This wonderful collection of seventy-six essays explores the fascinat-
ing origin and meaning of the names of some of the towns, villages,
cities, islands, mountains, and rivers that make up one of the world's
largest countries. This new edition includes fifteen more essays, and
updates the previous essays to include changes, corrections, and new
names to the year 2000.
Discover how some of Canada's most unusual place names came
to be; unearth the Aboriginal roots of names such as Miramichi,
Klondike, Iqaluit, Toronto, and Ottawa; learn the origin of such play-
ful and mellifluous names as Medicine Hat, Twillingate, Flin Flon,
Cupids, or Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! From Bonavista and Port au Choix
in the east to Malaspina Strait and Port Alberni in the west, this book
also reveals the rich Portuguese, Spanish, and Basque contributions to
Canada's toponymic heritage. Naming Canada tells us about place
names that became undesirable and had to be changed for reasons of
perceived political impropriety. The former Stalin Township, for
example, was renamed after Rick Hansen, the renowned Man in
Motion who promoted research in spinal cord injuries. The book also
discusses Canadian names that have been exported abroad, such as
Quebec in England and Toronto in Australia. One new essay explores
the nicknames used for Canadian places, and focuses on Hogtown as
an alternative for Toronto.
This collection is the best single source, in an engaging essay for-
mat, on the origin and meaning of hundreds of Canadian place
names. Alan Rayburn has had over thirty-five years of experience
in researching Canada's toponymic roots and in writing about the
authentic backgrounds behind thousands of names, from Toronto in
the south to Tuktoyaktuk in the north, and from Labrador in the east
to Juan de Fuca Strait in the west.
ALAN RAYBURN was the executive secretary of the Canadian Perma-
nent Committee on Geographical Names form 1973 to 1987. He has
written some 150 books, papers, and articles in the toponymic field,
including Naming Canada (1994), Place Names of Ontario (1997), and
the Dictionary of Canadian Place Names (1997,1999).
NAMING CANADA
Stories about Canadian Place Names
Revised and Expanded Edition
Alan Rayburn
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Naming Canada
Stories about Canadian Place Names
Revised and Expanded Edition
ALAN RAYBURN
UNIVERSIT Y OF TORONTO PRES S
Toronto Buffalo London
I
f
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2001
Toronto Buffalo London
First edition © University of Toronto Press 1994
Reprinted 1997
Revised and Expanded Edition 2001
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-4725-4 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8020-8293-9 (paper)
Printed on acid-free paper
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Rayburn, Alan
Naming Canada : stories about Canadian place names
Rev. & expanded ed.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8020-4725-4 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-8293-9 (pbk.)
1. Names, Geographical - Canada - Miscellanea. I. Title.
FC36.R38 2001 917.1 '001 '4 COO-932248-5
F1004.R389 2001
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance
to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and
the Ontario Arts Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support
for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through
the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
www.utppublishing.com 
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 3
Looking at Canada's Places from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, and to the Arctic 13
Canada: A Native Name from the Land 13
How Canada Lost Its 'Dominion' 17
Canada: The North, South, East, and West of It 21
High Points across the Land 25
How Our National Parks Got Their Names 28
A Medley of Favourite Names 33
Riding Names: Some Gratifying, Some Grating 38
'Hogtown' and Other Monikers across Canada 44
Scrutinizing Political Issues and Language
Problems 49
Of Hatters and Capers, Townies and Trifluviens, and
Other Monikers People Call Themselves 49
Pronouncing Names as the Locals Do 53
vi Contents
Sorting Out the Sound-Alikes and Look-Alikes 56
Standard Spelling Eliminates Confusion ... Usually 59
Who's to Blame for Mistake Names? 63
Acronyms ... Such as Kenora, Koocanusa, and Snafu
Creek 67
Avoid the Apostrophe ... But Not Always 69
A New Name for Merged Municipalities Can Cause
Quite a Fuss 72
When Names Become Politically Incorrect 77
Hot and Bothered by 'Disgusting' Names 82
Castle Mountain and Its Thirty-Five-Year Eisenhower
Hiatus 86
Receiving Names from Abroad and Exporting
Names 90
Touring the Middle East without Leaving Canada 90
Capitalizing on Foreign Capitals 95
Anzac to Zealandia: Names from Down Under 99
A Touch of Portuguese on the East Coast 103
The Basque Legacy on Canada's East Coast 106
Spanish Names along Our West Coast 111
Hispanic-American Names across the Land 113
Crimean Victories Commemorated across Canada 118
Ladysmith to Mafeking: Names from South Africa 123
On the Western Front: Names from First World War
Battles 128
Heavenly Places from Coast to Coast 131
Canadian Names around the World 135
Revealing Special Characteristics of Place Names
and Generic Terms 140
Cities: Source of Pride, Broken Dreams 140
Sorting Out Ontario's Municipal Make-Up 144
Legacy of the Voyageurs on the Prairies 149
Of Tickles and Rips, Barachois and Bogans 152
Contents vii
Shakespeare Remembered in Many Canadian
Names 155
Christmas Creek ... and Other Yuletide Honours 160
Of Valentines and Other Matters of the Heart 164
Giving the Devil His Due 168
Telenaming the Landscape 172
A Giggle, er, Gaggle of Ha! Hals 177
Adopting Names of Native Origin and Acknowledging
Names Used by Indigenous Peoples 181
Aboriginal Place Names: We All Have Our
Favourites 181
Indigenous Names for Aboriginal Places 183
Miramichi: Jacques Carrier in the 'Land of the
Mi'kmaq' 187
Saskatoon: A Home-Made Name from a Home-Grown
Fruit 189
Medicine Hat: Mystery, Romance, and Hints of Magic
Below 194
Canada Has Its Mississippi River Too 197
In Canso, Survival Is a Tradition 202
Nanaimo: A City and a Sweet Dessert 206
We Have 'Honoured' the Moose 662 Times! 212
Examining the Names of Particular Places 216
Cupids, Nfld.: Britain's First Canadian Colony 216
Acadia: A Land without Boundaries 219
Montreal: A People's City beneath a King's
Mountain 223
Meech Lake - of Accord Fame - and Other Lakes
Nearby 225
Ottawa: A Capital Name from a Fur-Trading People 229
Toronto Has a Great Fish Tale to Tell 233
Flin Flon: A Strange 'Professor' on Even Stranger
Ventures 238
viii Contents
Lake Laberge (Rhymes with Marge) and Other Yukon
Names 240
Observing Selected Names in Particular Regions 243
Captain Vancouver's Legacy 243
Mackenzie Expeditions Left a Trail of Names 247
'88 Olympics: Calgary, Kananaskis, and Mount
Allan 253
The Thousand Islands: There Are Really 1,149 256
Relocating the Lost Villages 260
Great Divide Passes in the Rockies 264
Commemorating Prominent Individuals and
Honouring Certain Family Names 269
Sir Guy Carleton: Names Recall a Revered Governor 269
Fraser: A Thoroughly Geographic Name 274
George Dawson: Inspiration for More than Twenty-five
Names 280
Victoria: The Most-Honoured Name in Canada 284
Canadian Tributes for Four Queen Elizabeths 287
Fit for the Prince of Wales 292
Vanier: Places Honouring an Illustrious Statesman 295
Reserving Lofty Peaks for Our Prime Ministers 299
A Mountain for Michener, a Lake for Leger 305
Laurier: Most-Commemorated Canadian 308
Remembering John R Kennedy 312
Smith: We Are Blessed with 439 of Them! 316
Index 321
Preface
A passion for maps and places and names has its roots in
my preschool days in the late 1930s outside the town of
Orangeville, Ontario. During my years of attendance in
the schools of Orangeville from 1939 to 1952, my love for
geography and history was nurtured by numerous help-
ful and dedicated teachers.
The joy of studying Canadian and world history con-
tinued during several years at university, first at Water-
loo College (in the mid-1950s, part of the University of
Western Ontario, but now Wilfrid Laurier University),
and later at the University of British Columbia, the Uni-
versity of Kentucky, and Universite Laval. It was at the
University of Kentucky that my interest in pursuing a
career in place-name study received a dramatic boost.
My thesis adviser, Thomas Field, was usually a mild-
mannered gentleman, but he revealed considerable
excitement, and sometimes animosity, when discussing
the background and merits of certain place names in the
state. Through his inspiration, I resolved to take up the
study of toponymy, if not as a profession, at least as an
avocation.
In 1957,1 joined the staff of the Geographical Branch of
the federal Department of Mines and Technical Surveys.
x Preface
Until 1964,1 was involved in land-use studies in the Mar-
itime provinces, Quebec, and Sri Lanka. In 1961, the staff
serving the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geo-
graphical Names was transferred from the topographical
survey division of the Surveys and Mapping Branch to
the Geographical Branch. Norman Nicholson, who was
both the director of the branch and the chairman of the
committee, announced that a new toponymy research
division would be set up in the branch, with Keith Fraser
as its chief and as executive secretary of the committee.
Soon after joining the toponymy division in 1964, I
undertook a place-names study of Renfrew County, a
huge area of 5,000 square kilometres in the Upper
Ottawa Valley. The main aims of the study were to assess
the accuracy of names on topographical maps and to
gather previously unrecorded names. The study
revealed an error factor of 15 per cent among the official
names; and for every name already in official use, at least
one other new local name for another geographical fea-
ture was found to be in use.
The approach and the results of the Renfrew study
appealed to the designated-names authorities in New
Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, and they invited
me in 1967 to undertake similar comprehensive field
investigations in those provinces. The stock of approved
names in New Brunswick in 1967 amounted to approxi-
mately 7,500. During an exhaustive two-year study, some
1,500 of those names were found to be incorrect as to
local usage, spelling, or placement on maps; and 8,000
additional names in local usage were picked up. During
the Prince Edward Island study, the stock of names was
increased from 1,200 to 2,200, and 300 corrections were
made. A similar study of Nova Scotia's names was
undertaken by Michael Munro of the toponymy divi-
sion's staff in 1973, with even more dramatic results.
Preface xi
In 1967, the Geographical Branch published Geographi-
cal Names of Renfrew County (74 pages) as part of its Geo-
graphical Paper series. Revisions of this book were
privately published in 1989 and 1990. The Surveys and
Mapping Branch (when the Geographical Branch had
been disbanded by the Department of Energy, Mines and
Resources in 1967, the toponymy division had been
transferred to the Surveys and Mapping Branch) pub-
lished Geographical Names of Prince Edward Island (135
pages) in 1973, and Geographical Names of New Brunswick
(304 pages) in 1975.
In 1973, I was appointed executive secretary of the
Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical
Names, a position I held until 1987. In that position, I
worked with the committee's secretariat, and with the
personnel of the federal, provincial, and territorial mem-
bers of the committee in the development of national
toponymic principles and procedures.
In the spring of 1983, the chairman of the committee,
Jean-Paul Drolet, who was also a director of the Royal
Canadian Geographical Society, proposed to the pub-
lisher and general manager of Canadian Geographic that a
place-names column be considered for the magazine.
Fortuitously, the publisher was then Keith Fraser, and he
greeted the suggestion with enthusiasm.
The magazine's editor, Ross Smith, invited me to sub-
mit a few sample columns. Subsequently, the first col-
umn, entitled 'Acronyms ... Such as Kenora, Koocanusa,
and Snafu Creek/ appeared in the December 1983/Janu-
ary 1984 issue of the magazine. By November/December
1993, sixty-one columns had been published on a variety
of toponymic topics, from names pronunciation and
spelling to names for royalty and governors general, and
to prominent names in the news, like Meech Lake.
Fourteen more articles were published in Canadian
xii Preface
Geographic after the first sixty-one columns were selected
for publication in Naming Canada (1994). The final four-
teen columns included ones on South African names
transferred to Canada, names of Basque origin in Eastern
Canada, the origin and meaning of Toronto, names with
a Shakespearean connection, and, for the last column, in
March/April 1996, the origin and meaning of Ottawa.
An additional article has been written on the nicknames
of places, with special attention on the origin of Hog-
town as a moniker for Toronto.
To my knowledge, the regular 'Place Names' column in
Canadian Geographic from 1983 to 1996 was unique in that
there was no similar column anywhere else in the world
during the last half of the twentieth century. The original
suggestion for the column was made by Jean-Paul Dro-
let, chairman of the Canadian Permanent Committee on
Geographical Names - now the Geographic Names
Board of Canada - from 1964 to 1988. As a member of the
board of directors of the Royal Canadian Geographical
Society, he took the idea to Keith Fraser, then executive
director of the society and publisher of Canadian Geo-
graphic. Keith, who had been the executive secretary of
the names committee in the 1960s, welcomed the idea of
a names column enthusiastically. He turned the idea
over to the recently appointed editor, Ross Smith. Until
1989, Ross nurtured the column by suggesting suitable
ideas to write about, and by deftly trimming awkward
sentences and excessive wording. His successor, Ian Dar-
ragh, and the managing editor, Eric Harris, continued to
encourage the writing of articles devoted to Canada's
place names. Rick Boychuk succeeded Ian as the editor
in 1995. We mutually agreed to discontinue the column
the following spring, when the seventy-fifth column was
Acknowledgments
xiv Acknowledgments
written on the origin of the name Ottawa. Finally, I want
to acknowledge the superb advice provided by Helen
Kerfoot, my successor as executive secretary of the com-
mittee from 1987 to 1998.
NAMING CANADA
Stories about Canadian Place Names
Revised and Expanded Edition
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Introduction
The 1994 edition of Naming Canada comprised the sixty-
one 'Place Names' columns first published in Canadian
Geographic from December 1983/January 1984 to Nov-
ember/December 1993. This 2001 edition contains those
sixty-one columns, revised and updated. In addition, the
fourteen columns published in the magazine between
January/February 1994 and May/June 1996 are included
in this edition, also revised and updated. A new essay on
nicknames of places, focusing on Hogtown for Toronto,
has been added.
Several corrections and changes have been made to
reflect information provided by the magazine's readers.
Some new details, dropped from the original articles
because of space limitations, or having come to light
since publication in the magazine, have been added to
some of the essays.
The idea for bringing the columns together in a single
volume was initiated in 1993 by Bill Harnum, vice-presi-
dent of scholarly publishing at the University of Toronto
Press. The initial arrangement of the essays into particu-
lar themes was undertaken by Laura Macleod. Subse-
quently, Gerry Hallowell, Rob Ferguson, and Beverley
Beetham Endersby completed the editing of the texts for
4 Naming Canada
publication in 1994. This new edition has been arranged
and edited by Jill McConkey, Frances Mundy, and Bever-
ley Beetham Endersby.
The essays are grouped into eight broad themes.
1 Looking at Canada's Places from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, and to the Arctic. The article on the origin of the
name Canada, and the amusing alternatives proposed
for the name of the new nation in 1867, was the thirty-
seventh article published in the magazine, but it is the
obvious lead-off essay in this collection. The article about
the suppression of the title 'Dominion' was a natural sec-
ond essay. The remaining six articles of the group deal
with the highest points in each of the provinces and terri-
tories, Canada's national parks, my favourite 24 names
from coast to coast, Canada's federal electoral ridings,
nicknames of Canadian places, and the farthest points on
the compass.
The declaration in the farthest-points article that there
was an unnamed point farther north than Cape Columbia
persuaded the Department of National Defence's Map-
ping and Charting Establishment to undertake precise
measurements. The point was found to be 242 metres far-
ther north than the designated most northerly site of
Cape Columbia. The Canadian Permanent Committee on
Geographical Names decided in 1992 to shift Cape
Columbia to the point. The article on the federal electoral
districts encouraged the staff of Elections Canada to set
up an advisory committee for the selection of names of
the new 301 ridings based on the 1991 census, and I was
invited to serve on the committee. The story about nick-
names examines the labels and monikers given to Cana-
dian places, with special attention devoted to Hogtown,
the widely known reference to Toronto. The article on the
highest points in each jurisdiction guided sexagenarian
climbers Clifford and Ruth Holtz of Oshawa, Ont., in
Introduction 5
their ascents in 1990 of each of the eleven highest points
in the country - Quebec and Newfoundland share the
same highest elevation, but with different names. And
one of the points of the Y-shaped summit may be nearly a
metre higher in Newfoundland.
2 Scrutinizing Political Issues and Language Problems.
Eleven of the essays concern a number of language issues
and a variety of political problems involving names. In
French, words like 'Quebecois' and 'Acadien' are called
gentiles, but no suitable English word for them has
evolved to describe them. Gentiles are widely used all
across Canada, from Haligonian to Winnipegger and on
to Vancouverite. Suggestions on what I believed were the
accepted pronunciations of several names aroused a cou-
ple of readers, who forcefully pointed out my errors.
Although Canada does not have too many confusing
sound-alikes and look-alikes, there are bothersome ones
like St. John's/Saint John, Kenora/Canora, two major
Churchill Rivers, and too many places called Windsor.
The misspelling of place names is quite common for
places like St. Catharines and Edmundston, and it doesn't
help when there is more than one official spelling, such as
Timiskaming/Temiscaming/Temiscamingue, and Oka-
nagan north of the 49th parallel, Okanogan south of it. In
another essay, actual mistakes, such as Cedoux evolving
from Ledoux, and Barry's Bay from Byers Bay, are exam-
ined. Several names are acronyms, that is, created from
parts of two or more words. Among them are Arvida,
Estevan, and Tarfu Creek. The handling of the possessive
apostrophe in names has had a mixed history over the
past hundred years, with places like St. John's preferring
it, and Smiths Falls ignoring it. The essay on merging
municipalities reveals the problems encountered when
new municipalities require their own identity, such as
Thunder Bay, Clarington, Miramichi, and Cambridge.
6 Naming Canada
Political correctness forced the change of Berlin to Kitch-
ener, and the dropping of Mount Stalin, but name purifi-
ers have been unable to divest Swastika of its 'good luck'
identity. Sensitivity resulted in the banishment of Belly
River and Foul Bay, but Crotch Lake and Bastard Town-
ship have survived attack. When former prime minister
John Diefenbaker requested background material in 1976
relating to the public clamour to change Mount Eisen-
hower back to Castle Mountain, I assumed he would rise
in the House of Commons to condemn the action taken in
1946 by Mackenzie King to assign a foreigner's name to
one of Canada's most impressive mountains. However,
he roundly condemned any attempt to sully the honour of
the Supreme Commander of the Second World War
forces, and Liberal minister Alistair Gillespie, who was
responsible for the names committee, fully agreed with
him. But three years later, during Joe Clark's brief govern-
ment in 1979, we got our Castle Mountain back.
3 Receiving Names from Abroad and Exporting Names.
Great numbers of Canada's names first saw the light of
day in foreign lands. Eleven essays concern the transfer
of names from abroad, and a twelfth in this group of arti-
cles is about Canada's export of names to other coun-
tries. Athens, London, and Paris recall great world
capitals. Canaan, Goshen, and Damascus owe their exist-
ence to biblical references. Zealandia and Australia
Gulch are among many names drawn from Canada's
Commonwealth partners down under. Portugal and
Spain were leaders among early explorers, so it is not
surprising to find names like Bonavista and Juan de Fuca
Strait on our east and west coasts. Basque whalers and
fishers left a legacy of more than 300 names on Canada's
east coast, primarily around the shores of the Gulf of St.
Lawrence and along the estuary of the St. Lawrence
River. Hispanic names from the United States and Latin
Introduction 7
America include Almonte, Spanish River, Toledo, Val-
paraiso, Eldorado, and Bonanza Creek. Hard-fought vic-
tories in the Crimean Peninsula by British and French
forces introduced names like Alma, Inkerman, and Can-
robert to Canada's toponymic fabric. The Anglo-Boer
War at the beginning of the twentieth century provided
several names for Canadian places, including Lady-
smith, Mafeking, Redvers, Mount Rhodes, and Kimber-
ley. First World War battles and victories in northern
France and in Belgium provided more than 125 names
for Canadian places and mountains, examples being
Vimy Ridge, St-Quentin, and Messines. Names reflecting
heaven, peace, and harmony are widely affixed to Cana-
dian places, from Paradise in Newfoundland to Utopia
in Ontario, and Sointula in British Columbia. Canadian
names like Toronto and Ontario have been transferred to
other countries, especially the United States and Austra-
lia, and even names like Quebec have been given to
places in Britain and France.
4 Revealing Special Characteristics of Place Names and
Generic Terms. Ten essays are devoted to special charac-
teristics of Canadian place names and to generic termi-
nology. The lead-off article reveals that Toronto has the
largest population of any incorporated 'city' in Canada,
and Greenwood, B.C., has the least population. In terms
of area, Timmins is Canada's largest, with Outremont,
Que., the smallest. An essay is devoted to the cities,
towns, villages, and townships of Ontario, where the 815
municipalities that existed in 1997 have been reduced to
fewer than 450 four years later. The wide use of 'butte'
for a flat-topped hill and the frequent occurrence of 'cou-
lee' for a steep-sided valley are legacies of the French
voyageurs and explorers who first investigated the
resources of Western Canada. In Eastern Canada, there is
a fascinating variety of terminology in names like Pinch-
8 Naming Canada
gut Tickle, Pocomoonshine Deadwater, MacLean Bara-
chois, Mersereau Bogan, Pickards Padou, Framboise
Intervale, and Meetinghouse Rips. Names like Stratford,
Avon River, Mount Romeo, Macbeth Icefield, and Ham-
let Township are among many names derived from the
rich depository of English literature penned by William
Shakespeare. Christmas is a joyous time, so it is not sur-
prising to find names like St. Nicholas Peak, Tiny Tim
Lake, and Yule Rock celebrating that season. Names like
Lovers Cove, Heart's Delight, and Bow and Arrow Shoal
inspired the writing of the essay on features with a
theme relating to the playfulness and romance associated
with Valentine's Day. In a contrasting theme, there are
hundreds of names dedicated to Satan and his traditional
homes of hell and Hades. Ominous examples include
Backside of Hell Cove, Devils Elbow Rapids, and Ogre
Mountain. An essay on telenaming the landscape draws
attention to names like Signal Hill, Marconi Towers, Tele-
graph Creek, Satellite Hill, and Landsat Island. The final
essay of this series concerns the much misunderstood
term 'haha' that occurs in several names in Eastern Can-
ada, the best example being the village of Saint-Louis-
du-Ha! Ha! Even though the term means 'an unexpected
barrier,' the vast majority of people will probably con-
tinue to believe it was introduced in names for comic
relief.
