Alex Maiassi

Wilson Williams remembers those conversations.

He was in his early 20s at the time.

So this is the idea that you should be stewards of the land so that it can keep providing for your children and your children's children and, you know, your children's children's children.

It's a kind of popular idea in a lot of indigenous cultures.

This idea about providing for the future made Wilson think twice about Chief Gibby's proposal.

And the second problem was that the whole plan also seemed kind of small.

Like, a few mid-rise buildings weren't going to bring in the kind of profit that would change the future of the Squamish nation.

Yeah, in Vancouver, like in most cities in North America, there are zoning laws that limit what you're allowed to build on any given piece of land.

At the time, more than half the land in Vancouver was restricted to single-family homes.

There were also laws regulating lot sizes and requiring a minimum number of parking spaces, all of which make it hard to build dense neighborhoods.

Wilson felt that putting mid-rise apartments on this land would be squandering a huge opportunity.

And he was not alone.

In the end, those initial plans never moved forward.

By then, Vancouver had become one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Rents had gone bonkers.

And that's because Vancouver is surrounded by water.

So to build more housing, the city had to build up.

But they couldn't build up because of all the zoning laws.

In Vancouver, those laws were contributing to a housing crisis.

Yeah, it was a true opportunity.