beach town.

The red retro-lettered sign at the end of Main Street in the town of South Bruce Peninsula read "Welcome to Saugeen Beach" when sun seekers woke up on Canada Day this week to look out at Lake Huron.

The sign had previously ushered people to "Sauble Beach," a tourist hotspot since the 1920s. Sporting restaurants and cottages, and town and private land are squeezed between two sections of reserve territory belonging to Chippewas of Saugeen First Nation.

Where one starts and the other ends is at the heart of what could be a precedent-setting case in Canada.

The band declared victory at the end of 2024 when the Ontario Court of Appeal sided with Saugeen First Nation, saying the federal government had breached the treaty it signed in 1854. It ruled that roughly 2.2 kilometres of shoreline land incorrectly surveyed in 1855 should be returned to the First Nation.

The federal government recognized the mistake in the 1970s and had supported the First Nation in its claim.

But lawyers working for the Town of South Bruce Peninsula and two families who bought lots in the 1940s and '50s are trying via legal avenues, one final time, to keep hold of the land they say they rightfully acquired under the rules and geography of the time.

On Monday, they filed an appeal they hope will be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada, in an effort to challenge the Appeal Court's decision.

"The effect of the rulings at trial and on appeal is to dispossess the town and families of their title, which they acquired lawfully and in good faith," the appeal filing reads.

"While none of them were found to have committed any legal wrong against Saugeen, the trial judge found that they must 'bear the brunt' of misconduct committed by the Crown alone."

The lawyers argue that the judge's decision may have been well-intentioned, but it sows uncertainty and unpredictability at the core of Canada's system of private landholding.

Another reason the case may wind its way to Canada's top court has to do with what the land looked like when it was surveyed in 1856, one year after the treaty was signed, compared to what it looks like today.

Experts who testified in the lower court agreed that the shoreline of the disputed section is far wider now, as result of receding water levels and the accumulation of sand.

It means that the man tasked with drawing the original lines for the treaty 170 years ago that gave the First Nation "about nine miles and a half of Lake Huron coastline" was making his mark on wet sand, and not dry land.

Because of how the map was drawn, and how the shoreline has changed, Saugeen argues that what is now dry land is rightfully theirs and that property owners are encroaching on it.

The trial and appeal judges both agreed that while the "disputed beach could not be given to Saugeen at the time of the survey because it was submerged in water, it could be declared part of the reserve today."

CBC News has reached out to all of the lawyers and the town for comment, but had not received a reply by publication time. The chief of Saugeen First Nation declined to comment on the case.

A spokesperson with the Supreme Court of Canada said there is no timeline on when a decision will be made about whether the case will be heard or dismissed.