5 Adopting Names of Native Origin and Acknowledging
Names Used by Indigenous People. Names of Native origin
are distinguishing marks of a country. The first of eight
essays draws attention to the strength and rustic beauty
of names like Athabasca, Muskoka, and Keremeos. The
second explores the trend to acknowledge the names
actually used by the Native residents of places like
Iqaluit, the largest settlement in Nunavut, and Kuujjuaq
in Northern Quebec, formerly Frobisher Bay and Fort
Introduction 9
Chimo, respectively. The next six essays celebrate indi-
vidual names with Native roots: Miramichi, Saskatoon,
Medicine Hat, Mississippi River, Canso, and Nanaimo.
To me, all six add an extra patina of beauty to the regions
in which they are located. The last article of the series
explores names like Moose Jaw, Mooseland, and Moose
Bath Pond, which owe their origins to the word moos,
from the description by Algonkian-speaking tribes of the
browsing habits of the hulking animal occupying the
Canadian wilderness from coast to coast.
6 Examining the Names of Particular Places. The eight
essays in this next grouping are primarily about names
of single places, with the first one about Cupids, Nfld.,
where the oldest British colony in present-day Canada
was established in 1610. Acadia is the mystical home of a
quarter-million people, who proudly proclaim their com-
mon heritage, but the name's roots are uncertain, and the
area both historically and currently constituting Acadia
widely differs among Acadians. Montreal is the most
vibrant city in Canada, but the derivation of its name
from the adjacent 223-metre Mont Royal has been long
disputed. The next article traces the roots of a name on
every Canadian's lips in the late 1980s - Meech Lake -
and examines the dual names of the next lake to the
northwest, known as Harrington Lake in English, Lac
Mousseau in French. Ottawa, Canada's capital, has a
name rooted in the fur trade between an Aboriginal tribe
and the French in the mid-1600s. The name Toronto may
be traced to the practice of Natives catching fish in weirs
embedded beneath the water between Lake Simcoe and
Lake Couchiching. The story of the origin of Flin Flon
seems more fanciful than real, but it's an expressive
name for a mining city set among Manitoba's rugged
rocks. Robert Service's ballad of the cremation of Sam
McGee on the shores of the Yukon's Lake Laberge, and
10 Naming Canada
correspondence with the man it is named for, Michel
Lebarge himself, provide an interesting tale of naming in
Canada's Yukon.
7 Observing Selected Names in Particular Regions. Six of
the essays deal with several names in particular regions.
The lead-off article examines the incredible 4%-year voy-
age of George Vancouver to Canada's west coast in the
late 1700s, and the naming of features from the Strait of
Georgia to Alaska's Cook Inlet. During the same period,
Alexander Mackenzie undertook two arduous journeys,
one to the mouth of the country's longest river, subse-
quently named for him, the second to the shores of the
Pacific. Eleven geographical features honour Macken-
zie's prodigious accomplishments. Calgary provides the
focus for an essay about features associated with the
1988 Winter Olympics held there. The Thousand Islands
comprise 1,149 identifiable pieces of rock and land sur-
rounded by the waters of the upper St. Lawrence River,
but only 367 in both Ontario and New York have official
names. Downriver at Cornwall, the construction of huge
dams in the 1950s resulted in the inundation of 8,000
hectares of land; the relocation of eight villages; and the
creation of two new towns, Long Sault and Ingleside.
The naming of the historic passes on the Great Divide of
the Rocky Mountains is the subject of the last article of
this series of essays.
8 Commemorating Prominent Individuals and Honouring
Certain Family Names. The final twelve essays concern
features named for noted individuals, or for particular
surnames. The revered Guy Carleton, Baron Dorchester,
has been honoured in several names in Eastern Canada.
There are 218 features with the name Fraser in Canada,
the most famous being British Columbia's Fraser River.
George Dawson, a brilliant scientist and scholar who
overcame physical adversity, named many features him-
Introduction 11
self, and in his honour at least 25 features were named
for him. No single individual has had more features -
more than 300 - named for her in Canada than Queen
Victoria, beginning with the capital cities of both British
Columbia and Saskatchewan. Four Queen Elizabeths
have been honoured in the names of islands, mountains,
roads, and public buildings. The Queen's eldest son, the
Prince of Wales, had several features named for him dur-
ing his visit to Canada in 1860. When his eldest son, also
the Prince of Wales, visited Canada in 1919 a number of
features were named in his honour. In 1979, the museum
of Native artifacts in Yellowknife was named for the
present Prince of Wales. The nineteenth governor gen-
eral, Georges Vanier, was a respected statesman for
whom several features, including cities in Ontario and
Quebec, were named. In 1927 a group of peaks in British
Columbia's Cariboo Mountains was chosen to be named
after prime ministers. Four were named that year after
for Laurier, Abbott, Thompson, and Bowell. During the
next forty-five years peaks were selected to honour King,
Meighen, Bennett, St-Laurent, and Pearson. The naming
of a mountain for Roland Michener and a lake for Jules
Leger, Canada's twentieth and twenty-first governors
general, reflects the great respect these public servants
had among their countrymen. The most honoured Cana-
dian in the naming of places is Sir Wilfrid Laurier, with
at least 37 geographical features as well as a number of
public institutions having been named for him. President
John F. Kennedy had a mountain named for him in 1964,
and the following year it was climbed by his brother
Robert. The final essay is about features across the coun-
try named Smith, the commonest surname in several
countries in the world. The inspiration to write this arti-
cle came to me during the summer of 1984, when, while
visiting the editor of Canadian Geographic, Ross Smith, I
12 Naming Canada
thoughtlessly observed that consideration had once been
given to changing the magical name Medicine Hat to the
dull and uninspiring Smithville.
Here's to all those Smiths, Erasers, Poiriers, Mac-
donalds, Cartiers, Mercredis, Englebrechts, and millions
of other Canadians of many races and cultures who have
made this great land such a memorable experience, top-
onymically speaking. Thanks for Naming Canada.
Looking at Canada's Places from
the Atlantic to the Pacific, and to
the Arctic
Canada: A Native Name from the Land
That's the way to Canada/ Jacques Car-tier's young
Aboriginal companions, Taignoagny and Domagaya,
shouted as the explorer neared Tie d'Anticosti on the St.
Lawrence River on 17 August 1535. Cartier turned his
ship up the 'grande riviere de Hochelaga,' also called 'riv-
iere de Canada/ and by 7 September was within 100 kilo-
metres of Stadacona (site of present-day Quebec City) in
Chief Donnacona's territory, called Canada.
Donnacona, of a St. Lawrence Iroquoian-speaking
tribe, was the father of Cartier's two Native friends, hav-
ing allowed his sons to accompany the explorer to France
the previous year. He and Cartier had met near what is
now the town of Gaspe. Cartier later learned that Canada
extended another 50 kilometres beyond Stadacona (the
limits today would be Baie-Saint-Paul on the east, Port-
neuf on the west, and the south shore of the St. Lawrence
River).
In his report of the 1535-6 voyage, Cartier appended a
list of the local St. Lawrence Iroquoian-language words.
He noted that kanata meant 'town/ interpreted subse-
quently as meaning a cluster of dwellings, with the lands
14 Naming Canada
ruled by Donnacona being a series of towns. Andre
Thevet, a contemporary French explorer, wrote that the
name meant 'land/
The words for town or village in various Iroquoian
languages are similar. The Mohawk use nekantaa, the
Onondaga ganataje, and the Seneca iennekanandaa.
So the origin and meaning of 'Canada' would appear
to be beyond dispute. However, that has not prevented a
proliferation of other stories, some of tenuous credibility.
It may have been Father Louis Hennepin who first
observed the similarity of the Spanish aca nada ('here
nothing') to Canada. He reported in 1698 that early Span-
ish explorers were disappointed in not finding gold and
other riches in Canada, and frequently made that deri-
sive declaration. It is said that Native people picked up
the phrase and passed it to Cartier as the name of their
country. The historian Charlevoix mentioned it as an old
tradition in his history of New France, published in 1744.
Some writers give the credit to the Portuguese, who
also are said to have exclaimed in disgust ca nada ('here
nothing').
In the 1880s, Marshall Elliott, an American writer, was
convinced that a Spanish or Portuguese origin was cor-
rect and did much to cast doubt on the name's Native
provenance.
In 1760, Thomas Jefferys, a British map maker, pub-
lished a geography in which he suggested the name was
derived from a Native language and that it meant
'mouth of the country/ an allusion to the mouth of the St.
Lawrence River.
A writer in an issue of Nova Scotia Magazine of 1779
offered that a Frenchman called Cane had attempted to
found a colony but failed, leaving only his name for the
territory.
The most outrageous suggestion came from a writer in
Looking at Canada's Places 15
the Kingston Gazette in 1811. He said the origin could be
traced to the first French settlers demanding a 'can a day'
of spruce beer from the intendant, the colonial adminis-
trator.
In 1861, Rev. B. Davies, an English philologist, put for-
ward an Oriental origin, noting the similarity of the
name Canada with Canara or Carnata in the south of
India. Such speculation was not based on a thread of his-
torical or linguistic evidence.
Other suggestions have included the Latin word Can-
dida, the Sanskrit kanada, and the Spanish Canada, all with
no more evidence than the mere coincidence of similar
syllables.
The Dictionary of Canadianisms (1967) states that the ety-
mology of Canada is by no means clearly established,
which imparts a measure of respect to the many fanciful
suggestions that have been proposed to discredit the
information from Jacques Cartier in the sixteenth century.
Writers of the twentieth century, such as Francis Park-
man (Pioneers of New France, 1905), Mark Orkin (Speaking
Canadian English, 1970), and William B. Hamilton (The
Macmillan Book of Canadian Place Names, 1978), have con-
cluded that the weight of opinion favours the Native
source as reported by Cartier.
Maps made in France soon after Cartier's return in
1536 assigned the name Canada to a vast territory north
of lie d'Anticosti. An exception was a map made for
Nicolas Vallard in 1547, where the name is inscribed in
the area of the present city of Quebec.
Pierre Desceliers, an eminent cartographer near
Dieppe, produced several maps of eastern North Amer-
ica in the mid-1500s. His 1550 map shows the name Can-
ada four times. Near the head of the Saguenay it is
written in large letters once, and in smaller letters twice.
It is shown again on the south shore of the St. Lawrence
16 Naming Canada
River opposite the mouth of the Saguenay. Why the repe-
tition? Perhaps he was told that the small lettering did
not give sufficient prominence to Donnacona's territory,
and was persuaded to inscribe the name in larger letters.
For more than two centuries, from the 1550s to the late
1700s, Canada was used as a popular alternative to New
France, at least to that part bordering on the shores of the
'grande riviere de Canada/ the St. Lawrence. It was not
until 1791 that it was given official status when the Con-
stitutional Act created the two jurisdictions of Upper
Canada and Lower Canada. The proclamation of the Act
of Union in 1841 amalgamated the two regions into a
single province of Canada, divided into Canada East and
Canada West. But Upper Canada and Lower Canada
remained in common use, even in debates in the Legisla-
tive Assembly of Canada.
In the 1860s, when union with the Atlantic provinces
was in the offing, proposals for a suitable name for the
confederation included not only Canada, but more than
thirty others. Among those most frequently repeated
were Tuponia or Tupona (an acronym for The United
Provinces of North America) and Efisga (England,
France, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Aboriginal). Other
suggestions included Acadia, Albertland, Albertoria,
Albionara, Albona, Alexandrina, Aquilonia, Borealia,
Britannica, Cabotia, Canadensia, Colonia, Hochelaga,
Laurentia, Mesopelagia, New Albion, Niagarentia, Nor-
land, Superior, Transatlantica, Transylvania, Ursalia, Ves-
peria, Victorialand, and Victorialia.
When Thomas D'Arcy McGee addressed the Legisla-
tive Assembly on 9 February 1865 on the subject of the
proposed union, he noted such suggestions as Tuponia
and Hochelaga, and remarked whimsically: 'Now I
would ask any Hon. Member of the House how he
would feel if he woke up some fine morning and found
Looking at Canada's Places 17
himself, instead of a Canadian, a Tuponian or Hochela-
gander?'
When the British North America Act was declared on
1 July 1867, it announced that Canada would be the
name of the new Dominion. The Canadian Encyclopedia
notes: 'the name Canada reveals strength, generates
pride and reflects much of the land's rugged character
and its resourceful people/
How Canada Lost Its 'Dominion'
When many of us were growing up, we spoke about liv-
ing in the Dominion of Canada, heard the word Domin-
ion almost daily in the news and in references to our
nation, and proudly celebrated Dominion Day every
First of July. When the prime minister and premiers met,
it was called a Dominion-Provincial Conference. In
school we learned about the indomitable Dominion
Land Surveyors who carved up the West, and on the
classroom wall there was a distorted Mercator map of
the world with a huge, bright pink land mass labelled in
bold letters DOMINION OF CANADA. But we rarely
hear or see Dominion any more. Why?
I did not notice the erosion of the word from our polit-
ical lexicon until it was officially dropped from the name
of the 1 July holiday in October 1982. About that time, I
was asked by the United Nations to confirm the official
long and short names of our country. I assumed the long
title was Dominion of Canada, and the short was simply
Canada. I was wrong. External Affairs declared that Can-
ada alone was official as both the long and the short
name.
Then early in 1990, an article on Canada's future in
Maclean's magazine said that Canada 'is not, in any offi-
18 Naming Canada
cial usage, a kingdom, a commonwealth, republic or fed-
eration, much less a union. Nor is it anymore, in
common government parlance, a dominion/ This set me
off on an odyssey to discover when we had officially
ceased to be the Dominion of Canada. To my surprise, I
found the title has not been officially dropped; it has only
been suppressed, with federal, national, and central substi-
tuted as adjectives, and Canada, nation, and country used
to replace the noun.
At one time, Canada's public servants included the
Dominion Fire Commissioner, Dominion Stone Carver
(Parliament Buildings sculptor), Dominion Archivist,
Dominion Astronomer, Dominion Statistician, and
Dominion Cerealist. None of those titles can be found in
the Government of Canada telephone directory today. In
1994 three titles remained in use: Dominion Geodesist,
Dominion Hydrographer, and Dominion Carillonneur.
By the end of the twentieth century, Dominion Geodesist
had been replaced by Director of Geodetic Surveys, and
Dominion Hydrographer had all but disappeared in
favour of Director General of the Canadian Hydro-
graphic Service, leaving the single title of Dominion Car-
illonneur to carry on into the new century. The only title
in French with Dominion still retained is that of Carillon-
neur du Dominion.
The word dominion had been used as early as 1764, when
George III was encouraged by the Lord Commissioners of
Trade and Plantations to obtain 'accurate surveys of all
your Majesty's North American dominions/ Historians
trace the origin of the title Dominion of Canada in the
constitution to Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley, one of the
Fathers of Confederation, from New Brunswick. While
assembled at the London Conference in December 1866,
the delegates from the provinces of Canada, New Brun-
swick, and Nova Scotia were pondering what to call the
Looking at Canada's Places 19
proposed federation. Kingdom of Canada had been con-
sidered but was judged pretentious and possibly offensive
to Americans. Besides, Queen Victoria did not like it.
One morning, Tilley reached for his bible on awaken-
ing and read: 'He shall have dominion also from sea unto
sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth/ The
appropriateness of the word struck him at once. Here
was a term to fulfil the hopes of creating a great nation
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the mighty St.
Lawrence to the vast northern reaches. The other dele-
gates later agreed, and Lord Carnarvon, the colonial sec-
retary and chairman of the conference, persuaded the
Queen and the British prime minister, Lord Derby, to
accept the title Dominion of Canada.
On 29 March 1867, the British North America Act
received royal assent, and a new word appeared in the
world's political vocabulary. The act stated that 'the
Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick
shall form and be One Dominion under the Name of
Canada; and on and after that Day those Three Provinces
shall form and be One Dominion under that Name
accordingly.'
When the Canadian constitution was patriated in 1982,
the entire British North America Act was incorporated
into it as the Constitution Act, 1867. So the word Domin-
ion continues to be a part of the official title of this coun-
try (although its legal name is strictly Canada).
Until the Second World War, Canadian politicians, his-
torians, and writers comfortably spoke and wrote about
the Dominion. But during and immediately after the war,
considerable tensions over Quebec's relationship to
Ottawa developed between Premier Maurice Duplessis
and Prime Minister Mackenzie King. With the appoint-
ment of Louis St-Laurent as minister of external affairs in
1946, and his becoming prime minister two years later,
20 Naming Canada
the tensions were eased by quietly dropping references
to the Dominion, viewed by Duplessis as an oppressive
word implying Quebec's subservience to the govern-
ment in Ottawa.
By the 1960s, many titles of agencies in Ottawa were
stripped of the word Dominion. The Dominion Bureau of
Statistics became Statistics Canada; Dominion experi-
mental farms became research stations. As early as 1948,
the magazine Saturday Night referred to 'federal minis-
ters' and 'national capital,' using Dominion only in rela-
tion to official functions. And by 1951, Queen's Quarterly
was writing of 'federal-provincial conferences.'
From the 1940s to the 1970s, various private members'
bills to change Dominion Day to Canada Day were
'talked out' in the House of Commons. Regardless,
almost all references in the media and by the federal gov-
ernment after 1972 were to Canada Day.
Then, in May 1980, Hal Herbert, Liberal MP for Vau-
dreuil, introduced a private member's bill to replace
Dominion Day with Canada Day. Many MPs expected
nothing would come of it, but on 9 July 1982, the bill was
given second reading and referred to the Committee of
the Whole House. Although a quorum was not in the
House, the call for third reading was made immediately.
When no objections were heard, the bill was carried and
the House adjourned.
The bill was then sent to the Senate, where a vigorous
debate took place in October. Although a stout defence of
Dominion Day was advanced by Senator Eugene Forsey
and the Monarchist League of Canada, the Senate, aware
of a Gallup poll indicating 70 per cent of Canadians
favoured the change, approved the bill without a
recorded vote.
On 1 July 1989, Michael Valpy, a Globe and Mail colum-
nist, assailed Canadian parliamentarians as Vandals'
Looking at Canada's Places 21
and 'milquetoast stewards/ but it seems that most Cana-
dians are content with our national holiday being called
Canada Day.
Across the land, however, remnants of Canada's title
still flourish: Dominion Square in Montreal; the commu-
nity of Dominion, N.S.; the village of Dominion City,
Man.; New Dominion, P.E.I.; Dominionville, Ont; and
several creeks, rivers, lakes, and mountains called
Dominion. The southwestern Ontario town of Ridge-
town is served by the Ridgetown Dominion weekly news-
paper, and many businesses, from Dominion Cellulose
Ltd. to Toronto-Dominion Bank, still proudly celebrate
the historic title of our country.
As we enter the twenty-first century, Dominion
remains in the title of our country because section 3 of
the British North America Act - to 'form and be one
Dominion' - is still in Canada's constitution.
Canada: The North, South, East, and West of It
The most easterly land of Canada - indeed of North
America - is Cape Spear, which juts into the Atlantic at a
longitude of 50°37'W.
Not long after the voyage of the Portuguese explorer
Joao Fernandes in 1498 (partly in company with John
Cabot), the names Cauo de la spera and Riuo de la spera
appeared on some maps published between 1505 and
1508. These Portuguese names refer to the idea of 'wait-
ing/ The small bay on the northwest side of the cape was
an important rendezvous for the Grand Banks fishery in
the early 1500s.
In the 1540s, the name of the point was rendered on
maps in French as Cap d'Espoir (meaning 'cape of hope'),
and later as Cap d'Esperance. This was rendered into
22 Naming Canada
English as Cape Spear and that became the established
form on British Admiralty charts.
The second Portuguese name, Riuo de la spera, became
Cape Bay on early English charts, but was changed to
Spear Bay in the 1700s. In 1981, the name Cape Bay was
restored; Spear Bay Brook has remained for a small
stream flowing into the bay.
The most southerly land feature of Canada is Middle
Island in Lake Erie at latitude 41°41'N. (So much for
thinking of Canada as entirely north of the 49th parallel!)
Middle Island is at the same latitude as the Klamath
Mountains of northern California; Great Salt Lake, Utah;
Des Moines, Iowa; and Chicago, 111. The island was pur-
chased from its American owners in 1999 and is being
administered by Point Pelee National Park.
Middle Island itself lies in the middle of the Lake Erie
shipping channel, almost halfway between Pelee Island
(Ont.) on the north, and Kelleys Island (Ohio) on the
south.
Pelee Island is our most southerly occupied land. The
name of the island is derived from nearby Point Pelee,
itself named by the French because its east side was
found to be devoid of trees, and thus pelee ('bare' or
'peeled').
Father Pierre Charlevoix, who took a journey along the
shore of Lake Erie in 1721, noted in his journal, pub-
lished in Paris in 1744, that Point Pelee was 'well enough
wooded on the west side, but on the east side it has a
sandy soil with only small red cedars of inconsiderable
quantity/
On looking at some maps of Canada, some people
may conclude that the country's most westerly point is
Frederick Island, the farthest west of the Queen Char-
lotte Islands. The longitude of this island is 133°11'W, but
it is nearly eight degrees east of the Yukon-Alaska
Looking at Canada's Places 23
boundary at 141°. The southern point of this boundary is
Mount St. Elias; its northern mainland limit is Demarca-
tion Point.
Mount St. Elias was first noted on 16 July 1741 by the
Danish-born explorer Vitus Bering during a voyage of
discovery on behalf of the Russian government. On St.
Elias Day, four days later, he named Cape St. Elias on
Kayak Island in present-day Alaska. Subsequently, map
makers assigned the cape's name to the mountain
sighted but left unnamed by Bering, and to the highest
range of mountains in Canada.
Demarcation Point, the most northwesterly point of
Canada, was mentioned by Sir John Franklin in his Nar-
rative of 1828. He noted it as having been so named 'from
its being situated in longitude 141 °W, the boundary
between the British and Russian dominions on the north-
ern coast of Canada.'
The name of the most northerly point in Canada has
been debated for a number of years.
During his expedition to northern Ellesmere Island in
1875-6, Sir George Nares applied the name Cape Colum-
bia (from the poetic name of the United States) to the
most northerly extension of land at 83°06'N. At the same
time he named an eastern extension of the same body of
land Cape Aldrich for his first lieutenant, Pelham Aid-
rich, who had established that the vicinity of the capes
was the most northerly land of the Arctic Archipelago.
In 1911, the Geographic Board published several deci-
sions on names. Its approval of Cape Columbia includes
the statement: 'Name given by Nares, as it is the most
northerly point of North America.'
Moira Dunbar and Keith Greenaway, in their Arctic
Canada from the Air (1956), stated without qualification
that Cape Aldrich is the northernmost point. They based
this judgment on their interpretation of air photos.
24 Naming Canada
In his North of Latitude Eighty (1974), Geoffrey Hatters-
ley-Smith also asserted that Cape Aldrich is the most
northern point by a few hundred metres, but noted that
'Aldrich himself accorded the distinction to Cape
Columbia/ In the 1950s and 1960s, Dr. Hattersley-Smith
raised with the names authority many questions about
various names of northern Ellesmere Island, but he did
not draw attention to any problems relating to the most
northerly named point. In 1967, geographer Jim Lotz
suggested naming the end of the whole 15-kilometre-
wide body of land, including the two named capes, as
'Centennial Promontory/ No action was taken on this
proposal.
The most recent representation on topographical maps
of the area of Cape Columbia is the 1970 edition of the
1:500,000 scale map. It and the 1967 edition of the
1:250,000 scale map reveal a small point extending far-
ther north than the points identified as Cape Columbia
and Cape Aldrich.
When this article appeared in the Feb./Mar. 1987 issue
of Canadian Geographic, it contained my suggestion that
Cape Columbia could continue to be recognized as the
most northerly land of Canada, but that the most north-
erly point of the cape be given a uniquely Canadian
name.
In the summer of 1987, the Mapping and Charting
Establishment of the Department of National Defence
surveyed the area of Cape Columbia and determined
that the small point was indeed the most northerly piece
of land, being 242 metres north of the site identified as
Cape Columbia.
In 1992, the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geo-
graphical Names decided that the small point, at the lati-
tude of 83°06'41.35", would henceforth be known as
Cape Columbia.
Looking at Canada's Places 25
High Points across the Land
The highest mountain in Canada is in the St. Elias Moun-
tains in the Yukon. At 5,959 metres, Mount Logan is sec-
ond only to Mount McKinley (6,194 metres) in Alaska as
the highest elevation in North America. In 1890,1.C. Rus-
sell of the U.S. Geological Survey, while undertaking a
survey in the St. Elias Mountains, named it for Sir William
Edmond Logan (1798-1875). Born in Montreal and edu-
cated in Scotland, Logan founded the Geological Survey
of Canada in 1842. On 4 October 2000, Prime Minister Jean
Chretien stated that the mountain was to be renamed for
former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who had
died a week earlier. However, after two weeks of consid-
erable negative reaction to the proposal in the media, Her-
itage Minister Sheila Copps announced that another,
unnamed feature would be selected to honour Trudeau's
memory.
The St. Elias Mountains were named in the late 1800s
after Mount St. Elias, a name in turn derived from Cape
St. Elias in Alaska, named by the Danish explorer Vitus
Bering on St. Elias Day in 1741. Mount St. Elias is on the
western boundary of Canada and, at 5,489 metres, is our
second-highest mountain. In fact, the next sixteen high-
est mountains in Canada are all in the St. Elias Moun-
tains, all but one entirely in the Yukon. Fairweather
Mountain (at 4,663 metres, the eighth-highest in Canada)
straddles the B.C.-Alaska boundary. It was named by
Capt. James Cook during his historic voyage along the
west coast in 1778.
The highest mountain entirely within British Colum-
bia is Mount Waddington (4,016 metres) in the Coast
Mountains. It was named in 1918 by the Geographic
Board of Canada for Alfred Waddington, who from 1858
to 1872 promoted the dream of a transcontinental route
26 Naming Canada
to the Pacific via Bute Inlet, the head of which is 60 kilo-
metres south of the mountain.
Alberta's highest mountain is Mount Columbia (3,747
metres), located on the boundary with British Columbia
in the Rocky Mountains. It received its name in 1899
from the Columbia River, itself named in 1792 by Capt.
Robert Gray, an American, for his vessel, the Columbia.
But Mount Columbia is not the highest peak in the Rock-
ies; that claim belongs to British Columbia's Mount Rob-
son, whose elevation is 3,954 metres, but still only
twentieth highest in Canada. The origin of the Robson
name is uncertain. One story is that it may have been
named for Colin Robertson (1783-1842), a Hudson's Bay
Company trader.
The highest point in Saskatchewan is an officially
unnamed elevation in the Cypress Hills, which rises to
1,392 metres near the Alberta border. (The Cypress Hills
rise even higher, to 1,465 metres, farther west in Alberta.)
Early French voyageurs identified the jackpine as a
cypres, and this was rendered as 'Cypress' on the map of
the Palliser report of 1857-60.
The highest crest in Manitoba is Baldy Mountain, at
832 metres. It is located in Duck Mountain Provincial
Park, 60 kilometres northwest of Dauphin.
The highest peak in the Northwest Territories is offi-
cially unnamed, although referred to as 'Mount Nirvana'
in the alpine literature. Called that in 1965 by William J.
Buckingham, a mountain climber, it rises to 2,773 metres.
The mountain is in the Ragged Range, southwest of the
South Nahanni River. The range was named in 1960 by
Hugh S. Bostock for the characteristic ruggedness of its
summits. At an elevation of 2,764 metres, Mount Sir
James MacBrien, 30 kilometres to the north of Mount
Nirvana, is usually given the honour of being the highest
in the Northwest Territories, but it is short by 9 metres. A
native of Port Perry, Ont., MacBrien (1878-1938) was a
Looking at Canada's Places 27
distinguished soldier and commissioner of the RCMP,
1931-8.
The highest point in Nunavut is Barbeau Peak, named
in 1969 for the distinguished anthropologist and folklor-
ist Marius Barbeau (1883-1969).
The highest spot in Ontario, 95 kilometres north of
Sudbury, was determined only in 1972 when Ishpatina
Ridge, with an elevation of 693 metres, was found to be
28 metres higher than Ogidaki Mountain. The latter, near
Sault Ste. Marie, was declared in 1966 to be the highest
elevation. Before that, Tip Top Mountain near Lake Supe-
rior, at 640 metres, was considered the highest. In the
Ojibwa language, Ishpatina means 'high hill' and Ogidaki
means 'high ground/
The highest summit in Quebec, at 1,652 metres, is Mont
D'Iberville in the Torngat Mountains. This name was
given in 1971 by the Commission de toponymie du
Quebec for Pierre Le Moyne D'Iberville (1661-1706), who
led many ruthless expeditions in North America, includ-
ing a destructive rampage in St. John's and the Avalon
Peninsula of Newfoundland in 1696-7. In 1981, the New-
foundland Geographical Names Board ascertained that
the peak so named was on the Quebec-Labrador bound-
ary, and decided that a name more suitable to that region's
history should be assigned to the peak. The board gave it
the name Mount Caubvick, in honour of an Inuit woman,
who, with four other Inuit, accompanied George Cart-
wright, a trader on the Labrador coast, to England in 1772.
So it is no coincidence that the heights of the highest
points in Quebec and Newfoundland are identical: they
are the same feature, but with two quite different names.
On the island of Newfoundland, the highest elevation,
at 814 metres, is an unnamed peak in the Lewis Hills in
the Long Range Mountains. The summit is 40 kilometres
southwest of Corner Brook, and only 6 kilometres from
the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
28 Naming Canada
The highest land in Nova Scotia is White Hill, a tree-
less peak with an elevation of 532 metres on the North
Barren of the Cape Breton Highlands, 17 kilometres west
of Ingonish.
Prince Edward Island's highest elevation is only 142
metres above sea level, and is located in Lot 67, Queens
County. The community on the hill is rather oddly
named, being composed of two words suggesting a place
lower than its surroundings: Glen Valley.
In 1899, W.F. Ganong determined New Brunswick's
highest elevation (820 metres) and named it Mount Car-
leton for Thomas Carleton (1736-1817), the first lieuten-
ant-governor of New Brunswick. In 1969, a warden from
a private fishing lodge drove me to the base (465 metres)
of the mountain, and told me it would take 2
l
/2 hours to
walk to the top. After 1% hours, I had reached its sum-
mit, and spent another hour viewing the grand vistas.
Later, I asked the warden why he had not told me I could
easily reach the top in less than two hours. In his reply,
he revealed his respect for the mountain and his percep-
tive judgment of my nature: 'I wanted you to enjoy the
climb without worrying how far it was to the top.'
In 1990, Clifford and Ruth Holtz, two Oshawa resi-
dents then in their sixties, set out to climb the highest
elevations in each province and territory. They accom-
plished the ascent of all eleven the following year.
How Our National Parks Got Their Names
The names of Canada's national parks reflect a variety of
origins. Some derive from a dominant local community
(Banff, Revelstoke) or a physical feature (Riding Moun-
tain, Gros Morne). Others come from a leading character-
istic within the park's area (Glacier) or purpose (Wood
Looking at Canada's Places 29
Buffalo), while some convey a general description
(Pacific Rim, Cape Breton Highlands).
Canada's Aboriginal languages have contributed a
number of park names (Kouchibouguac, Yoho, Kluane),
with all of the recent parks in the north having either
Inuktitut or Inuvialuktun names specially created for
them (Auyuittuq, Tuktut Nogait, Ivvavik, Aulavik, Sir-
milik, and Quttinirpaaq).
Rocky Mountains Park was the name given 100 years
ago to the first reserve set aside in Alberta for the educa-
tion and enjoyment of the nation. Subsequently the park
area was enlarged, until 1930, when it was renamed
Banff, an identification it had had informally for several
years. Banff is the name of a Scottish town and county,
and was given in either 1883 or 1884 to a CPR station
a little east of the present townsite, established in 1886
by George Stewart, the park's first superintendent.
Although Banff is closely linked to Lord Strathcona
and Lord Mount Stephen, it is not certain if either influ-
enced its choice as a station name; the latter was born in
Banff shire.
Jasper, created in 1907, took its name from Jasper
House, a North West Company trading post founded in
the early 1800s. The post had been named for Jasper
Hawes, who ran the post in 1817.
The name Yoho, given to a river, a mountain, a station,
and a pass, as well as the park, is usually equated with
the Cree for 'wonder' or 'excitement.'
The name Kootenay - the park embraces the headwa-
ters of the Kootenay River - may have been given by the
Blackfoot to describe the 'people of the water' in the lan-
guage of the Kootenay. The 'ay' spelling was fixed in
1864 by Frederick Seymour, first governor of British
Columbia, to differentiate it from Kootenai, the form
used in the United States.
30 Naming Canada
Mount Revelstoke - the park encloses some spectacu-
lar topography of the Selkirk Mountains - was named in
1914 for the city of the same name; the latter had been
named in 1886 for Lord Revelstoke, head of a British
banking house that had provided some of the financing
for CPR construction. Glacier, also in the Selkirks, was
created in 1886 and contains more than 100 glaciers.
Gwaii Haanas park reserve at the south end of
Moresby Island (in the Queen Charlotte Islands) was set
up as South Moresby park reserve in 1988, and its
present name was confirmed in 1993. In Haida the name
means 'islands of wonder and beauty/
Waterton Lakes, on the Alberta-Montana border, dates
from 1895. The lakes were named in 1858 by Thomas
Blakiston for a noted British naturalist, Charles Waterton.
The three lakes are joined by narrows called Dardanelles
and Bosporus.
Wood Buffalo is Canada's largest park. It was estab-
lished in 1922 to protect a small herd of wood buffalo
and to provide a reserve for a larger herd of plains buf-
falo transferred from Wainwright, Alta.
Saskatchewan's Prince Albert National Park is north of
the city of Prince Albert, which was named for the consort
of Queen Victoria. Grasslands in southern Saskatchewan
represents one of Canada's major ecosystems.
Riding Mountain, which occupies the rugged land-
scape west of Lake Manitoba, was created in 1930 and
takes its name from the park's highest elevation. Riding
Mountain probably derives its name from Aboriginal
pack trails used by the early explorers.
Wapusk was established in 1996 on the shore of Hud-
son Bay, southeast of Churchill, to protect the dens of
polar bears and other wildlife. The name in Cree means
'white bear.'
The names of two parks in southern Ontario (St.
Lawrence Islands, Georgian Bay Islands) merely indicate
Looking at Canada's Places 31
their locations. Pelee is named for a prominent point
extending into Lake Erie; the French word pelee means
'bald' or 'denuded/ a description given to the point in
the early 1700s.
Pukaskwa is located on the north shore of Lake Supe-
rior in the area of the Pukaskwa River. The name's origin
is uncertain, with 'fish cleaning place' being the most
plausible. There is also a story that the name recalls an
Aboriginal's killing and burning of his wife. The name is
pronounced 'PUK-a-saw.' Bruce Peninsula park and the
adjoining Fathom Five Marine park were created in 1987.
Quebec has three national parks. La Mauricie is on the
west side of Riviere St-Maurice, a name given in the
eighteenth century for the Sieur de la Fontaine, Maurice
Poulin. The river had been named 'Riviere de Fouez' in
1535 by Jacques Cartier for a French family named Foix;
it was also known as 'Riviere des Trois-Rivieres.' Forillon
embraces the most easterly part of the Peninsule de la
Gaspesie. The name is said to relate to the practice of
fishermen using fires to attract fish or to alert ships to
dangers in navigation.
The latest Quebec park, Mingan Archipelago, consists
of a cluster of small islands on the north shore of the St.
Lawrence, 160 kilometres east of Sept-lies. The name
Mingan was long thought to be the Montagnais word for
'wolf; more recently, the preferred derivation is that it
comes from a Breton word to describe the islands' topog-
raphy, 'rounded stone.'
New Brunswick has two national parks. Fundy is on
the north shore of the Bay of Fundy. The name is likely a
modification of 'fendu,' from the French name for Cape
Split at the entrance to Minas Basin. Kouchibouguac, near
Richibucto, was created in 1971. Taken from the Kouchi-
bouguac River, the name is derived from the Mi'kmaq
expression Pijeboogwek, 'river of the long tideway.'
Cape Breton Highlands, the older of Nova Scotia's two
32 Naming Canada
national parks, takes its name from the most northerly
part of Cape Breton Island. Cape Breton may have been
named in the early 1500s for the fishermen from France's
Bretagne. Kejimkujik was created in 1964. Its largest lake,
Kejimkujik Lake, has a Mi'kmaq name of uncertain ori-
gin. Nova Scotians pronounce it 'KEJ-im-KOO-jik,' 'KEJ-
ma-KOOJ/ and 'KEJ-a-ma-KOO-jee.'
Terra Nova in Newfoundland takes its name from a
river and a lake, both derived from the Latin for 'new
land.' Gros Morne is north of Corner Brook in the Long
Range Mountains. Gros Morne, from the French for
'great height/ is the highest point in the park, rising to
806 metres.
Kluane in the Yukon is on the east flank of the spectac-
ular St. Elias Mountains, which are interspersed with
impressive icefields and glaciers. The name, pronounced
'KLOO-aw-nee,' means 'whitefish place' in Tlingit. Ivva-
vik, in the northern part of the territory, was called
Northern Yukon in 1984, but was renamed ten years later
after the Inuvialuktun word for 'place of giving birth and
raising young,' in reference to the Porcupine herd of the
barren-ground caribou.
Nahanni is a corridor along 300 kilometres of the
South Nahanni River, a wild and turbulent tributary of
the Liard River in the Northwest Territories. Nahanni is
named for an Athapaskan tribe and means 'people of the
west.' The newest parks in the Northwest Territories are
Aulavik (1992) and Tuktut Nogait (1996). The former, on
Banks Island, means 'where people travel' in Inuvialuk-
tun and the latter, on the south shore of Amundsen Gulf
and east of Inuvik, means 'calving ground of the young
caribou' in the same language spoken by the local Inuit.
Auyuittuq was established as a park on Baffin Island
in 1972. Its Inuit name means 'place that does not melt' in
reference to its most prominent feature, the Penny Ice
Looking at Canada's Places 33
Cap. Two national parks have recently been created in
the northern lands of Nunavut: Quttinirpaaq (1999), for-
merly called Ellesmere Island park reserve, and Sirmilik
(1999) on northeastern Baffin Island. The former's name
in Inuktitut means 'top of the world,' and the latter's
means 'the place of glaciers.'
A Medley of Favourite Names
Do you remember this sonorous phrase of the 1950s and
1960s: 'Jack Pickersgill, the honourable member for
Bonavista-Twillingate'? The two place names spoken
together are quite melodious, and conjure up pleasant
images.
The town of Bonavista is located at Cape Bonavista,
130 kilometres northwest of St. John's, Nfld. The name of
the cape is one of Canada's oldest, possibly having been
given in 1500 by the Portuguese explorer Caspar Corte-
Real for Boa Vista, one of the islands of Cape Verde off
Africa's west coast. The town of Twillingate, situated on
South Twillingate Island in Notre Dame Bay, is 140 kilo-
metres northwest of Bonavista. It was named by French
fishermen for Pointe de Toulinguet, at the entrance to the
harbour of Brest, in Bretagne, France.
Bonavista is now part of the riding of Bonavista-Trin-
ity-Conception. Gander-Twillingate was the name of a
riding until 1988, when it was changed to the more mun-
dane Gander-Grand Falls.
These pleasant, musical names have inspired me to
select my two favourite place names from each province
and territory.
Two names in Nova Scotia that I particularly like are
Antigonish and Pubnico. Antigonish, the home of St.
34 Naming Canada
Francis Xavier University, takes its name from the
Mi'kmaq word Nalegitkoonech. Its meaning may refer to
how Rights River flows through broken marsh into Anti-
gonish Harbour. The usual translation, 'where branches
are torn off/ probably refers to the site of the town, and
to an entirely different Mi'kmaq word.
Pubnico, 35 kilometres southeast of Yarmouth, is at the
head of Pubnico Harbour. The 15-kilometre-long harbour
has several communities on each side having Pubnico as
part of their names. Among these are Lower West Pub-
nico, Middle West Pubnico, West Pubnico, Upper West
Pubnico, Lower East Pubnico, Centre East Pubnico, Mid-
dle East Pubnico, and East Pubnico. The name comes
from the Mi'kmaq Pogomkook, meaning 'dry sandy place.'
Rustico is my favourite in Prince Edward Island. It
forms part of the names of several farming and fishing
communities on the shores of Rustico Bay. Named for
Rene Rassicot, who came from France's Normandie in
1724, Rustico became the local form by 1774.
I also like Strathgartney, the name of a provincial park
17 kilometres west of Charlottetown. In 1846, Robert
Bruce Stewart selected the name for his homestead, nam-
ing it after a valley in Perthshire, Scotland.
Among my favourites in New Brunswick is Nackawic,
a village at the mouth of Nackawic Stream. The name is
derived from the Maliseet Nelgwaweegek, suggesting
'straight water,' because of the way the stream entered
the Saint John River before the river was dammed.
Kouchibouguac is a little village on the north bank of
the Kouchibouguac River, 40 kilometres southeast of the
city of Miramichi. In 1971, Kouchibouguac National Park
was created along the seashore from Kouchibouguac Bay
to Richibucto Harbour. The name means 'river of the
long tideway' in Mi'kmaq.
Sorel, where the Richelieu flows into the St. Lawrence
Looking at Canada's Places 35
northeast of Montreal, is my favourite Quebec place
name. The site was granted in 1672 to Pierre de Saurel, a
captain of the Carignan-Salieres Regiment. Called Sorel
before 1787, it was renamed William Henry for Prince
William Henry, future King William IV, who visited the
place that year. The name Sorel was restored in 1860, and
by 1906 archivist Pierre-Georges Roy reported that Will-
iam Henry was totally forgotten.
My other Quebec choice is the town of Maniwaki,
located on the Gatineau, 125 kilometres north of Ottawa.
The name, derived from the Algonquin for 'Mary's land/
was given in 1849 by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
Ontario's Muskoka evokes images of summer cot-
tages, boat trips among the islands, and rambles in the
woods. Lake Muskoka got its name from two Ojibwa
chiefs, Yellowhead and his son William Yellowhead, both
of whom were known as Musquakie in their language.
Both Musquakie and Muskoka were derived from
mesqua ahkees, 'red ground.'
I like both the name Cobalt and the indomitable spirit
of the people of this Northern Ontario town. Silver was
discovered there in 1903. Dr. Willet Miller, the provincial
geologist, went to the site in 1904 and chose the new rail-
way station's name from traces of the mineral cobalt
found near the station.
During my childhood, I read the name Wawanesa on a
calendar in my grandfather's house and imagined the
home of the national insurance company would be a
great city on the Prairies. In fact, the village, 35 kilome-
tres southeast of Brandon, Man., has never been the
metropolis I envisioned, and now has fewer than 500
people. The name probably means 'whippoorwill' in
Algonquin; the bird is mentioned in Longfellow's poem
The Song of Hiawatha as Wawonaissa.
Minnedosa, a town 45 kilometres north of Brandon, is
36 Naming Canada
a mellifluous name created in the 1880s by a miller
named J.S. Armitage. He derived it from the Siouan
words for 'swift water/ in reference to the fast-flowing
Little Saskatchewan River. The river, which flows
through the town to the Assiniboine River, was officially
called Minnedosa River in 1928, but the preferred local
name, Little Saskatchewan River, was restored in 1980.
Assiniboia, 90 kilometres south of Moose Jaw, is one of
my favourite Saskatchewan names. Formerly called
Leeville for the first postmaster, Hubbard Lee, the town
was renamed in 1913 for the former District of Assini-
boia, part of the North-West Territories from 1882 to
1905. The district was named for the Assiniboine River,
itself given for the Siouan tribe whose name in Ojibwa
means 'one who cooks with (hot) stones.'
The centre of Saskatchewan's potash industry is Ester-
hazy, a town of 3,000 south of Yorkton. The name
honours Count Paul Esterhazy, a Hungarian who, while
living in New York in the 1880s, resolved to help his fel-
low countrymen working in desperate conditions in the
Pennsylvania coal mines. He bought land north of the
Qu'Appelle Valley and persuaded many of the miners to
move there. Later they were joined by farm families who
came to Canada from Hungary.
Pincher Creek is one of my favourite names in Alberta
because it reflects the spirit of the wild west. The town of
Pincher Creek, with a population of 3,650, is located on a
tributary of the Oldman River, 85 kilometres west of
Lethbridge. Its name recalls the loss of a pair of pinchers
(an older form of 'pincers') in the 1860s by a prospecting
party. Another story is that some of the prospectors were
murdered by Aboriginals. When the remaining members
of the party came across the grisly site, they found the
pinchers of one of their murdered friends near the creek.
Between Edmonton and Red Deer is the attractive
Looking at Canada's Places 37
town of Lacombe, with a population of 5,600. The name
recalls the missionary Albert Lacombe (1827-1916), who
ministered to the Aboriginals and the Metis from Win-
nipeg to Lesser Slave Lake during the last half of the
nineteenth century. In the 1880s, Father Lacombe, who
was partly of Aboriginal origin, helped the CPR reach an
amicable settlement with Chief Crowfoot for the con-
struction of the railway across Blackfoot lands in south-
ern Alberta.
One of my favourite British Columbia names is Kit-
wanga, a village in the Skeena River valley between Ter-
race and Hazelton. I find its lilting syllables, 'KIT-wawn-
GAH/ especially pleasant. The name is derived from a
Gitksan phrase meaning 'people of the place of rabbits/
Keremeos, a village of 700 about 40 kilometres south-
west of Penticton, is another name I find appealing to the
ear. It was derived in 1887 from an Okanagan word, pos-
sibly meaning land 'cut across in the middle' or 'a flat cut
through by water' in reference to the Similkameen River
crossing the flat lands near the village.
No name sings more about the Yukon and the Gold
Rush days than Klondike. The name, from Thron-duick,
meaning 'hammer water' in an Athapaskan dialect,
relates to the practice of putting stakes in the river to
catch salmon. Ironically, the fishing was so poor in the
summer of 1896 that George Carmack and his party
abandoned their stakes to prospect in one of the Klond-
ike's tributaries, the legendary Bonanza Creek, and the
stampede was on.
Whitehorse has a certain beauty and strength in its
name. It is said that the first miners travelling down the
Yukon River in 1880-1 thought the rapids at the site of
the present city looked like the manes of white horses.
The builders of the White Pass and Yukon Route first
called the townsite Closeleigh in 1899, but reverted in
38 Naming Canada
1900 to the name that had already become widely known
throughout the world. In the early 1950s, Whitehorse
replaced Dawson City as the territorial capital.
Another territorial capital, 1,000 kilometres to the east,
has another of my favourite names. Gold was discovered
on the north shore of Great Slave Lake in 1934. The com-
munity that sprang up at the site was named Yellow-
knife, derived from the name of a band of Athapaskans
who made tools from yellow copper. Yellowknife, with a
population of almost 17,000, has been the capital of the
Northwest Territories since 1967.
Nanisivik is a small mining community on Baffin
Island, in Nunavut. It was developed in 1974 by Nanisi-
vik Mines to extract lead, zinc, silver, and cadmium. In
Inuktitut, the name means 'place where people find
things/
So there you have my twenty-four favourites. Half are
names of Native origin, revealing my preference for
names derived from the languages of the First Nations of
Canada. There are no -ville, -town, -burg, or saint names
among my selections. Although some are names trans-
ferred from other parts of the world, none is derived
from places in England or the United States.
Riding Names: Same Gratifying, Some Grating
In the essay 'A Medley of Favourite Names,' I wrote that
Bonavista-Twillingate used to be a favourite name of
mine for a federal electoral district, and that Twillingate
was now preserved in the name of Gander-Twillingate.
Wrong. This was a riding name prior to the redistribu-
tion that came into effect in July 1988. The new riding
was called Gander-Grand Falls.
Looking at Canada's Places 39
The 1988 redistribution provided for 295 federal rid-
ings, up from 282 in the previous Parliament. Of these,
107 were new riding names, while 188 were the names of
the redistribution as they existed in July 1988. The next
redistribution, based on the 1991 census, resulted in 301
ridings, with 6 new names and a whopping 115 changes.
The creation of boundaries and the selection of names
for each electoral district are the responsibility of com-
missions appointed in each province and territory fol-
lowing each decennial census. When a new district
corresponds generally to a riding at the time the reports
are tabled in the House of Commons, a sitting member's
riding name may be changed or restored by a private
member's bill. Following an election, a change in a
riding name can also be made through a private mem-
ber's bill.
After redistribution based on the 1971 census, more
than forty name changes were accepted by the House of
Commons. After the 1988 redistribution, there were eigh-
teen changes to the new riding names to June 1993. The
commission in Quebec had recommended Chapleau for
the area of the former district of Gatineau, but the sitting
member successfully appealed in the summer of 1988 to
have it renamed Gatineau-La Lievre. In 1996, the single
name Gatineau was restored. In New Brunswick, the
commission suggested Chaleur in place of Gloucester, in
order to reflect the francophone majority and to com-
memorate the name given by Jacques Cartier in 1534.
However, Gloucester, in continuous use since 1867, was
retained after an appeal by the sitting member. Subse-
quently, in June 1990, it was changed to Acadie-Bathurst.
The riding of Restigouche was changed to Restigouche-
Chaleur in 1989, and became Madawaska-Restigouche
in 1996.
Among the most attractive riding names are single
40 Naming Canada
place names that clearly identify the specific area of the
country. Examples are Athabasca, Peterborough, Skeena,
Wetaskiwin, Chicoutimi, Thornhill, and Yukon. Also
pleasing are riding names comprising two names that
produce a musical cadence. Among these are Brome-
Missisquoi, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Cariboo-Chilco-
tin, Regina-Qu'Appelle, Winnipeg-Transcona, Edmon-
ton-Strathcona, Fundy-Royal, and Timmins-Chapleau.
But as more place names are added to a riding name, it
becomes rather cumbersome, as in the case of Dufferin-
Peel-Wellington-Grey and Beauport-Montmorency-
Cote-de-Beauport-Ile-d'Orleans.
St. John's East and St. John's West have been in use
since 1949, but as several communities in the former are
west of the latter, new names such as St. John's-Torbay
and Avalon-Placentia would have been better choices. In
the redistribution based on the 1971 census, Humber-
Port au Port-St. Barbe was an awkward title. Its succes-
sor is equally awkward: Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte.
Prince Edward Island has four ridings, each with a sin-
gle name chosen from a prominent physical feature.
Although the single name has its appeal, each is rather
vague as to the geographical area to which it refers. For
example, Charlottetown would be more explicit than the
current name of Hillsborough.
Six riding names in Nova Scotia were changed in 1996.
Several of the province's eleven riding names were either
vague or inappropriate in 1988. Central Nova and South
West Nova were rather bland. Two names were quite
misleading: the Cape Breton Highlands, were for the
most part, not in the riding of Cape Breton Highlands-
Canso, and the main section of the Annapolis Valley was
not in Annapolis Valley-Hants. The Nova Scotia com-
missioners resolved the discrepancies in 1996 by intro-
ducing Sydney-Victoria and Bras d'Or-Cape Breton on
Looking at Canada's Places 41
Cape Breton Island, and renaming Annapolis Valley-
Hants as Kings-Hants.
In New Brunswick, Fredericton was substituted for
York-Sunbury, Miramichi for Northumberland-Mirami-
chi, and Beausejour for Westmorland-Kent in 1988. The
province's commission believed that parts of the previ-
ous names could be confused with riding names in
Ontario. Beausejour, derived from the name of a French
fort built in 1750, destroyed by the British in 1755, and
restored as a national historic park in 1926, was a pleas-
ant name for this riding which takes in a large area to the
north and east of Moncton, including the university
town of Sackville on the Isthmus of Chignecto. In 1996,
the riding name was changed to Beausejour-Petitcodiac.
The commission in Quebec has shown sensitivity for
traditional names, with twenty-two of the original sixty-
five names of 1867 still in use. Among the more pleasing
to the ear are Chambly, Charlevoix, Portneuf, Charles-
bourg, Shefford, and Lotbiniere.
The commission tried in 1988 to restore the boundary
of Quebec-Est to include the heart of the old city, with
Quebec-Quest to the west of it. But opposition per-
suaded the commission to maintain Langelier, in use
only since 1966, in the downtown area, and to continue
the use of Quebec-Est to the west of the city centre. In
1990, Langelier became Quebec (French) and Quebec
(English). For the two, Quebec-Limoilou and L'Anci-
enne-Lorette-Vanier would have been suitable alterna-
tives. Lachine-Pointe-Claire might be preferable to Lac-
Saint-Louis. Sainte-Foy-Sillery would be more explicit
than Louis-Hebert. As Montreal-Nord is the only munic-
ipality comprising Bourassa, the municipal name might
be a better choice.
Ontario has two unwieldy riding names. Hastings-
Frontenac-Lennox and Addington, formed from parts of
< Naming Canada
tee three counties, is quite a mouthful. For it, Napa-
i-Bancroft might be a suitable alternative. For the
^ainly Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey, an innovative
cice might be Ontario Highlands, the word highlands
hg widely used to describe this highest part of south-
«Ontario.
imcoe North could well be named Huronia, which
1 strong historical associations with the Midland and
Clia areas, and is used as a regional name in weather
iDrts. Quinte would be an apt substitute for Prince
frard-Hastings. The area of the new riding of Ottawa
Sth would be understood better if the name Ottawa-
A Vista were used, since the neighbourhood tradition-
a known as Ottawa South is actually in the riding of
Gwa Centre.
randon-Souris and Dauphin-Swan River are two of
rfavourite riding names in Manitoba. Unfortunately,
fi of the province's electoral districts have directional
rues, with two of them, Winnipeg North Centre and
Vnipeg South Centre, being unwieldy and unimagina-
ti Four of these names date back to 1924, but the
cce of Assiniboine, Fort Garry, or Kildonan for these
rngs would better reflect the rich history of the Red
Rr Valley.
le fourteen electoral districts of Saskatchewan were
opletely reorganized in 1988, with only three names of
tbrevious redistribution being kept. In 1996, only four
oiose names continued unchanged. The commission-
eavoided directional words, choosing instead such
e:llent names as Regina-Qu'Appelle, Cypress Hills-
Gslands, Yorkton-Melville, and Saskatoon-Hum-
b«.t. The commissioners gave no reason in their report
fcelecting Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing. It was changed
taskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar in 1996.
lere are some colourful names in Alberta outside the
Looking at Canada's Places 43
two main cities. Crowfoot, from the name of the legend-
ary Blackfoot chief, and Wild Rose, from the provincial
flower, are imaginative, although neither is especially
identified with its respective area. Wild Rose, in the rural
area north of Calgary, was first named Kneehill in 1988
by the Alberta commission, but when it was pointed out
that this is the name of a district municipality mostly in
the adjacent riding of Crowfoot, the commissioners
chose Wild Rose instead.
Eleven of Alberta's twenty-six electoral divisions have
directional components in their names. The commission
claimed that geographical directions are more easily rec-
ognized by the public, but Calgary-Glenmore (from
Glenmore Reservoir and Glenmore Trail) might be just as
effective as Calgary Southwest, and Calgary-Blackfoot
(from Blackfoot Trail) as well understood as Calgary
Southeast. It is pleasing that Edmonton-Strathcona was
kept. Perhaps better alternatives could be found for
Edmonton East, Edmonton Southeast, and Edmonton
Southwest.
British Columbia has some of the most evocative
riding names, such as Vancouver-Quadra, Nanaimo-
Cowichan, Cariboo-Chilcotin, and Esquimalt-Juan de
Fuca. In 1996 Okanagan Centre was renamed Kelowna,
and Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt became Okana-
gan-Coquihalla. Eraser Valley East became simply Eraser
Valley, while Eraser Valley West was renamed Langley-
Abbotsford.
In 1988, one riding name in Quebec was given both
English and French forms: Mount Royal and Mont-
Royal, which are statutory forms of the city's name. In
1990, four more Quebec ridings were assigned bilingual
names. Otherwise, forms like Temiscamingue, Trois-
Rivieres, and Bonaventure-Gaspe-Iles-de-la-Madeleine-
Pabok are respected in English. Elsewhere almost all the
44 Naming Canada
official French names of ridings with directional words
are translated, such as Edmonton-Sud-Ouest, York-Sud-
Weston, Surrey-Est. Some names are awkward hybrids,
such as Quest Nova, St. John's-Ouest, and Eraser Valley-
Ouest. Adding accents to some names (e.g., Nanaimo,
Vegreville, Malpeque) goes against the official forms of
these names. Saanich-Gulf Islands had been translated
to Saanich-Les Iles-du-Golfe in 1988, but in 1996 its
English form was retained as its French title. Mysteri-
ously, names with river (e.g., Peace River and Rouge
River) have been saved from translation.
Twillingate may be gone from the name of a federal
riding, but we still have such distinctively Canadian
names as Skeena, Medicine Hat, Nunavut, Nickel Belt,
Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, and Bonavista-Trinity-Con-
ception.
'Hogtown' and Other Monikers across Canada
Nicknames of places are common across the land. Some
are boastful, others are honorific, and a few are down-
right nasty.
• Promotional slogans abound, like 'Ambitious City' for
Hamilton; the 'Honeymoon Capital of the World' for
Niagara Falls; 'Hub of the Maritimes' for Moncton;
'Gateway to the North' for each of Edmonton, Prince
Albert, and North Bay, Ont.
• Affectionate labels often adorn places, such as 'City of
Bridges' for Saskatoon, 'Celestial City' for Fredericton,
'Royal City' for both New Westminster and Guelph,
'Cradle of Confederation' for Charlottetown, 'Loyalist
City' for Saint John, N.B., 'Queen City' for both Regina
and Toronto, and 'Forest City' for London, Ont.
Looking at Canada's Places 45
• Glorified comparisons are often made with foreign
places, such as referring to Montreal as the 'Paris of
Canada/ Winnipeg as the 'Chicago of the Canadian
West/ Ottawa as the 'Washington of the North/
Hamilton and Sydney, N.S., as the 'Pittsburgh of Can-
ada/ Biggar, Sask., as the 'Little Apple' (the town has
been noted on signs since the 1940s with 'New York is
big, but this is Biggar/ leading to another comparison
with America's 'Big Apple'), and Toronto as both the
'Belfast of America' and the 'Athens of the Dominion/
• Some names are clipped to a single syllable, examples
being 'The Hat' for Medicine Hat, 'The Peg' for Win-
nipeg, and The Soo' for Sault Ste. Marie.
• Significant characteristics of a place can result in
names like 'Steeltown' for Hamilton, 'Limestone City'
for Kingston, 'Flowertown' for Brampton, and 'Motor
City' for both Oshawa and Windsor.
• Previous names for places are sometimes used to iden-
tify either an admirable history or a backward charac-
teristic, such as 'Pile o' Bones' for Regina, 'Gastown'
for Vancouver, 'Bytown' for Ottawa, and 'Muddy
York' and 'Little York' for Toronto.
• Some places are often referred by their acrostic (the
first letter of each word or fused words), examples
being 'P.A/ for Prince Albert, 'P.G/ for Prince George,
'Y.K/ for Yellowknife, and T.O/ for Toronto (which
may be an acrostic for Toronto, Ontario, or a false
acrostic from the two initial letters of the name).
• A province or part of a province can have a nickname,
such as southwestern British Columbia being called
'Lotus Land/ and the Island of Newfoundland having
become well known as The Rock/ Prince Edward
Island is known as 'Garden of the Gulf/ 'Million Acre
Farm/ and 'Spud Island/
• Derisive titles are sometimes attached to places by out-
46 Naming Canada
siders, examples being 'Cowtown' for Calgary, Tat
City' for Ottawa, and 'Winterpeg' for Winnipeg.
No place in Canada has as many sobriquets as To-
ronto. As well as those noted above, the city has often
been called the 'City of Churches' and Toronto the
Good/ each of which was not necessarily complimen-
tary. Envy of places south of the border has spawned
'Broadway North' and 'Hollywood North/ In 1975 Wash-
ington Post correspondent Anthony Astrachan called it
'City that Works' in an article in Harper's. Recently it has
been referred to as the 'Big Smoke/ which may have
originated in an Australian Aboriginal comment about
the big cities Down Under, and was picked up by
Maclean's writer Allan Fotheringham, who may have
thought the phrase appropriate for a place with 'big rep-
utation, little to show for it/ Toronto is fortunate in that
references, especially the negative ones, to the govern-
ment and legislature of the province of Ontario are usu-
ally made to 'Queen's Park/ and not the designated
provincial capital. Sometimes Toronto has been dubbed
the 'Centre of the Universe/
At the end of the nineteenth century, the city of Cincin-
nati had acquired the nickname 'Porkopolis' because it
was a leading hog-slaughtering city in the United States.
Its equivalent in Canada was Toronto, where the British
Empire's finest bacon and pork earned the city the sobri-
quet 'Hogtown/ Or so the story goes, even though there
appears to be scant evidence that the nickname was ever
used to describe Toronto before the 1930s. The earliest
citation that I have found is on a card dated 17 May 1943
in the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library: 'Why is
Toronto called Hogtown? Mr. T.A. Reed (1871-1958),
authority on Toronto, says that in his opinion the name
had no definite origin, but was probably one applied in
Looking at Canada's Places 47
contempt as to a rich, selfish community which
"hogged" things and the name stuck/ A Dictionary of
Canadianisms on Historical Principles (1967) provides a
1959 reference from Vancouver's monthly Press as its ear-
liest citation for 'Hogtown.'
Without providing any citations, some have suggested
that the moniker may be traced back to 1849 when the
Toronto city council passed a bylaw prohibiting hogs
from running at large within the municipal limits. Others
have suggested that 'Hogtown' evolved in the late nine-
teenth century when Joseph (later Sir Joseph) Flavelle
made the William Davies Company a leading pork
packer. University of Toronto historian Michael Bliss
wrote a comprehensive biography of Flavelle titled A
Canadian Millionaire (Toronto: Macmillan, 1978), and in it
entitled a whole chapter 'Hogtown/ concluding that in
the early years of the twentieth century 'people were
starting to call Toronto "Hogtown."' Unfortunately,
Bliss's otherwise excellent scholarly biography provides
nary any solid evidence that the moniker was ever used
then. Professor J.M.S. Careless, writing in 1984, men-
tioned how the Davies's 'bacon empire may well have
inspired Toronto's later nickname "Hogtown."' Geogra-
pher Michael Doucet of Ryerson Polytechnic University
has extensively studied the nicknames given to Toronto,
and has concluded that 'Hogtown' emerged when Tor-
onto became a leading meat-packing centre along its
waterfront, later in the city's west end, and then was
reinforced by the media after about 1945 in other Cana-
dian cities, where the word 'Hogtown' has been used to
identify Canada's greediest and snootiest urban centre.
In 1995 the Toronto Star's 'Words' columnist Lew Gloin
devoted four columns to the origin of 'Hogtown.' He
wondered if the nickname had come about because hogs
were observed rooting near muddy Yonge Street's water-
48 Naming Canada
front in the early 1800s. He referred to the recollection of
Dick Griffin of Norland (north of Lindsay) that 'Hog-
gtown' (Griffin's spelling) came about because a man
named Hogg farmed at Hogg's Hollow just beyond
the northern limits of the city, but again without any
written evidence. Gloin concluded that majority opinion
favoured meat-packing as the ultimate source of 'Hog-
town.'
Some writers believe that 'Hogtown' has been fading
from use over the past forty years. That was Pierre Ber-
ton's conclusion in The New City (1961), Doug Gloin's in
the Toronto Star in June 1995, and Robert Sheppard's in
the Globe and Mail in April 1997. In observing the mercu-
rial change taking place in Toronto, Berton said that it
was 'possible to look back on Hogtown with warmth
and affection.' Gloin claimed that 'Toronto's old nick-
name, Hogtown, has all but disappeared, surfacing only
occasionally in headlines on the sports pages of local
papers.' Sheppard wrote: 'Welcome to the new city that
used to be called Hogtown and that is now so much
more like a pig in a poke.' It may be true that the nick-
name has declined in use within the present city, but it
still gets mentioned often in the press across Canada to
refer to the perceived selfishness and smugness of the
city on the north shore of Lake Ontario.
I get the sense that Canada's only truly cosmopolitan
city, the only one that can comfortably wrap itself in its
own adulation as being widely respected by other world
cities of a similar size, and does not in any way resent
being called 'Hogtown' - it is a fact of its history. As
Bruce West wrote in 1967, Torontonians take a peculiar
pride in the way people talk about them.
Scrutinizing Political Issues and
Language Problems
Of Hatters and Capers, Townies and Trifluviens,
and Other Monikers People Call Themselves
Haligonian, Montrealer, Torontonian, Winnipegger, Cal-
garian, Vancouverite. These are abbreviated ways of
referring to the residents of places, but there does not
appear to be a distinct term in English to describe such
words. Some dictionaries offer gentilitial and ethnonym;
they are rarely used. Some writers have used ethnic and
dominym, but these are not very helpful in explaining the
concept of people living in particular locations. I have
suggested patrial, without success, as well as nopitacs
(names of people in towns and cities), but these have not
been received with much enthusiasm either.
Francophones use the word gentile to describe such
words as Parisien, Montrealais, and Gaspesien. The
Commission de toponymie du Quebec has ruled on the
correct gentiles for most municipalities in the province;
these terms are listed in their masculine and feminine
forms in the government's municipal directory, Repertoire
des municipalites du Quebec.
Since the English language does not appear to have a
specific word to describe the residents of a geographi-
50 Naming Canada
cally defined place, I will use the word gentile (pro-
nounced 'JAWN-tee-LAY'). All the provinces and the
Yukon have distinctive gentiles in English. Some, such as
Newfoundlander and Albertan, possess a very strong
sense of historical and cultural identity. The Northwest
Territories does not lend itself to a gentile, and Nunavut
is still too young to have acquired one, although
Nunavutan may be an obvious choice.
The gentile for a person from the province of Quebec -
Quebecois - is spelled both Quebecer and Quebecker in
English. The term Quebecois in English usually implies a
Quebecer whose language and culture are distinctively
French Canadian.
In Quebec, a few gentiles have been endorsed in
English, such as Shawvillite, but most follow the rules of
the French language; for example, Ayer's-Cliffois. Several
are derived from Latin roots, such as Trifluvien (Trois-
Rivieres) and Fideen (Sainte-Foy). A few reflect the
place's history, with Havre-Saint-Pierre having Cayen
from its Acadian roots, and Sainte-Elisabeth having Bay-
ollais, from the full name of St. Elizabeth of Bayolle.
There are six different ways to form a gentile in
English; the final syllable of the source name usually pro-
vides a clue as to whether it should take n, ian, onian, He,
er, or ese, the last apparent in Canada. Names ending in a
and ia add an n: thus we have Oshawan, Mississaugan,
Kelownan, and Victorian. An exception is a resident of
Kenora, dubbed a Kenoraite by Mark Orkin in Speaking
Canadian English, published in 1970, and confirmed in
1989 by the editor of the Daily Miner and News.
The onian suffix is almost always used by places end-
ing in ton, resulting in Monctonian, Frederictonian, Edm-
ontonian, and Hamiltonian. A number of other places,
with no apparent relationship in their final syllable, also
have the onian ending, such as Haligonian (Halifax),
Political Issues and Language Problems 51
Amherstonian, Galtonian, Woodstonian, Saskatonian,
and Pictonian, the last for both Pictou, N.S., and Picton,
Ont. While Orkin gives Bellevonian for Belleville, the
editor of the city's newspaper, The Intelligencer, stated in
1989 that he prefers the term Bellevillian.
In the United States, names ending in town usually
form their gentile by using tonian, but the preference in
Canada may be to add er, as in Charlottetowner.
Names ending in consonants and silent vowels form
their gentile in one of three ways: by adding ian, ite, or er.
Usually names with ville drop the e and add ian, but
sometimes such names also end in ite, especially if resi-
dents suspect that an outsider may invert the a and the i
and refer to someone from Brockville as a 'Brockvillain/
At one time, names with ian were likely more numer-
ous in Canada than those with ite, but gentiles with the
latter seem to be growing in popularity. Vancouver resi-
dents were once known as Vancouverians, but Vancou-
verite is now universally used. Among Canadian gentiles
with the ian ending are Stratfordian, Fort Erian, Bathurst-
ian, Yarmouthian, Sudburian, Kamloopsian, and Calgar-
ian. People in Peterborough are called Peterburians. The
residents of the capital of Newfoundland have been
referred to as St. Johnsians, but they are really better
known as 'townies,' as opposed to 'baymen,' who live in
outport communities.
Names with ite include Sydneyite, Granbyite, Corn-
wallite, Guelphite, St. Catharinite, Brandonite, Thompso-
nite, and Banff ite, but these forms are rarely used. Orkin
adds Barrie-ite, Sooite, and Nanaimoite, but they are not
common.
Among names with the suffix er are: Saint Johner,
Lunenburger, Summersider, Londoner, Winnipegger, Flin
Floner, Medicine Hatter (often simply Hatter), and
Yellowknifer.
52 Naming Canada
Some places may not have a gentile at all, especially
those with two or more words, like Niagara Falls, North
Bay, and Thunder Bay, although some people have told
me that Niagara Fallsian, North Bayite, and Thunder
Bayite have been used by the media. Residents of Thun-
der Bay may be more familiar with Lakeheader.
Sometimes the residents of several adjacent communi-
ties use a common gentile. The people living on the island
of Montreal between Dorval and Sainte-Anne-de-
Bellevue are collectively called West Islanders. Residents
from Port Hawkesbury to Glace Bay, and beyond to
Ingonish and Inverness, Nova Scotia, and all the villages
and crossroad communities in the region, are proud to be
called Cape Bretoners or Capers. Labradorian is a badge
of honour for the long-time residents of Newfoundland
living on the mainland side of the Strait of Belle Isle. The
people of Prince Edward Island are known simply as
Islanders, sometimes as Spud Islanders. A Gulf Islander
is someone who has settled into the bucolic life on one of
the islands in the Strait of Georgia between mainland
British Columbia and Vancouver Island.
A gentile that does not seem to fit any pattern is Moose
Javian, although it may be related to Shavian, used in
referring to the literature and ideas of George Bernard
Shaw. I have also seen the form Moosichapishanisippian,
given in jest by a former Reginan.
Many people are not above composing humorous
gentiles for various places, among them being Niagara
Felons, Fort Brings, Smithereens, and Terracites (for
Smithers and Terrace, towns in northwestern British
Columbia), and Bragg Crickets (for Bragg Creek, a com-
munity near Calgary).
There appears to be a large number of places, with
populations exceeding 10,000, that do not possess a gen-
tile in English. They include Corner Brook, Nfld.; Truro,
Political Issues and Language Problems 53
N.S.; North Battleford, Sask.; Grande Prairie, Alta.;
Prince Rupert, B.C.; and Whitehorse in the Yukon.
Pronouncing Names as the Locals Do
Queries are often received by names offices as to the cor-
rect pronunciation of certain place names. Other than
suggesting the range of suitable pronunciation, names
authorities invariably avoid making pronouncements on
pronunciation.
Some names permit a range of pronunciation. While
there may be a general preference for three pronounced
syllables for Toronto ('t-RAHN-to'), to call it TRAWN-
to' is not considered entirely wrong. Fredericton is called
TRE-drick-tun' and 'FRE-dik-tun/ and Calgary is pro-
nounced both as 'KAL-ga-ree' and as 'KAL-gree/ with
the first in each instance appearing to be more correct
and the latter somewhat sloppy diction.
Sometimes, the same name is pronounced differently
in separate parts of Canada. Dalhousie University in
Halifax and Dalhousie, N.B., are usually pronounced
'dal-HOW-zee/ but the street in Ottawa and the town-
ship in Lanark County, Ont, are heard as 'dal-HOO-zee/
and Port Dalhousie in St. Catharines comes out as 'port-
da-LOO-zee/
In Prince Edward Island it is 'SOO-ree' for the town of
Souris, but the same name in Manitoba is 'SOO-ris/ In
Nova Scotia, Greenwich is pronounced 'GREE-nich/ in
New Brunswick it is 'GREEN-wich/ and in Prince
Edward Island, 'GREN-ich/ The various Elgins in Can-
ada are usually pronounced with a hard 'g/ but Elgin-
burg near Kingston, possibly influenced by American
pronunciation, is usually called 'el-JIN-berg/ St. John's,
Nfld., is generally pronounced 'sint-JAHNZ/ but Saint
54 Naming Canada
John, N.B., comes out with equal emphasis on both sylla-
bles: 'SAYNT-JAWN.'
Some names have had distinctly separate develop-
ments in terms of spelling and pronunciation, with the
spelling form appearing to be unlike the pronounced
form. Such a name is Magaguadavic River in New Brun-
swick, which was fixed in its spelling at the end of the
eighteenth century, but has long been pronounced as 'ma-
ga-DAY-vee/ The pronunciation of the nearby Digde-
guash River ('DIG-gi-dee-WASH') is reflected in the spell-
ing of another New Brunswick name: Diggity Stream.
There is the classic case of Bay d'Espoir in Newfound-
land, which has long been ironically known as 'BAY-dis-
PAYR/ Such a pronunciation, however, reflects seven-
teenth-century French speech. Etobicoke, the name of the
former city on the west side of Toronto, but now part of
Toronto, may come out of a stranger's lips as 'ee-TO-bee-
KOKE/ but locally the form 'e-TO-bee-KO' is preferred.
The name of the former rural city of Nanticoke (now part
of the town of Haldimand), on Lake Erie near Simcoe, is
pronounced 'NAN-te-KOKE.' Stouffville, near Toronto,
is called 'STO-vul/ not 'STOOF-vil.' Gleichen in Alberta
is pronounced 'GLEE-shun,' although the CPR financier
for whom it was named, Count Albert Gleichen, pro-
nounced his name 'GLAYK-kun.'
There are some names whose pronunciations seem to
be designed to separate the local residents from outsid-
ers. An example is Newfoundland, which is locally pro-
nounced 'NYOO-fin-LAND/ not 'noo-FOWND-land.'
A pronunciation that certainly distinguishes a west-
erner from an easterner is the mouthing of Sas-
katchewan. A native barely enounces the first, third, and
fourth syllables, saying 'sis-SKATCH-eh-win,' while an
easterner is inclined to stretch it out to 'sas-SKA-choo-
wahn.'
Political Issues and Language Problems 55
Another interesting example is North Gower, a com-
munity 16 kilometres south of Ottawa's city centre.
Residents rhyme it with 'door/ not 'power.' Antigonish
in Nova Scotia is 'an-ti-ga-NISH' not 'an-TIG-a-nish/
Maugerville east of Fredericton is called 'MAY-jer-vil' not
'MAW-ger-vil.' One can never be too certain about the let-
ter 'g' in names. Margaree in Nova Scotia has a hard 'g'
but Langenburg in Saskatchewan has a soft 'g' in the mid-
dle and a hard 'g' at the end.
Many names of French origin, or Native names that
have come into English via French, have acquired some
unusual pronunciations. Examples are Rencontre, Nfld.
('ROWN-kown-ter'); Pouce Coupe, B.C. ('poos-KOO-
pee'/'poos-KOO-pay'); Quesnel, B.C. ('kwe-NEL'); Des
Joachims, Que. ('de-SWI-shah'); Tobique River, N.B.
(TOH-bihk'); Bienfait, Sask. ('BEEN-FAYT'); Quirpon,
Nfld. ('KAR-poon'); Grand Bruit, Nfld. ('gran-BRIT');
Punnichy, Sask. (poo-nih-SHY); Hobbema, Alta. (hoh-
BEE-mah); Skidegate, B.C. (skih-dee-GET); Hecate Strait,
B.C. (HEK-ut); Tete Jaune Cache, B.C. (tee-ZHAWN-
kash); Cramahe Township, Ont. (KRAH-mee); and
L'Ardoise, N.S. ('LORD-WAYZ').
In this sampling there are no doubt some perceived
errors in the suggested pronunciations. As well, some
unusual names have been omitted because of uncertainty
about local preferences. In this group are Trepassey and
Aquaforte, Nfld.; Gabarus and Necum Teuch, N.S.; Apo-
haqui, N.B.; Breadalbane, P.E.I.; Nicabong and Kazabazua,
Que.; Caesarea, Wanapitei, and Schreiber, Ont.; Melita,
Man.; Wauchope, Sask.; Provost, Alta.; Ucluelet and Tsaw-
wassen, B.C.; Rancheria, Y.T.; and Aklavik, N.W.T.
As with personal names, we all like to pronounce
places as they are spoken by the local population. The
stranger is usually forgiven, but announcers on radio and
television are expected to know the local preferences.
56 Naming Canada
Sorting Out the Sound-Alikes and Look-Alikes
Do you, like many of us, sometimes get confused by the
look-alike, sound-alike cities of St. John's and Saint John?
Do you know which one is the capital of Newfoundland?
Do you wish they had more distinctive names so you
would have no doubt which is which?
St. John's, the chief city and capital of the province of
Newfoundland, traditionally takes its name from the dis-
covery of its harbour by John Cabot on the feast of St.
John the Baptist, 24 June 1497. The first reference to the
name of the harbour, R de Sam joham, is on a map pro-
duced by Pedro and Jorge Reinel in 1519. The earliest
mention of the city's name in its present form is in a let-
ter written in 1527 by John Rut, who led an English expe-
dition to North America that year. With a name having
460 years of continuous use, St. John's could hardly be
expected to surrender it for another.
The Saint John River in New Brunswick was named
Riviere saincte-Jean by Sieur de Monts and Samuel de
Champlain on 24 June 1604. The city that developed at
the river's mouth in one of Canada's most scenic settings
- albeit often fogbound - was known as Menagoueche
(Tittle peninsula') by the Mi'kmaq and the Maliseet, and
also as Ouigoudi (Village') by the Maliseet. On the
arrival of the Loyalists in 1783, two names came into use:
on the east side of the river's mouth, Parr Town (for John
Parr, governor of Nova Scotia) and, on the west side,
Carleton (for Sir Guy Carleton, then commander-in-chief
of British forces in North America, not for his brother,
Thomas Carleton, first lieutenant-governor of New
Brunswick). Two years later, Ward Chipman, a distin-
guished lawyer and politician, proposed the name Saint
John for the first incorporated city in what is now Can-
ada, and for the county extending along the Bay of
Fundy shore.
Political Issues and Language Problems 57
In English, St. John's and Saint John receive some dis-
tinction in their spellings, the Newfoundland city having
an apostrophe s, and the New Brunswick city always
having its saint spelled in full. There is also a small dis-
tinction in their pronunciation: 'sint-JAHNZ' for the one;
and, with equal emphasis on the two syllables, 'SAYNT
JAWN' for the other. The unofficial French form, Saint-
Jean, is often used for both, but it is not authorized for
federal maps and documents.
Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, a city 40 kilometres southeast
of Montreal, is the site of the former well-known College
militaire de Saint-Jean. Once known in English as St.
Johns, this form was officially dropped in 1962.
No doubt many people groaned in 1965 when Premier
Joseph Smallwood of Newfoundland announced that
Hamilton River in Labrador would be renamed
Churchill River for Sir Winston Churchill, ignoring the
fact that Canada already had another major river by the
same name. The latter, which drains much of northern
Saskatchewan and Manitoba, had been named in the late
1600s for John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, a gover-
nor of the Hudson's Bay Company. An effort to have the
name Hamilton River restored, while maintaining the
widely known Churchill Falls, did not gain support.
About 1985,1 read a report that a person from Toronto
was going to Sackville, N.S., to give a lecture. My first
reaction was that this was an error for the home of the
well-known liberal arts institution, Mount Allison Uni-
versity, in Sackville, N.B. However, the unincorporated,
loosely connected community from Lower Sackville
through Middle Sackville to Upper Sackville, some 20
kilometres north of the centre of Halifax, was actually
meant. The unofficial name, Sackville, has been gaining
acceptance for this whole complex of some 25,000 peo-
ple. While Nova Scotians may have no difficulty distin-
guishing their place from the little town of 5,500 people
58 Naming Canada
just over the border in the neighbouring province, the
same name for two towns in the Maritimes will surely be
confusing for other Canadians.
One of the most duplicated names in Canada is Wind-
sor. As well as the city in southwestern Ontario, there are
incorporated towns of Windsor in Quebec and Nova
Scotia, and an unincorporated community in New Brun-
swick. In Newfoundland, the town of Grand Falls-Wind-
sor has a population of 14,700.
In 1973, the Ontario town of Durham in Grey County
fought unsuccessfully to prevent the use of the same
name for the new Regional Municipality of Durham,
which embraces the county of Durham and parts of the
counties of Ontario and Northumberland east of Tor-
onto. Ontario has several other towns and villages whose
names are duplicated by counties elsewhere in the prov-
ince: Dundas, Simcoe, Perth, Prescott, Hastings, and
Wellington.
The discrepancy of having the original community of
Pickering, Ont., within the municipal boundaries of the
town of Ajax and not those of the town of Pickering was
partly resolved in 1987 by having it renamed Pickering
Village. In 1975, the old community of Caledon, 50 kilo-
metres northwest of Toronto, was renamed Caledon Vil-
lage to distinguish it from the town of Caledon.
There are some confusing duplications in Western
Canada too, starting with the largest city on the west
coast, Vancouver. In 1886, it was incorporated as a city,
duplicating not only the name of the biggest island on
the coast, but also the name of a city in the state of Wash-
ington.
Other confusing community names in the west in-
clude: Hudson Bay in Saskatchewan; Dawson Creek in
British Columbia and Dawson City in the Yukon; Sidney
in British Columbia, often spelled the same as Sydney,
Political Issues and Language Problems 59
N.S.; Cochrane in both Alberta and Ontario; and Fort
Saskatchewan, an Alberta town 25 kilometres northeast
of Edmonton.
Although duplicated names will always be with us
(Quebec - city and province; Kenora, Ont., and Canora,
Sask.; Chatham and Dorchester in both Ontario and New
Brunswick), there are really not too many confusing
look-alikes in Canada. Fortunately, for populated places
with similar names, the correct postal code can usually
prevent mail from going to the wrong look-alike.
Standard Spelling Eliminates Confusion ... Usually
Almost every place name in Canada has a single cor-
rect form, but some, like St. Catharines and Edmund-
ston, are commonly misspelled. Some names of features
crossing provincial boundaries (Timiskaming/Temis-
camingue) or international boundaries (Kootenay/
Kootenai) have variant spellings in the different juris-
dictions. And a few names are spelled differently by
postal or rail authorities.
One of the most frequently misspelled place names is
St. Catharines, Ont. When I saw this spelling on a rail-
way station sign in the 1950s, I assumed it was a mistake.
Surely, I thought, there is only one proper way to spell St.
Catherines. This assumption was reinforced by a sign
pointing to St. Catherine's Cathedral.
The confusion about St. Catharines is compounded by
a dispute over the origin of the name. The usually
accepted story is that it refers to the first wife of Robert
Hamilton, Catharine Askins Robertson, who died in
1796. A reference the same year to a church at 'St. Cathe-
rines' led Catharine Welland Merritt to claim in 1926 that
the honour belonged to Catherine Butler, wife of the
60 Naming Canada
leader of Butler's Rangers. In doing so she chose to
ignore an 1875 biography of her own grandfather, Will-
iam Hamilton Merritt, which stated that the community
was formally named in 1809 for the wife of Robert
Hamilton, a prominent public official in the Niagara Pen-
insula in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
Another suggestion made in the 1920s that the name
was given in honour of Catharine Prendergast, who mar-
ried William Hamilton Merritt in 1815, has no substantia-
tion. All that may be said is that both 'Catherine' and
'Catherine' were names commonly given to girls in the
late 1700s, a time when Empress Catherine the Great of
Russia (1729-1796) held court on the world stage.
Another name frequently misspelled is Edmundston,
N.B., named in 1851 for Sir Edmund Walker Head, lieu-
tenant-governor of New Brunswick from 1848 to 1854.
Numerous references - maps, CN express slips, road
signs, and advertising items - refer to 'Edmunston.'
During a test for a professional position with the
Department of Energy, Mines and Resources in 1976,
nine applicants were asked to locate Edmundston on a
map; seven of them wrote 'Edmunston.' The omission of
the 'd' may be partially explained by its phonetic weak-
ness in a series of four consonants.
The proper spelling of Athabasca is difficult to pin
down. Strong cartographic, documentary, and local prac-
tice in the 1800s favoured Athabasca, the form adopted
in 1882 for one of the four new districts of the Northwest
Territories. In 1902, the Geographic Board of Canada
changed the name of the district, lake, and river to Atha-
baska, in keeping with international rules of nomencla-
ture requiring a hard 'c' to be spelled with a 'k/
After Alberta was established as a province in 1905,
usage there favoured Athabasca, especially for the town
120 kilometres north of Edmonton. But when the Geo-
Political Issues and Language Problems 61
graphic Board of Canada was asked by postal officials in
1912 to review its decision, it reaffirmed the 'k' spelling it
had made ten years earlier.
The sinking of H.M.C.S. Athabaskan during the Second
World War, with great loss of life, reinforced the spelling
'Athabaska/ In 1947, however, the newly formed Geo-
graphic Board of Alberta adopted the form Athabasca
and urged the federal board to concur. On receiving the
agreement of Saskatchewan, in which more than half of
Lake Athabasca is located, the Geographic Board of Can-
ada agreed to Athabasca in 1948 for the river, lake, town,
falls, mountain, and glacier, and several other minor fea-
tures in Alberta.
Confusion about the spelling continues today, al-
though prominence in the news of the Athabasca tar
sands has encouraged acceptance of the 'c' form, but it is
somewhat offset by Athabaska Airways, established in
the 1990s to connect northern Saskatchewan places with
major Prairie centres.
On the north side of the Fraser River, 50 kilometres
east of Vancouver, is the community of Whonnock, a
name derived from the Halkomelem word for 'hump-
back salmon/ In 1939, the Geographic Board respelled it
Whonock, after the name of a local First Nations reserve.
Railway and postal officials also opted for the one 'n'
form, even though predominant local use had been
Whonnock for a hundred years. After a concerted cam-
paign in the 1960s, the extra 'n' was restored in 1969.
Also in the Fraser Valley, 40 kilometres farther east, the
city of Chilliwack and the surrounding township of Chil-
liwhack were spelled differently for many years. But
after a poll in 1979, the two were united on 1 January
1980 as the District Municipality of Chilliwack, which
became a city in 1999. The name is from a Salish tribe; its
meaning is uncertain.
62 Naming Canada
In the late 1860s, Governor Frederick Seymour of Brit-
ish Columbia decided that one means of distinguishing
American and British territories was to create different
spellings for names of some prominent rivers. He
decreed that the names Okanagan, Kootenay, and Yahk
should be used in British Columbia to contrast with their
spelling south of the border: Okanogan, Kootenai, and
Yaak. These distinctions remain.
The spelling of 'Temiskaming' has caused much confu-
sion, especially since this is not one of the three official
forms of that name. Temiskaming was formerly part of
the name of the Ontario Northland Railway (Temiskam-
ing and Northern Ontario Railway). This spelling is also
commonly used in the names of businesses in New
Liskeard, Haileybury, and Cobalt.
The territorial district and federal electoral district in
Ontario are spelled Timiskaming. The county and the
federal electoral district in Quebec are Temiscamingue.
The lake's name is officially Timiskaming in Ontario and
Temiscamingue in Quebec. Adding to the confusion, the
Quebec town on the Ottawa River, 60 kilometres north-
east of North Bay, is Temiscaming. So much for ensuring
standard spelling for names with the same origin!
In 1982, the New Brunswick government legislated a
change in the spelling of the town of Shippegan to Ship-
pagan, but made no correction to several other names
with Shippegan: the territorial parish, bay, park, beach,
channel, and harbour. Canada Post spelled the name
Shippegan from 1850 to 1852, 1862 to 1900, and 1955 to
1982, when it adopted Shippagan. The post office was
Shippigan from 1852 to 1862 and 1900 to 1955, a common
form of the name for associated features in the 1800s, and
the form still used by Canadian National. Confusing,
isn't it?
Political Issues and Language Problems 63
Who's to Blame for Mistake Names?
Mistakes happen - and are sometimes corrected. It
would have been the Meach Lake Accord if Quebec's
Commission de toponymie had not repaired a century-
old error in 1982. The lake got its name from pioneer set-
tler Asa Meech, but it was misspelled Meach on an 1890
map and it took years (and appeals from Meech's
descendants) to get it changed.
There are countless such tales of Canadian place
names altered through spelling mistakes, bad handwrit-
ing, faulty translation, or confusion between sound-alike
words. Often these alterations become commonly used
and then prove very difficult to correct. Indeed, until
about 1970, names authorities were reluctant to correct
past errors at all, citing long usage in public documents,
land descriptions, and maps. In recent years, however,
serious requests to correct the spellings of names have
been greeted with more sympathy, as in the case of
Meech Lake (see pp. 225-8).
In 1765, Monckton Township was established at The
Bend on the Petitcodiac River in New Brunswick, and
named for British general Robert Monckton (1726-1782),
who was lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia from 1755
to 1759, and James Wolfe's second-in-command at the
capture of Quebec in 1759. The following year, when
New Brunswick's townships were redesignated par-
ishes, the 'k' was accidentally dropped. As a village grew
at the 'Hub of the Maritimes/ it became known as Monc-
ton, which was incorporated as a town in 1855, and a city
in 1890. In March 1930, the city council passed a motion
to rename the city Monckton, but fierce opposition
ensued, and the motion was quickly rescinded in April.
During the early 1600s, a small river in Nova Scotia's
64 Naming Canada
Annapolis Valley was named for Louis Hebert, the
apothecary who accompanied Pierre du Gua de Monts to
Port Royal, and Samuel de Champlain to Quebec. When
the Loyalists arrived in the late 1700s, they anglicized the
name to Bear River. And that, to this day, is the name of
the river, and a village of 900, nestled in a picturesque
and surprisingly rugged setting, 12 kilometres inland
from Digby.
Bury Head, near Alberton, P.E.I., was Barry Head on a
1770 plan and Berry Head on charts and maps from 1845
to 1966, when it was respelled to recall the site of an early
graveyard. Some long-entrenched mistakes, on the other
hand, are unlikely ever to be changed. Carleton Place,
Ont., was named in 1830 for Carlton Place, a street in Glas-
gow, with its erroneous spelling probably influenced by
nearby Carleton County. Aquaforte, Nfld., was initially
Aguafuerte, but mapmaker Robert Robinson changed the
Portuguese original on a 1669 map and the change stuck.
And Geary, N.B. (pronounced 'GA-ree'), was settled
about 1810 by Loyalists who called their settlement New
Niagara for the Ontario peninsula where they had lived
for a few years. Adopting the last two syllables of the con-
temporary pronunciation, 'NY-a-GA-ree/ they shortened
the name to New Gary, and then to Geary.
Some incorrect names have been accepted without
complaint. Around the turn of the century Joseph Chow-
aniec moved from Ledoux, Minn., and settled north of
Weyburn, Sask. When his neighbours accepted his pro-
posal in 1905 to name their new post office Ledoux,
Chowaniec submitted it to the Post Office Department in
Ottawa. A clerk misread his writing, however, and put
Cedoux on the date stamp. It is Cedoux, Sask., to this day.
Cedoux is just one of many place names misspelled by
government clerks and surveyors. On the Canadian
National line, 30 kilometres northeast of Calgary, is the
Political Issues and Language Problems 65
community of Kathyrn, named after Kathryn McKay,
whose father donated the town site in 1911. The letters r
and y were transposed on a sign in 1913, and the Post
Office Department continued the erroneous - but by
then adopted - form in 1919. As if to complete a circle,
two Alberta place-names books published in the 1970s
and the 1980 Canada Gazetteer Atlas all missed the long-
established spelling of the community, referring to Kath-
ryn rather than Kathyrn.
Philip and Helen Akrigg, authors of British Columbia
Place Names (1986), have their summer home at Celista,
B.C., on Shuswap Lake, northeast of Kamloops. In their
book, they note that in 1908 postal authorities suggested
Celesta, the name of a creek 35 kilometres to the north-
east near the head of Seymour Arm, as the name for a
post office. But an error in handwriting resulted in
Celista. It became the name of the community, and was
later adopted for the names of the creek and nearby
Celista Mountain.
One of the main tributaries of the Ottawa River is the
Madawaska River, which rises in Algonquin Park and
joins the Ottawa River at Arnprior. Its name derives from
the Matouoiiescarini, a tribe encountered by Champlain
in 1613, and it was called the Mataouachita on a 1703
map by Guillaume Delisle, and Mataouaschie in Sir
David W. Smith's Topographical Description of Upper Can-
ada in 1799. If the river's name had evolved solely from
its rendering in early cartographic and documentary
sources, its spelling might have become more like Mata-
washita. But its present spelling may have been influ-
enced by New Brunswick's unrelated Madawaska River,
which means 'land of the porcupine' in Maliseet. As
early as 1725, engineer Gaspard Chaussegros de Lery
spelled the Ontario river Matouasca, almost the exact
spelling, Madouasca, used for the New Brunswick river
66 Naming Canada
on Delisle's 1703 map. In Alexander Sherriff's 1837
report of the lands between the Ottawa River and Geor-
gian Bay, map maker William Henderson rendered the
name Madaouaska. The present spelling was settled in
surveyors' reports in the 1840s and on Thomas Devine's
Government Map of Canada in 1861.
Two places in Ontario's Madawaska Valley have curi-
ous 'mistake' names. Camel Chute, at the head of Cen-
tennial Lake, 70 kilometres upriver from Arnprior, is
called after a local sawmill owner named Campbell
(a name sometimes pronounced 'KAMT in Eastern
Ontario). When surveyor Duncan McDonell visited in
1846 he wrote Campbells Chute in his notes. When
another surveyor, John Haslett, visited the next year, he
first wrote Camels Chute in his diary but corrected it the
following day to Campbells Chute. In 1890, the post
office at the site was named Dubreuil, but difficulty with
its spelling and pronunciation led local settlers in 1903 to
ask for a name change - to Camel Chute. The MP for
Renfrew South, Aaron A. Wright, mildly objected to the
misspelling, but thought his protest of no consequence,
'since Camel Chute is shorter, it might be better to spell it
that way, particularly since they have petitioned for it.'
Fifty-five kilometres farther up the Madawaska River
from Camel Chute, on Kamaniskeg Lake, is the village of
Barry's Bay. For a century and a half, local residents, his-
torians, and names experts have puzzled over who the
Barry was who left his name on the bay. In my Geographi-
cal Names of Renfrew County (1967), I mentioned the early
name of 'Barry's Camp on the Bay.' And in the second
edition (1989), a number of other claims were offered:
Barry was a foreman for McLachlin Brothers, an Arn-
prior-based lumber company; he was a hunter or trap-
per; there wasn't a Barry at all but a field of blueberries!
But then, in 1992,1 found in the Archives of Ontario the
Political Issues and Language Problems 67
misfiled microfilm of surveyor John Haslett's diary of his
1847 survey east from Kamaniskeg Lake and back again.
Going east, he crossed 'Barry's Bay'; returning west, he
crossed the Madawaska at lumberman William Byers's
hay farm. As there were no settlers in the area before the
late 1850s, I have concluded that Haslett wrote Barry's
Bay when he should have written Byers's Bay, and the
error was continued on maps and in survey records there-
after. It may be sheer coincidence, but even today Barry's
Bay is often pronounced as though it were Byers Bay.
Acronyms ... Such as Kenora, Koocanusa,
and Snafu Creek
Acronyms are words formed from one or more first let-
ters of other words. Many do not reveal that they are not
original words in their own right, such as Fiat, Sabena,
and snafu.
Place-name specialists have been more lenient in their
interpretation of 'acronym,' allowing names com-
pounded from any parts of other words to qualify; for
example, Mantario, a village in Saskatchewan, from
Manitoba and Ontario.
Acronyms as place names are rare in Eastern Canada,
but they have attained full flower in the Prairie prov-
inces. There are at least fifty-six in Alberta, fifty-one in
Saskatchewan, and thirty in Manitoba. Few are known
beyond their own neighbourhood, and many have dis-
appeared altogether, though the names persist in the old
records.
Perhaps the best known of Canada's acronyms is
Kenora, a city of some 10,000 inhabitants in northwest-
ern Ontario.
In the late 1800s, the area on the north side of Lake of
68 Naming Canada
the Woods was known as Rat Portage. In 1880, the postal
designation Keewatin was chosen to replace that of Rat
Portage, and in 1886 another post office on the north
shore of the lake was named Norman for a son of a man-
ager of the M & O Lumber Co. In 1904, a proposal was
made to unite Keewatin, Norman, and the eastern part of
Rat Portage into a single municipality known as Kenora.
The name Kenora was adopted, but Keewatin remained
a separate incorporated town until 1 January 2001, when
it was united with the towns of Kenora and Jaffray
Melick to form the city of Kenora.
As well as Mantario, Sask., Alsask, Sask., is a village
near the Alberta border and northwest of Mantario, and
Altario, Alta., is northwest of Alsask. Mankota, Sask., is a
village, 50 kilometres north of the 49th parallel, whose
first settlers came from Manitoba and North Dakota in
the 1920s.
Another well-known acronym is Arvida, once a town in
its own right, but since 1975 a neighbourhood of Jonquiere
in the Saguenay-Lac St-Jean region of Quebec. Arvida was
established in 1926 by the Aluminum Co. of Canada, and
named for its president, Arthur Vining Davis.
Batawa, 7 kilometres north of Trenton, Ont., is derived
from the Bata Shoe Company, plus an ending common to
many Ontario names, such as Ottawa. Nolalu, 45 kilome-
tres southwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., is named for the
Northern Land and Lumber Company. Noranda, part of
the Quebec city of Rouyn-Noranda, is a contraction of
North Canada.
When the Libby Dam was built in the state of Montana
in 1967, a huge reservoir resulted, backing up the
Kootenay (Montana's Kootenai) River into British Colum-
bia. People and municipal authorities on the Canadian
side favoured Lac Morigeau (after a pioneer). The prefer-
ence of Montana residents, Koocanusa Lake, was deter-
Political Issues and Language Problems 69
mined to be the overwhelming favourite. In 1968, the
United States and Canadian authorities approved Kooca-
nusa, an acronym formed from Kootenay, Canada, and
U.S.A.
Estevan, a city of some 9,000 people in southern
Saskatchewan, derives its name from parts of the names
of George Stephen and William Van Home, the first two
presidents of the CPR. North of Yorkton, Sask., is the
town of Canora, named in 1905 from the first and second
letters of Canadian Northern Railway.
Among Alberta places deriving their names from
other words are: Cadomin (Canadian Dominion Mine),
Marwayne (W.G. Marfleet and Wainfleet, England), and
Westlock (two settlers, Westgate and Lockhart).
Two of Manitoba's better-known acronyms are Trans-
cona (Transcontinental Railway and Strathcona) and
Sherridon (Sherritt and Gordon).
The names Snafu Creek and Tarfu Creek in the Yukon
are derived from acronyms of Second World War vin-
tage. The first means, 'Situation normal, all fouled up';
the second, either 'That's always really fouled up' or
'Things are really fouled up.'
Use of acronyms as place names has been generally
out of favour since the late 1960s. Provincial and territo-
rial names authorities have usually rejected the cute and
casual proposals submitted to them, preferring instead
names having local or historical significance.
Avoid the Apostrophe ... But Not Always
The name Hudson's Bay has a long history, dating from
the ill-fated voyage into this great body of water by Henry
Hudson in 1610, and the establishment of the Governor
and Company of Adventurers of England in 1670.
70 Naming Canada
In 1900, the Geographic Board of Canada published
the following decisions: 'Hudson bay and strait; inland
sea and passage communicating with the Atlantic (not
Hudson's)/ Canadian maps and charts then began using
the name Hudson Bay. Subsequently, the Hudson Bay
Railway was built to Churchill, Man., the Hudson Bay
Mining and Smelting Company was opened in Flin Flon,
Man., and the town of Hudson Bay (pop. 1,900) was
established in Saskatchewan, east of Prince Albert.
The board's decision was in keeping with one of its
basic rules adopted in 1898, which stated that the posses-
sive form of names should be avoided whenever it could
be done without destroying the euphony of a name or
changing its descriptive application. The rule added that,
if the possessive were retained, the apostrophe should be
dropped.
This rule had universal application in the English-
speaking world, having been adopted in the 1890s by
names authorities in Britain and the United States (while
respecting well-established names with the apostrophe),
and later in the twentieth century by Australia and New
Zealand. But in the 1970s, the rule was amended in Can-
ada to permit the apostrophe where it was well estab-
lished and in current use.
There are several names in Canada with the apostro-
phe. Examples are St. John's in Newfoundland, St.
Peter's in Nova Scotia, Campbell's Bay in Quebec, and
Lion's Head in Ontario. These forms are in keeping with
the principle of geographical naming that names estab-
lished in the statutes by other authorities must be
accepted without change.
In the first half of the twentieth century, the Geo-
graphic Board severely restricted the use of the posses-
sive 's,' even when local communities had long used it -
such as Reed's Point, Moore's Hill, and so on.
Political Issues and Language Problems 71
Occasionally, in its zeal to trim the V from names, the
board erroneously modified some personal names end-
ing in 's.' In Lanark County, Ont., the board imposed
Wood Lake, Nichol Lake, and Bower Lake even though
these were derived from the family names Woods,
Nichols, and Bowers. Corrected forms were entered into
the official records in the 1960s.
The practice of omitting the apostrophe from sup-
posed possessive names varies from community to com-
munity. The town of Smiths Falls, Ont., was established
in the statutes in 1882 with the apostrophe, but that spell-
ing was ignored locally. The Ontario Municipal Board
noted the discrepancy in 1968, and required the Ontario
legislature to pass an act recognizing the form Smiths
Falls before allowing the issuing of debentures. The town
of St. Marys, Ont., similarly did not use the apostrophe,
although recorded in the statutes, so it was also changed
to its current form in 1968. Subsequently, the town
authorities persuaded the St. Mary's Cement Company,
whose trucks are seen throughout the province, to omit
the apostrophe from its name.
The Geographic Board did not accept the statutory
name Lion's Head, Ont., in 1913, but substituted Lion-
head. The form Lion's Head, widely used for local ser-
vices and the post office, was restored in 1940. Nearby is
the local community of Colpoy's Bay. The adjacent bay
(on the Georgian Bay side of the Bruce Peninsula) was
named about 1820 for Sir Edward Colpoys, but the local
residents, unaware that the terminal's' is not possessive,
use an apostrophe. The name Barry's Bay, Ont., is used
by the residents, but the post office is Barrys Bay. The
name Burk's Falls, Ont., is also used widely, although it
is ignored by the postal authorities and the weekly news-
paper, the Burks Falls-Powassan Almaguin News.
The apostrophe is rarely used in official names in
72 Naming Canada
western and northern Canada. Some writers refer to Gib-
son's Landing, a charming community on Howe Sound
northwest of Vancouver, where the popular TV show The
Beachcombers was based, but the village has long been
known as simply Gibsons. The municipality of Hudson's
Hope in northeastern British Columbia was established
in 1965, but the post office, opened in 1913, remains
Hudsons Hope.
The Lions Gate Bridge and the village of Lions Bay
both derive their names from The Lions/ distinctive
peaks that look down on Vancouver. Some writers incor-
rectly add an apostrophe either before or after the V in
such names.
Names like Kingsport, Kingscourt, and Kingston do
not require the apostrophe, although they are composed
of two or more fused words, with the prefix suggesting a
possessive characteristic. The same approach should be
followed with names such as Kings Point, Kings Lake,
and Kings Head since, as proper names of features in the
public domain, they no longer have any possessive con-
notation. It follows that names like McLarens Landing,
Fiddlers Elbow, and Haydens Corners also do not
require apostrophes.
In dealing with names ending in V with the posses-
sive apostrophe, it is wise to avoid autocratic rulings. If
residents insist on using St. Kyran's, Heart's Content,
Colpoy's Bay, and Ayer's Cliff, names authorities should
be flexible enough to grant them their wish.
A New Name for Merged Municipalities
Can Cause Quite a Fuss
When well-established municipalities are being forced to
amalgamate and select a new name, without adequate
Political Issues and Language Problems 73
consultative processes, much discord and tension are
likely to follow.
Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliet that 'a rose by
any other name would smell as sweet/ but the twin
Ontario cities of Fort William and Port Arthur weren't
buying it back in 1968 when the province decreed they
could no longer exist as separate entities. These historic
places at the head of Lake Superior had been about equal
in area and population for most of the seventy-five years
before that, and developed a strong rivalry over which
name the new city would bear.
To end the wrangling, the minister of municipal
affairs, Darcy McKeough, asked the Lakehead Planning
Board to ignore all existing names and devise some alter-
natives. He subsequently allowed only the board's three
suggestions to be put to the voters. Thunder Bay, from
the historic bay bordering the sparring municipalities,
received 15,821 votes; Lakehead, 15,302; and The Lake-
head, 8,477. Clearly, the majority of the voters preferred
some form of Lakehead, but their vote was split. It was
not long, however, before Thunder Bay was fully
accepted, while Lakehead survives in the identities of
various businesses and institutions, including Lakehead
University. Even Fort William and Port Arthur linger on,
albeit in informal usage by older residents and in the
names of provincial electoral divisions.
Finding a compromise name with a strong historical
association proved effective in New Brunswick as well.
On 1 January 1995, the towns of Newcastle and Chat-
ham and adjacent villages on both banks of the Mirami-
chi River became a single city under the name of
Miramichi. There was a similar development in south-
ern Alberta when the well-known local name Crows-
nest Pass was given to the new municipality that
emerged from the fusion of the towns of Blairmore and
74 Naming Canada
Coleman, and the villages of Bellevue, Frank, and Hill-
crest Mines.
History played no part, however, in resolving the con-
flict in Ontario when the town of Bowmanville, the vil-
lage of Newcastle, and the townships of Clarke and
Darlington were united in 1974 as the town of Newcas-
tle. Although most voters did not know it, the name
Newcastle was deeply rooted in the history of that area
of the north shore of Lake Ontario, where the district of
Newcastle had existed from 1799 to 1850. Many assumed
that the little village had been given precedence over the
town of Bowmanville. Confusion and public unrest con-
tinued for fifteen years until, in 1991, a name change was
endorsed by 59 per cent of the voters. Eventually, after
extensive consultation, a committee proposed the name
Clarington for the new 'municipality/ which the resi-
dents wanted it to be called, deeming 'town' to misrep-
resent the nature of the largely rural community.
Clarington, a blend of Clarke and Darlington, has more
than 58,000 people, but the name is largely unknown
outside the area of Durham Region.
Merger mania reached a high level in Ontario in the
1960s and '70s, and attained super megalomania in the
province in the 1990s. Amalgamations were promoted in
Quebec, Newfoundland, and New Brunswick in the
1970s and '80s. The process got started in Prince Edward
Island and British Columbia in the early 1990s. There has
been little need for large-scale municipal streamlining on
the Prairies, although Winnipeg annexed several subur-
ban municipalities in the 1960s, and many cities, espe-
cially Calgary and Edmonton, have extended their
boundaries to encompass outlying suburbs.
Economic reasons, such as cost efficiency and improved
delivery of programs, usually lie behind municipal amal-
gamations. Sometimes they evolve through local consent,
Political Issues and Language Problems 75
but more often they come about through provincial
enforcement. In joining together two or more municipali-
ties, important questions of identification arise: what to
call the new municipality; how to choose its name; what to
do with former names? Mergers can be highly emotional
experiences, especially for long-time residents who cher-
ish their heritage. Arriving at an acceptable name calls for
tact, sensitivity and in-depth knowledge of local history.
To be sure, some names are naturals. When one munici-
pality is considerably larger than the others entering the
union, for instance, its name invariably takes precedence,
with the smaller municipalities being remembered as
neighbourhood and ward names. This happened in St.
Catharines, Ont., in 1961, when the city absorbed the
towns of Merritton and Port Dalhousie; and in Jonquiere,
Que., with the annexation of the towns of Arvida and
Kenogami in 1975. When the more populous district of
Abbotsford, B.C., was united in 1995 with the district of
Matsqui, Abbotsford became the new city's name. During
the same year the cities of Halifax and Dartmouth, the
town of Bedford and the county of Halifax were joined
together as the Regional Municipality of Halifax. In 1996
the government of Ontario decided, without full con-
sultation of the residents of Metropolitan Toronto, that
Toronto would become an enlarged city on 1 January
1998. The cities of Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough,
and York, and the borough of East York were absorbed
into the new city of 2,385,421 people. The names of the
former municipalities continue to have relevance to their
respective residents.
In the merging of two municipalities with nearly equal
areas and populations, the new name is often a hyphen-
ated combination, as in Grand Falls-Windsor, Nfld.,
joined in 1991, and Rouyn-Noranda, Que., amalgamated
in 1986.
76 Naming Canada
Even with hyphenated names, one of the names may
eventually supersede the other. The New Brunswick
town of St. Stephen-Mill town, amalgamated in 1973,
became simply St. Stephen two years later. Similarly,
Levis-Lauzon, Que., united in 1989, was replaced by
Levis alone in 1991 when the town of Saint-David-de-
1'Auberiviere was brought into the fold. Other examples
are Victoriaville, Que., after being Victoriaville-Artha-
baska for less than a year, and Sarnia, Ont, which was
officially Sarnia-Clearwater during 1990 and 1991.
Sometimes the choice of a new name has been found
in an obscure connection. In 1972, a row erupted in the
Ontario towns of Gait, Hespeler, and Preston, as well as
parts of the adjacent townships, when Gait was desig-
nated by the province as the name for the planned amal-
gamation of these municipalities. So strong was the
ensuring protest that all existing names were promptly
disqualified, and the province called for a completely
new name. The Preston and Hespeler councils agreed on
Cambridge, after Cambridge Mills, an early name of Pre-
ston, while Gait's council settled on Blair, the name of a
community on the west side of the Grand River. By a
narrow margin - 11,728 votes to 9,899 - Cambridge won.
Since then, Preston and Hespeler have remained strong
neighbourhood names, but Gait has faded somewhat in
use since it became the main urban centre of Cambridge.
In 1993, the municipal communities of Southport, Bun-
bury, Crossroads, and Keppoch-Kinlock, in Prince
Edward Island, were united as the town of Waterview,
but that name did not sit well with some vocal oppo-
nents, who demanded a second ballot. The next vote
supported Stratford, the second-place finisher in the ear-
lier vote. That name had been derived from the main
road in Southport, which had been first used in 1858 for
the name of a local school district.
New names may also be cobbled together out of for-
Political Issues and Language Problems 77
mer names. Walden, west of Sudbury, Ont., was a 1973
concoction of parts of the names Waters and Denison
townships, and the town of Lively. The fact that it repli-
cated the name of the pond in Massachusetts made
famous by Henry Thoreau was no doubt not far from the
thoughts of local councillors. On 1 January 2001, the
town of Walden was absorbed by the new city of Greater
Sudbury. Ramara Township in Ontario's Simcoe County
grew out of the union of Rama and Mara townships in
1994. Many of the recent amalgamations in Ontario have
resulted in some of the dullest names ever foisted upon
the province's municipal toponymy, examples being
South Bruce Peninsula, Northeastern Manitoulin and the
Islands, and North Frontenac.
As the benefits of 'bigger is better' have increasing-
ly appealed to cash-strapped governments, more and
more mergers will take place down the road. In the
area of Canada's national capital the Regional Munici-
pality of Ottawa-Carleton, the cities of Ottawa, Nepean,
Gloucester, Kanata, Cumberland, and Vanier, the vil-
lage of Rockcliffe Park, and the municipal townships
of Osgoode, Rideau, Goulbourn, and West Carleton
became the city of Ottawa on 1 January 2001. The
twenty-nine municipalities of the lie de Montreal may
be merged under the single name of Montreal, but many
of the present officially bilingual cities may insist on pro-
tecting in law their linguistic status within the new
super city.
When Names Become Politically Incorrect
Pride and fond memories of homelands and heroic lead-
ers across the sea have influenced many place names in
Canada. London, Ont., New Glasgow, N.S., New Den-
mark, N.B., and Labrador's Churchill River are just a few
78 Naming Canada
of the hundreds of examples. However, several name
changes took place after Canadians fought wars against
countries where some of our names originated, or when
foreign heroes were subsequently judged monstrous.
Of the three international powers Canada has been at
war with in the twentieth century - Germany, Italy, and
Japan - only Germany has been the source of a large
number of Canadian place names. By the beginning of
the First World War, there were some thirty names of
probable German origin in southwestern Ontario be-
tween Stratford and Guelph - the largest concentration
of German settlement in Canada. Only three of these
were changed during wartime. In 1942, a small commu-
nity between Guelph and Waterloo, originally called
New Germany, was renamed Maryhill after the Blessed
Virgin Mary and the hill on which St. Boniface Church
was located. Two years later, German Mills - 6 kilome-
tres south of downtown Kitchener - was changed to
Parkway.
The most significant change in the area occurred dur-
ing the First World War, when the city of Berlin - now
Kitchener - was forced to choose a name more in tune
with the ideals of freedom, democracy, and service to the
British Empire.
Berlin was named in 1833, and by 1911 it was the
ninth-largest city in Ontario, with 70 per cent of its
population having German roots. But by 1916, the name
Berlin had become untenable, observed co-authors John
English and Kenneth McLaughlin in Kitchener: An Illus-
trated History. Berlin's city council and business leaders
feared the patriotism of its residents would be judged
suspect, and worried about the loss of business. In Feb-
ruary 1916, the council appealed to the Ontario legisla-
ture for permission to change the name, but it was told to
hold a plebiscite first. On 19 May, 3,057 Berliners cast
Political Issues and Language Problems 79
their ballot, with approval for a name change winning by
only eighty-one votes. But the change to Kitchener was
not made without considerable resentment and acri-
mony, especially in the German parts of the city.
The selection of a new name was not easy. From thou-
sands of submissions, the choice was reduced to six, all
of which were rejected by council because of widespread
criticism. Council also defeated a subsequent proposal to
amalgamate with Waterloo, and instead drew up another
list of six names: Adanac, Benton, Brock, Corona, Keo-
wana, and Kitchener. The last was in honour of Lord
Herbert Kitchener, a British military hero who drowned
on 5 June 1916. Only 892 residents voted, with Kitchener
receiving the most votes, 346, followed closely by Brock
with 335. The remaining four received only 48, with 163
voters spoiling their ballots by writing in either Berlin or
Waterloo. Considering the turnout too low to justify a
change, opponents gathered twice as many signatures in
opposition. Regardless, council changed Berlin to Kitch-
ener on 1 September 1916.
Not all efforts to change names have succeeded. In one
case, a place name with Nazi overtones - Swastika,
Ont. - was successfully protected from assault by top-
onymic purifiers. A mine was named in 1906 by Bill and
Jim Dusty, who discovered the first gold in Northern
Ontario while exploring for silver on behalf of investors
in Tavistock, Ont. A cross on a charm worn by a woman
from Tavistock inspired Bill Dusty to name the mine
Swastika, meaning 'good luck' in Sanskrit. Both the com-
munity and railway station adopted the name.
But during the Second World War, the swastika - the
official emblem of the Nazis - came to symbolize misery
and the annihilation of millions. Consequently, Ontario's
Minister of Highways announced in 1940 that Swastika
would be changed to Winston in honour of the British
80 Naming Canada
prime minister, Winston Churchill. In defiance, residents
of Swastika tore down the new sign, replacing it with
another that read: To Hell with Hitler. We had the swas-
tika first/ As John Wroe reported in Saturday Night mag-
azine in 1986, 'the government never got its wish and, as
the war receded in memory, the controversy dimin-
ished/ Since then, occasional efforts by outsiders to get
rid of the name have been fiercely resisted by the resi-
dents of Swastika, now part of the town of Kirkland
Lake.
In 1936, a Canadian Pacific station across the Fraser
River from Hope, B.C., was named Petain in honour of
Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, a distinguished French
military leader during the First World War. Four years
later, when the free world learned that Petain had collab-
orated with Nazi Germany, Canadian Pacific changed
that station name to Odium for Maj. Gen. Victor Odium,
then a widely respected Canadian diplomat. But Mount
Petain in the Canadian Rockies and two lakes and a
township in Quebec remain as honours to the French
military genius.
Military and political leaders who fought with the
Allied powers during the Second World War have also
had their names affixed to geographical features in Can-
ada. Among those honoured was Marshal Joseph Stalin,
whose name was given to a mountain in north-central
British Columbia and a township 50 kilometres south-
west of Sudbury. But in 1985, names scholar Jaroslav
Rudnyckyj and members of the Ukrainian Canadian
Committee urged federal and provincial politicians and
names boards to expunge the name Stalin - a person
they deemed to be one of history's most notorious crimi-
nals - from Canadian maps. In the Ontario legislature,
the cause was taken up by MPP Yuri Shymko, whose pri-
vate member's bill to substitute Hansen Township for
Political Issues and Language Problems 81
Stalin Township was unanimously passed on 6 Novem-
ber 1986. The new name honours Rick Hansen, who
gained international attention during his Man in Motion
wheelchair tour to promote research into spinal cord
injuries and other physical disabilities.
In April 1987, the British Columbia government fol-
lowed Ontario's lead, changing Mount Stalin to Mount
Peck in honour of Don Peck, a widely respected trapper,
guide, and outfitter who lived at Trutch, B.C., on the
Alaska Highway, from 1949 to 1963. But the change was
not universally endorsed. The Vancouver Historical Soci-
ety protested the rewriting of an important part of Cana-
dian history. And one Fort Nelson resident wrote to
several newspapers to say that Stalin had been honoured
because he stood steadfast in defeating the German foe,
and that to eliminate his name from our maps was no
better than the Stalinesque purges impugned by the free
world.
Near Canmore there is a mountain that had long been
known as Chinamans Peak, which recalled a climbing
feat performed in 1896 by miner Ha Ling, whose ances-
try was Chinese. One hundred years after the climb, sev-
eral residents of Canmore and Calgary expessed their
displeasure with what they perceived to be a derogatory
name. In 1998, the names authority in Alberta had it
renamed Ha Ling Peak, a recommendation that had been
made by the Medicine Hat News in its 'Canmore Cullings'
column in 1896.
Some names now gracing our cities, towns, moun-
tains, and rivers may well be judged politically incorrect
in the years to come, and vigorous efforts may yet be
made to replace them with names considered more
appropriate to Canada's vision of peace, tolerance, and
freedom. However, since I am not a revisionist at heart, I
hope such demands for change will be rare.
82 Naming Canada
Hot and Bothered by 'Disgusting' Names
Place names derived from words deemed coarse or
unspeakable have frequently aroused sensitivity, offence,
and even hostility. Over the years new names and
masked substitutes have been used to banish names
found vulgar or suggestive.
In 1924, almost 200 property owners in Victoria asked
city council to change the name Foul Bay to Gonzales Bay,
after Gonzales Point, named in 1790 for the first mate of a
Spanish sloop. The change was opposed by Post No. 3 of
the Native Daughters of British Columbia, among others,
but the matter was raised again ten years later by Henri
Parizeau, long-time director of the Canadian Hydro-
graphic Service on the west coast. He claimed that 'it
would be in the interests of the public in general, that this
most objectionable name around the coast of Victoria
should be changed to a more respectable and decent
name/ It was a sentiment shared by the Foul Bay Commu-
nity Association, which noted that the name was 'a con-
stant source of offence to residents and of ridicule by non-
residents and tourists/ as well as an obstacle to residential
development. Finally, in November 1934, with endorse-
ments from the councils of Victoria and Oak Bay and pro-
vincial authorities, the Geographic Board of Canada
authorized the change. However, the boundary street
between the two municipalities is still Foul Bay Road.
Two names of Native origin on Vancouver Island,
Kokshittle Arm and Kowshet Cove, were also changed in
1984, to Kashutl Inlet and Cullite Cove. George G. Aiken,
provincial member of the Geographic Board, assumed a
high moral tone in support of the changes. 'We do not
wish/ he wrote, 'to have the daughters of our present
and future citizens feel embarrassment in naming the
locations of their homes. We cannot, as a Board, in this
Political Issues and Language Problems 83
democratic country, ignore these objections of the citi-
zenry when these objections are founded on good taste
and reason/
In 1959, a family of Finnish extraction named Suni
advised the Ontario Department of Municipal Affairs
that the word paska ('shallow' in Cree), as in the name
Paska Township, was a vulgar word for excrement in
Finnish. Municipal Affairs advised the Department of
Natural Resources of the offending names Paska Lake
and Paska Creek, and Canadian National Railways of the
embarrassingly named Paska siding. As there was a
large Finnish population in Northern Ontario, especially
in Thunder Bay, 250 kilometres to the southwest, the
township, the siding, and the two natural features were
renamed - after the Suni family.
Other examples of undesirable names changed in-
clude, in Newfoundland, Distress becoming St. Bride's,
Famish Gut switching to Fairhaven, Scilly Cove opting
for Winterton, and Turk's Gut changing to Marysvale. In
Alberta, Meighen (pronounced almost like 'mean') was
changed to Viking. And in New Brunswick, Pisarinco
became Lorneville.
A century ago, Sipweske was a growing village near
Brandon, Man. Its name, derived from a Cree word, had
unwelcome overtones of intemperance to some. Accord-
ing to Penny Ham in her Place Names of Manitoba (1980),
Wawanesa ('whippoorwill'), adapted from Wawonaissa
in Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, was then intro-
duced. The village of 482 is the headquarters of the
Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company.
Crotch Lake is a reservoir on Ontario's Mississippi
River, 110 kilometres southwest of Ottawa. In 1848, land
surveyor John Harper gave it the euphemism Cross
Lake, and this was endorsed by the Geographic Board in
1941.1 made a field survey of the area in 1965, and found
84 Naming Canada
the original name was universally preferred. It was sub-
sequently reaffirmed by the Canadian Permanent Com-
mittee on Geographical Names.
In 1910, the Lethbridge Board of Trade declared, 'We
are certainly very much disgusted with the present name
and wish to make a change of some kind/
The object of the board's disgust was the name of the
river on whose banks the city of Lethbridge, Alta., was
situated. It was the Belly River, and Lethbridge citizens
were convinced that their thriving young city deserved
to be set on a river whose name did not engender dis-
comfort and embarrassment. (In those days 'belly' was a
word avoided in polite company.) They had campaigned
since 1886, but it took almost thirty years to secure a
more distinguished appellation.
Alberta's Belly River rises some 20 kilometres south of
the 49th parallel in Montana and flows north to join the
Oldman River 18 kilometres upstream from Lethbridge.
It was given its name during a survey in 1858 by Thomas
Blakiston, a member of the Palliser Expedition, and the
name first appeared on a map in 1865.
Blakiston derived the name from the Blackfoot Moko-
ivanis, meaning 'big bellies/ referring to the local Atsina
tribe and equivalent to the name Gros Ventre used by
French explorers and voyageurs. Blakiston applied the
name Belly to the whole river from its source to its con-
fluence with the Bow River, where the two rivers become
the South Saskatchewan River, 90 kilometres northeast of
present-day Lethbridge. Thus when the city of Leth-
bridge was first laid out near a series of rich coal deposits
in 1885, it found itself on the east bank of the Belly River.
Just one year later, Minister of the Interior Thomas
White visited Lethbridge, and residents asked him to get
the name changed. No action was taken, and in 1900,
Lethbridge News publisher E.T. Saunders - who had ear-
Political Issues and Language Problems 85
Her found the name historic and euphonious - urged a
change, too. He wrote about the discomfort of strangers
and the blushing embarrassment of ladies. To get around
the problem, he suggested that the St. Mary River, a trib-
utary of the Belly upriver from Lethbridge, be desig-
nated the main watercourse, with the Belly as a branch of
it. That way, Lethbridge would sit beside the St. Mary.
Six years later (and still no action), Saunders again
appealed to the authorities. He claimed the name Belly
made Lethbridge appear to be a crude frontier settle-
ment, and this time suggested extending the name South
Saskatchewan River to some point upriver from Leth-
bridge.
In 1910, the Lethbridge Board of Trade wrote a letter to
the Department of the Interior proposing the name
Alberta River for the entire watercourse, including the
present Oldman and South Saskatchewan rivers. The
Geographic Board rejected the proposal, stating the new
name had no authority based on usage, and noting in
any case that the Bow was the principal tributary of the
South Saskatchewan. The Board of Trade asked for other
alternatives to Belly, but the Geographic Board re-
sponded by urging it to canvass local residents for their
own alternatives.
The matter languished until 1913, when the Board of
Trade again asked the Department of the Interior to
replace Belly River with Alberta River, 'a name citizens
could call attention to with pride.' But the Geographic
Board told the Board of Trade to obtain the views of local
authorities and then seek the endorsement of the provin-
cial government. In 1915, the Board of Trade asked Pre-
mier Arthur Sifton to approve Alberta River, but Sifton
said he preferred Lethbridge River. This new proposal
was sent to the Geographic Board, which declined to
accept it. Geologist and Geographic Board member
86 Naming Canada
Donaldson Dowling pointed out that the Oldman River
carried considerably more water than the Belly at their
confluence, and suggested carrying the name Oldman
River to its juncture with the Bow. This would make the
Belly the Oldman's tributary and put Lethbridge on the
Oldman. It was the compromise the Geographic Board
approved in August 1915, and thus after many years of
appeals, Lethbridge finally got rid of its Belly River.
Fortunately, the purging of place names has become
quite rare in recent times. People are sometimes aston-
ished to encounter Bastard Township in Ontario's Leeds
County, but in 1796, when the township was surveyed
and named, Bastard was a respectable surname in
England, and John Pollexfen Bastard was a member of
Parliament. The names of both Bastard Township and
adjoining Kitley Township are derived from the Bastard
family seat in Devon.
In 1966,1 asked Reeve Gerald Cross of the Township of
Bastard and South Burgess if thought had ever been given
to changing the name. He replied that the question had
been raised with the Department of Municipal Affairs in
Toronto, but when told it would cost $1,200, the council
decided such funds should be spent on more important
matters. Local efforts by a realtor in 1994 to rename it Bev-
erly Hills (after the Upper Beverly and Lower Beverly
lakes), on the two-hundredth anniversary of the naming
of the township, were rejected by the local residents. It is
now part of the Municipal Township of Rideau Lakes.
Castle Mountain and Its Thirty-Five-Year
Eisenhower Hiatus
On 17 August 1858, Dr. James Hector, a naturalist-
geologist with the Palliser Expedition, was exploring the
Political Issues and Language Problems 87
Bow River valley upstream from present-day Banff.
Beside Vermilion Pass (which now leads to Windermere,
B.C.), he noted a majestic 11-kilometre-long mountain. It
reminded him of the great crenellated castles of Britain,
and he promptly named it Castle Mountain.
(Two days later, Thomas Blakiston, another naturalist
with the same expedition, assigned the name Castle
Mountain to a feature west of present Pincher Creek,
which is about 250 kilometres southeast of Banff. How-
ever, it was renamed Windsor Mountain in 1915.)
On 9 January 1946, the day before the visit to Ottawa
by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, then Supreme Commander
of the Allied Forces in Europe, Prime Minister Macken-
zie King, acting on a suggestion from his friend Leonard
Brockington, instructed the Geographic Board of Canada
to rename Castle Mountain in honour of the illustrious
general. Apparently the prime minister had learned that
the general had been presented with a castle in Scotland,
and Mr. King regarded the presentation of this Canadian
'castle
7
 as a gift of much greater magnitude and signifi-
cance.
In Alberta, the provincial government was astonished
by the arbitrary name change, and proceeded to establish
its own names board to make sure that all naming in
Alberta henceforth would receive provincial approval.
The Alpine Club of Canada called the renaming a sacri-
lege; and editorials noted that there were many un-
named mountains in the Rockies to which the general's
name could have been given.
In the early 1970s, efforts were begun to restore the
name Castle Mountain and to assign Eisenhower to
another feature. Freeman Keyte, a public servant who
was living in Calgary at the time, took the crusade to the
Geographic Board of Alberta, members of Parliament,
and the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographi-
88 Naming Canada
cal Names. The editor of the Crag and Canyon in Banff
raised the issue with the provincial minister of culture,
and subsequently newspapers in Calgary and Edmonton
published many letters urging reinstatement of the name
Castle Mountain. The letter writers claimed that the orig-
inal name embodied the country's ruggedness and inde-
pendence. The publisher of the Edmonton Journal, how-
ever, expressed his opposition to the reinstatement.
In February 1975, the Historical Society of Alberta
passed a resolution calling for restoration of the name
Castle Mountain, and suggested that Eisenhower Peak
be given to its most prominent tower. This was endorsed
by the Alberta Historic Sites Board, which had succeeded
the Geographic Board of Alberta as the new provincial
names authority.
Because the mountain is in Banff National Park, the
matter was referred to Parks Canada, then part of the
Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. The name
change was approved, but no announcement was to be
made until after the United States bicentennial celebra-
tions in 1976. However, the news became known in April
1976 to the Edmonton Journal, whose publisher repeated
his opposition.
In May 1976, the issue was raised in the House of
Commons by former prime minister John Diefenbaker,
then an opposition MP. Because of a perceived bond with
Gen. Eisenhower through their common efforts to defeat
the German forces during the First World War, Diefen-
baker was strongly opposed to changing the name back
to Castle Mountain. Alistair Gillespie, the minister
responsible, assured the House that the name Mount
Eisenhower would stay. And so it did ... for another three
years.
However, immediately after the election of the Conser-
vative government of Joe Clark in May 1979, the Alberta
Political Issues and Language Problems 89
Historic Sites Board took up the issue again. Freeman
Keyte, then residing in the Ottawa area, pursued the
matter tenaciously with Mr. Clark's office, with the min-
ister responsible for Parks Canada, John Fraser, and with
the provincial minister of culture, Mary J. LeMessurier.
Although federal endorsement of the change back to
Castle Mountain was finally given in October, Alberta's
concurrence was not received until the morning of
Thursday, 13 December. On the evening of the same day,
Mr. Clark's government was defeated in a non-confi-
dence vote in the House.
This landmark federal-provincial decision restored
Castle Mountain, and assigned Eisenhower Peak to its
prominent eastern elevation. It also confirmed the name
Castle Junction for the intersection of Highways 1A and
93.
The Mount Eisenhower 1:50,000 topographical map was
scheduled for a new printing in the fall of 1979. I per-
suaded the chief of map reproduction to withhold the
map until the name was changed. The Castle Mountain
map was published in January 1980.
In the years since the reinstatement of Castle Moun-
tain, the only reaction received by the committee's names
secretariat has been that of enthusiasm and pleasure.
Receiving Names from Abroad
and Exporting Names
Touring the Middle East without Leaving Canada
The Gulf crisis of 1990-1 focused the world's attention
on the city of Baghdad, capital of Iraq since 1921. This
ancient city of Mesopotamia lies in the fertile valley of
the Tigris, only 40 kilometres east of the Euphrates River.
It is one of many historic Middle East cities, regions,
mountains, and rivers reflected in Canada's place names.
In the late 1880s, the name Bagdad (without the 'h') was
given by the Central Railway of New Brunswick to a
flagstop 35 kilometres northwest of Sussex. Although
Canadian Pacific abandoned the line in the 1960s,
Bagdad remains the name of the small community.
Another ancient city of the Tigris Valley recalled in
Canada is Nineveh, once the capital of the Assyrian
Empire. Its intricate streets, squares, and a magnificent
palace were unearthed by British archaeologists between
1820 and 1851. The farming community of Nineveh, 25
kilometres northwest of Bridgewater, N.S., was settled in
the 1840s. There is another locality by the same name on
Cape Breton Island, 23 kilometres southwest of Baddeck.
Tales of the mysterious Middle East and stories from
the Bible are likely the source of some 140 place names in
Canada. About 75 of these occur in Southern Ontario, in
Receiving and Exporting Names 91
an arc from Chatham in the west through Barrie and
Newmarket to Belleville in the east. There are clusters of
such names in a 40-kilometre radius around both
Belleville and Lindsay. Quebec, New Brunswick, and
Nova Scotia have about a dozen each, with concentra-
tions northeast of Granby, Que., and around Sussex, N.B.
In all of Western Canada, there are only about 15 Middle
East names. Only one appears to have been given in the
three territories: Ophir Creek in the Yukon.
The giving of Middle East place names in Canada
appears to be a nineteenth-century phenomenon. Most
were chosen between 1820 and 1885, when much of the
naming took place in the Maritimes, Southern Quebec,
and Southern Ontario. Many towns and villages in North-
ern Ontario and the West were founded after 1885, when
few turned to the Bible or Arabic tales for inspiration.
Many names from the Middle East were given to rural
communities or crossroads where Protestant congrega-
tions established meeting-houses. When a school, post
office, or railway flagstop was established, the leaders of
each community encouraged the use of their church
name.
The original Garden of Eden, thought to have been in
the Middle East near the headwaters of the Euphrates,
has also influenced Canadian place names. About 30
kilometres southwest of Antigonish, N.S., are Garden of
Eden and Eden Lake. There is also a place called Eden 35
kilometres northeast of Port Hawkesbury, N.S. In
Ontario, there is a Garden of Eden 10 kilometres north of
Renfrew, an Eden south of Tillsonburg, and an Eden
Grove northwest of Walkerton. Eden Mills is east of
Guelph, and Edenvale is northwest of Barrie. There is
one Eden in Manitoba, 15 kilometres north of Neepawa.
In Saskatchewan, the village of Edenwold, 35 kilometres
northeast of Regina, was a German settlement when it
was named in 1890. Kaleden, B.C., was the winning
92 Naming Canada
name in a 1909 contest: a minister combined the Greek
word for 'beautiful' with the name of the biblical garden
of paradise.
Egypt and Lebanon are also among Canada's place
names. Nova Scotia has a place called Egypt Road, and
Quebec has a place called Egypte. In Ontario, Egypt is
just south of Lake Simcoe, Little Egypt is northeast of
Goderich, and Lebanon is 35 kilometres northwest of
Waterloo. The regions of Ophir and Sheba, in the south-
ern part of the Arabian Peninsula, are both reflected in
the names of townships in Northern Ontario. Ophir is
also a community 50 kilometres east of Sault Ste. Marie.
Sheba was once a Canadian Pacific flagstop northwest of
Thunder Bay.
Cairo and Damascus also turn up in Canada. In 1852, a
post office called Sutherland's was opened 40 kilometres
northeast of Chatham, Ont. In 1896, it was changed to
Cario, and respelled Cairo the following year. There is
also a Cairo Township in Northern Ontario. Damascus,
30 kilometres west of Orangeville, Ont., dates back to
1872. Another Damascus, 28 kilometres northeast of
Saint John, N.B., was named by a surveyor in jest
because the tortuous road leading to it reminded him of
Paul's conversion on the way to the original Damascus.
The biblical story of Moses leading the Israelites from
the Land of Goshen (near the present mouth of the Nile)
to the promised Land of Canaan prompted many early
settlers to name their communities after one or the other.
In the early 1800s, a traveller baptised two places south
of Renfrew, Ont., Goshen and Canaan when he was
denied food in the first, but was offered nourishment in
the latter. Both names were adopted by their respective
communities, but ironically only Goshen survived.
There are two places called Goshen in New Bruns-
wick - one 25 kilometres northwest of Sussex, and the
Receiving and Exporting Names 93
other 25 kilometres east of Sussex. To avoid confusion,
the latter used the name Sheba for its postal address, but
the community remained Goshen. The Canaan River in
New Brunswick spawned several community names:
New Canaan, Canaan Road, Canaan Station, and Canaan
Rapids.
Nova Scotia has two places called Goshen. One is
65 kilometres northwest of Halifax. The other, 27 kilo-
metres south of Antigonish, was so named because
twice a year two members of the community were sent
to Halifax for supplies, much like the sons of Jacob went
to Goshen in Egypt to buy corn. There are also three
places called Canaan in Nova Scotia, and another called
New Canaan.
Before he died, Moses viewed the promised land from
atop Mount Pisgah, a height of Mount Nebo east of Jeri-
cho and the River Jordan. Mount Pisgah, 13 kilometres
northeast of Sussex, N.B., offers an excellent view of lush
fields in the valleys below. Mont Nebo, 75 kilometres
west of Prince Albert, Sask., was at one time a Canadian
National flagstop.
Mount Hebron, Mount Hermon, and Mount Carmel
are also prominently mentioned in biblical stories.
Hebron in Labrador was established by Moravian mis-
sionaries in 1829. In New Brunswick, Mount Hebron is
10 kilometres north of Sussex. In Ontario, New Hermon
is 20 kilometres east of Bancroft. Mount Carmel occurs as
a place name five times in Ontario, and is the name of an
Acadian community in western Prince Edward Island.
Mount Zion was the fabled city of David on the east-
ern ridge of Jerusalem. New Brunswick has New Zion
and Zionville, and Ontario has six places called Zion, as
well as Zion Hill and Zion Line.
Jerusalem itself was widely known as Salem. This
name occurs six times in Ontario; there is also a Salem
94 Naming Canada
Corners southwest of Lindsay. Salem, New Salem, and
Salem Road can all be found in Nova Scotia.
Among prominent places of the Holy Land mentioned
in the Old and New testaments are Bethany, Bethel,
Bethesda, Siloam, Galilee, Jordan, and Ebenezer. All of
these are reflected in Canadian place names, especially in
Ontario. The places where Jesus was born and raised are
not commemorated in English-speaking Canada, but
both occur in Quebec: Bethleem is 50 kilometres east
of Sherbrooke, and Nazareth is a neighbourhood of
Rimouski.
The community of New Sarepta, 40 kilometres south-
east of Edmonton, was named in 1905 after Sarepta, now
known as As Sarafand in present-day Lebanon. Sardis, a
community in the city of Chilliwack, B.C., was named in
1888 for the site of one of the seven churches of Asia, in
the western part of present-day Turkey. There is a Troy
25 kilometres west of Hamilton, Ont., another 25 kilome-
tres east of Chatham, Ont., and yet another 10 kilometres
northwest of Port Hawkesbury, N.S.
The Plain of Sharon is a fertile region on the Mediterra-
nean coast north of present-day Tel Aviv. The reference
in the Song of Solomon ('I am the rose of Sharon ...')
inspired David Willson in 1831 tp name the Children of
Peace community of Sharon, 5 kilometres north of New-
market, Ont. At the north end of the Plain of Sharon is
Caesarea. It is also the name of a community 25 kilome-
tres southwest of Lindsay, Ont. Its name is of dual origin,
since the place was settled by the Caesar family in 1836.
The biblical stories and classic tales of the Middle East
and the Holy Land reinforced the resilience and perse-
verance of Canada's nineteenth-century pioneers. Today,
the names add variety to the toponymic fabric of Can-
ada, especially in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova
Scotia.
Receiving and Exporting Names 95
Capitalizing on Foreign Capitals
The map of Canada shows a sprinkling of place names
derived from world capitals, reflecting the strong attach-
ment many settlers felt towards their homelands. Most,
predictably, are named for capitals in northern Europe
and the British Isles. A national capital possesses a mea-
sure of prestige and an aura of strength and longevity,
but the history of these Canadian namesakes is not
always based on such stalwart qualities.
For example, the town of Paris, Ont., 10 kilometres
west of Brantford, was not named for the grand French
city of savoir-vivre. Rather, this Paris derived its name
from the development, in 1829, of local gypsum deposits
that were used to make plaster of Paris and fertilizer.
The community of Warsaw, Ont., with a population of
230, situated 20 kilometres northeast of Peterborough,
was named by Thomas Choate in 1841 after his birth-
place, Warsaw, N.Y., which was itself named for the Pol-
ish capital.
One might conclude that the village of Hague, 50 kilo-
metres north of Saskatoon, was named for the Nether-
lands' seat of government, The Hague, but it was really
named for J.H. Hague, a railway engineer who later ran a
hotel in Vancouver.
The majority of capital-city namesakes in Canada,
however, were legitimately named for foreign capitals.
Athens, Ont., an attractive village of 960 people, 20 kilo-
metres west of Brockville, was named in 1888 to honour
the great city of Greece and its respect for education. The
village, which then went by the mundane name of Farm-
ersville, had three schools, including a teacher's training
school.
The city of London, Ont., on the Thames River, takes
its name from the surrounding London Township, itself
96 Naming Canada
named for Great Britain's capital in 1798. In 1791, Lt.-
Gov. John Graves Simcoe wanted to locate the capital of
Upper Canada at the Thames River site, then known as
The Forks. He called it Georgina, for the reigning mon-
arch. York (now Toronto) was subsequently chosen as the
capital of Upper Canada and, in 1825, Georgina and The
Forks were replaced by London when a post office was
opened and the seat of government for London District
was moved there. It was moved from Vittoria, a small
community near the town of Simcoe, 70 kilometres east
of London.
A few communities in Canada were named for capital
cities that were prominent in the news. In the early 1870s,
Belgium made headlines when Britain secured its neu-
trality during the Franco-Prussian War. In 1871, Brussels,
the anglicized version of Belgium's capital, was chosen
to replace the community name Ainleyville and the
postal name Dingle, 85 kilometres north of London.
Belgium's capital also turns up in its French form, 85
kilometres southeast of Brandon, Man. A settlement of
Belgians, Bruxelles was named in 1892 by Catholic arch-
bishop Alexandre Tache.
In 1854, the Crimean War and Russia in general were
popular topics of discussion. In that year Springfield,
Ont., changed its name to Moscow, commemorating the
retreat of Napoleon from the Russian capital in 1812.
Moscow, with a population of 65, is located 30 kilometres
northwest of Kingston.
But capitals in the news were not always looked upon
favourably. During the First World War, tensions arose
over the loyalty of the predominantly German residents
of Berlin, Ont. The name had been chosen for a post
office in 1833 by the early settlers. Berlin was settled first
by Mennonite families from Pennsylvania in 1807, later
by Pennsylvania 'Dutch' families (of German stock) and,
Receiving and Exporting Names 97
after 1830, by German immigrants. In 1916, amid much
rancour, a vote was taken to change the name. Among
six choices, Kitchener was the most popular. It com-
memorates Lord Kitchener, the hero of Khartoum who
drowned that year.
Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, also spawned another
Canadian place name. Khartum, Ont., a locality in Ren-
frew County, was named in 1909 to commemorate
Ottawa Valley rivermen who joined the Nile expedition
in the 1880s. Two road signs identify the limits of the
place, but there was only a single family living in it in
1999.
A Canadian traveller can arrange an extensive tour of
European capital cities without having to take along a
passport. Amsterdam is 55 kilometres north of Yorkton,
Sask. It was homesteaded about 1912 by settlers from the
Netherlands, and was named for that country's adminis-
trative centre.
Stockholm is a village of 390 people, 60 kilometres
south of Yorkton. The colony of New Stockholm was set-
tled by Swedes in the 1880s. When the Canadian Pacific
Railway arrived there in 1903, the name Stockholm was
proposed for a station and post office.
The community of Copenhagen, with a population of
200, is 20 kilometres southeast of St. Thomas, Ont. Recall-
ing the capital of Denmark, it had a post office from 1870
to 1914. Vienna, a former village of 480 people (now part
of the Municipal Township of Bayham), 35 kilometres
southeast of St. Thomas, was named in 1836 by Capt.
Samuel Edison (the inventor's grandfather) for the Aus-
trian city where one of his ancestors was born.
Dublin is the name of a community of 255 people, 30
kilometres northwest of Stratford, Ont. Named Carron-
brook in 1854, it was renamed Dublin in 1878 to honour
settlers from Ireland. New Dublin is a small community
98 Naming Canada
of 60 people, 14 kilometres northwest of Brockville, Ont.
Dublin Shore and West Dublin are seaside communities
18 kilometres southeast of Bridgewater, N.S. An Irish set-
tlement was located in that part of Lunenburg County in
the 1760s and was named New Dublin Township.
Other modified capital namesakes include New Lon-
don, a rural community 38 kilometres northwest of
Charlottetown, P.E.I. New London was established as a
port in 1773 on Grenville Bay, which became known as
New London Bay by the mid-1830s. A former farming
community 25 kilometres northeast of Edmonton had a
post office called New Lunnon from 1876 to 1907. This
spelling reflects a Cockney pronunciation of London.
The neighbouring town of Gibbons has preserved the
name in Lunnon Drive.
Cairo, Ont., Bagdad, N.B., and Damascus, Ont., are
Canadian communities representing Middle East capi-
tals. Manilla, a community of 450 people, 20 kilometres
west of Lindsay, Ont., replaced Mariposa in 1857 as the
postal name. It is named for Manila, the capital of the
Philippines. Delhi, 15 kilometres west of Simcoe, was
laid out in 1828 as Fredericksburg, but when that name
was found to be in use elsewhere, the township name
Middleton was given to the post office in 1831. The name
was changed to Delhi (pronounced 'DEL-HYE') in 1853,
in honour of the then-capital of India, but the name Fred-
ericksburg remained in general use even after the second
change.
Settlers may have had great expectations for their new
towns, hoping they would one day deserve their proud,
capital names. But with the exception of London and
Paris, none of the namesakes has reached a population of
more than 1,000. Some, such as Reykjavik, Man., Riga,
Sask., and New Kiew, Alta., are now nothing more than
wind-blown fields. Then again, these founders of capital
Receiving and Exporting Names 99
communities may not have been attempting to build
great cities; perhaps they were simply seeking a fond
reminder of their former homes or a curious footnote in
place-name geography.
Anzac to Zealandia: Names from Down Under
In another essay, I referred to Canadian place names
found in New South Wales, Australia, including Toronto
and Canada Bay. That prompted several readers from
Down Under to send me more examples: Labrador in
Queensland; Canadian Bay and Sherbrooke in Victoria; and
Quebec, Alberta, Calgary, Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, and
Ontario avenues in Clapham, near Adelaide, South Aus-
tralia. Their interest has inspired me to pursue this
southern link further, by researching names from the
South Seas that are found in Canada.
Before his luckless third voyage to Canada's Arctic,
Sir John Franklin served as governor of Van Diemen's
Land - later renamed Tasmania - from 1836 to 1843.
Franklin disappeared in 1845 along with his entire expe-
dition to the Northwest Passage. At the request of Frank-
lin's wife, Lady Jane, a group of islands on the west side
of the Boothia Peninsula was named the Tasmania Group
in 1859, in honour of Sir John's service in Tasmania. In
1910, they were designated Tasmania Islands.
Lighter emotions inspired other names. In 1858, a
group of settlers set sail from Charlottetown, P.E.I., to
begin a new life in New Zealand. At the same time,
another group from Charlottetown moved east to the
area of Souris, P.E.I., to take up farming. They called their
settlement New Zealand - a light-hearted reference to
the first group's destination - and it later became the
name of their post office from 1879 to 1914.
100 Naming Canada
In 1871, residents needed a name for the new post
office at Davis Corners, west of Perth, Ont. The postal
inspector proposed Zealand, in honour of the South Seas
country, shortening the name for postal efficiency.
Although the office was closed in 1915, the rural commu-
nity is still known as Zealand.
New railways frequently generated new place names.
In 1905, the Canadian Northern Railway picked the
name Ranfurly for a village 145 kilometres east of Ed-
monton. It was named for the Fifth Earl of Ranfurly, who
had just completed a four-year term as governor of New
Zealand. But CNR officials were thwarted when they
chose the name Brock for a station on another line, 95
kilometres southwest of Saskatoon. The new settlers
insisted on choosing their own name, and from several
submissions they picked Thomas Englebrecht's sugges-
tion of Zealandia. Englebrecht had emigrated from New
Zealand on the S.S. Zealandia around 1907, and became
one of the area's first settlers from abroad.
Australian Hugh McRoberts established Richmond
Farm south of Vancouver in 1861. One of his daughters
suggested that name after a favourite place in Australia
(possibly the town of Richmond, near Sydney), accord-
ing to Philip and Helen Akrigg in their British Columbia
Place Names (1986). Richmond was subsequently chosen
for the district municipality embracing Lulu Island,
which is now a city of 125,000.
During the First World War, the Australian and New
Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) fought with distinction
at Gallipoli, Turkey, and on the Western Front in Belgium
and France. During that war, a tributary of the Parsnip
River, north of Prince George, B.C., was named Anzac
River in their honour. When the British Columbia Rail-
way was built in 1967 from Prince George to Dawson
Creek, a sixty-nine-car siding was built near the mouth
Receiving and Exporting Names 101
of the river and called Anzac. Also during the First
World War, land surveyor Frank C. Swannell undertook
extensive surveys in the Nechako and Bulkley valleys
west of Prince George. He named Bennett Lake for an
Australian assistant who had served overseas with the
Anzac forces. When informed that the province already
had a Bennett Lake, Swannell recommended the subse-
quent change to Anzac Lake. The name Anzac was also
given to a station on the Canadian Pacific Railway line
just south of Fort McMurray, Alta., in 1922.
The Second World War created new place-name links
with the South Pacific. Commonwealth Lake in northern
Manitoba was named to recognize the British Common-
wealth Air Training Plan of 1939-45. The islands in the
lake were called Beaver for Canada, Kiwi for New
Zealand, Kangaroo for Australia, and Lion for Britain.
These appellations were given in 1974 by Allen Roberts,
a New Zealand-born pilot who trained in Manitoba and
subsequently became the province's director of surveys.
Sir Robert Richard Torrens was an Adelaide lawyer
and state legislator who introduced the Torrens system
of land titles in South Australia in 1858. In 1922, surveyor
Richard W. Cautley named Mount Torrens, near Grande
Cache, Alta., for him - sixteen years after Alberta
adopted the Torrens system of transferring land owner-
ship by registration and certificate, rather than by deed.
Australian prospectors travelled to the Yukon in the
1890s to probe the northern gravel bars for gold, even
before the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s: they
brought a wealth of place names from down under.
There are now two streams in the Yukon named Ballarat
Creek, which recall a gold rush at Ballarat, in central Vic-
toria, in the 1850s.
A tributary of Indian River, south of Dawson City, was
named Australia Creek sometime between 1891 and
102 Naming Canada
1894. A small tributary of that creek, called Melba Creek,
is likely named after Dame Nellie Melba, a world-
famous operatic soprano at the turn of the century and a
native of Melbourne.
A tributary of the Klondike River, east of Dawson City,
was also named Australia Creek in 1897. To avoid confu-
sion with the creek named earlier, geologist W.H. Miller
renamed it Aussie Creek in 1935. Australia Hill stands at
the nearby confluence of the Klondike River and Hunker
Creek.
Walhalla Creek, southeast of Dawson City, was named
by a prospector who was believed to have worked the
goldfields of Walhalla in Australia's state of Victoria,
according to Robert C. Coutts in Yukon: Places & Names
(1980). A few kilometres to the west is Australia Gulch.
Fiji may have been the birthplace of James Asasela,
although Vilhjalmur Stefansson described him in The
Friendly Arctic (1922) as a Samoan. 'Jim Fiji/ as he was
commonly called, represented the Samoas in an exhibit
of 'Native races' at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. On the
way home he boarded a ship in San Francisco that he
assumed was sailing towards the Hawaiian Islands,
because he saw some Hawaiians on board. But the ship
was a whaling vessel that spent the next three years in
the Arctic. He returned to the Arctic in 1896 for another
three-year stint, and thereafter remained in the North.
Asasela sailed with Stefansson's Canadian Arctic Expe-
dition to the Beaufort Sea from 1913 to 1917. He then
became a trapper, and disappeared about 1930 while
sealing in Amundsen Gulf. In his memory, the Inuit of
Paulatuk renamed Little Booth Island, east of Cape
Bathurst, Fiji Island; and named an anchorage on the
south side of the island Jim Fiji Harbour.
Motorists travelling between Winnipeg and Brandon
pass signs for Sidney and Melbourne, only 8 kilometres
Receiving and Exporting Names 103
apart, and may speculate about an Australian connec-
tion. In fact, no direct connection exists, although both
Melbournes are named for the same British prime minis-
ter. Sidney is named for Sidney Austin, a British journal-
ist who travelled on the first westbound CPR train
(besides, the Australian city is spelled 'Sydney'). But
there is still an impressive exchange of names that cele-
brate the enduring links between Canada and its Com-
monwealth partners in the South Seas.
A Touch of Portuguese on the East Coast
Portuguese navigators of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies were tireless in their search for new lands, fishing
grounds, and trading opportunities. Colonies flying the
Portuguese flag sprang up around the world.
The Portuguese presence in Canada is reflected mainly
on Newfoundland's east and south coasts, where such
names as Bonavista, Burgeo, Fogo, and Ferryland are
found. Labrador, too, is derived from Portuguese, and so
is Bras d'Or Lake in Cape Breton Island.
From 1480 to 1509, Portuguese navigators accompa-
nied several English expeditions from Bristol. Joao
Fernandes, a lavrador ('small landholder') of Terceira in
the Azores, may have sailed in 1497 to the New World
with John Cabot. In 1499, he was directed by King Man-
uel I of Portugal to search for new lands. The following
summer he sighted Greenland, which was soon identi-
fied on maps as Tiera del Lavrador. Some sixty years
later, map makers restored the Norse name to that island
and assigned the name Labrador to the mainland to the
southwest.
King Manuel gave a similar directive in 1501 to Caspar
Corte-Real who, with three ships, explored the coast of
104 Naming Canada
Labrador and the east coast of Newfoundland. The ship
carrying Corte-Real disappeared while travelling sepa-
rately, but the others returned to Portugal with informa-
tion about the lands, the fishery, and the Aboriginal
peoples. When Miguel Corte-Real sailed in search of his
brother in 1502, he suffered the same fate.
The voyages of the Corte-Reals, and of subsequent
Portuguese explorers, resulted in several names that are
still in use today, either in obscure Portuguese forms or
in English translation.
Cape Race, the most southeasterly point of Newfound-
land, occurs on the earliest maps as capo raso, a description
of the flat cliffs observed there. It also may have been
named for Cabo Raso at the mouth of the River Tagus, the
last point that sailors would see on leaving Lisbon.
Following the Newfoundland coast northward, one
reaches Renews, a name identifiable with the Portuguese
word ronhoso ('scabby'); rocks there are encrusted with
shells and seaweed. Fermeuse and Aquaforte appear on
a 1519 map as R fermoso ('beautiful') and R da aguea
('freshwater'). Ferryland may be traced tofarelhao, mean-
ing 'steep rock' or 'reef.'
Cape Spear, the most easterly point in North America,
is shown on a map of 1505-8 as Cauo de la spera ('place of
waiting'). Perhaps one of the vessels of the Corte-Real
expeditions waited here for Caspar or Miguel.
St. John's is believed by some to have been discovered
by John Cabot on 24 June 1497, St. John the Baptist's Day.
On a 1519 map, the entrance to the harbour is called R de
Sam joham. Cape St. Francis appears as c d sfrancisco. The
Portuguese identified Conception Bay with several vari-
ations of baia da concei^ao, a name that honours Our Lady
of the Immaculate Conception. Baccalieu Island, off the
tip of Bay de Verde Peninsula, is shown on a 1505 map as
y dos bacalhas ('codfish island').
Receiving and Exporting Names 105
Some writers believe that Caspar Corte-Real first
applied the name Trinity Bay (in Portuguese, of course)
to that body of water. While there is no cartographic evi-
dence to support this, it is known that subsequent Portu-
guese travellers called it baia de santa ciria. The English
seem to have chosen Trinity Bay in the late 1500s. Cat-
alina, at the outer end of the bay, may have its roots in
the name p de S Catarina, shown on maps of the mid-
1500s.
Cape Bonavista is said to have been the first place
reached by John Cabot in 1497. The name itself is Portu-
guese, appearing on early maps as C de boa vista. Cape
Freels, from y dofrey luis ('island of Brother Luis'), is the
main landmark at the north side of Bonavista Bay.
Fogo Island and Cape Fogo, off the northeast coast,
derive their names from the Portuguese y dofogo ('island
of fire').
The first point west of Cape Race is Cape Pine, which
occurs on sixteenth-century charts as c de pena. Across St.
Mary's Bay is Cape St. Mary's. The bay is shown on a
1537 map as Sa maria, and the cape, on a 1536 map, as
Cabo de Sancta Maria.
The French islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon were
known in the 1500s as Arcepelleguo das honze mill virgeens,
named for St. Ursula and the 11,000 virgins murdered by
the Huns in the fourth or fifth century. A modified form
of virgeens appears to have been transferred over 100
kilometres to the northwest to the present town of Bur-
geo and to Burgeo Islands.
Other south-coast names with probable Portuguese
roots include: Great Colinet Island - colmat (possibly
colina - 'hill'); Red Island - ilha roxa; St. Lawrence - baia
de sa lourengo; Lamaline - le belim (possibly baleia -
'whale'); Cape Chapeau Rouge - c roxo; Fortune Bay -
fortuna; Penguin Islands - isla de pitogoen; and Cape Ray
106 Naming Canada
along with several adjacent features with the specific,
Codroy - c rei (and the Basque Cap d'Array). Cape St.
George on Newfoundland's west coast may have begun
as c de S Jorge.
Joao Alvares Fagundes, who sailed along the south
coasts of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia about 1521,
may have named Bras d'Or Lake to reinforce control of
Portuguese discoveries near the boundary of Spanish
exploration, set by the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. Bras
d'Or is generally regarded as having evolved from
'labrador.' None of the other names from Fagundes's
travels, including Cap Fagunda for present Cape Breton,
survives.
The Basque Legacy on Canada's East Coast
For more than a century, the Basques ruled the fishery
around the coast of the Island of Newfoundland and in
the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries intrepid whalers and fishers sailed
every spring from their ports in the Bay of Biscay -
where France and Spain meet - to their North American
whaling stations and bountiful cod-fishing grounds.
Although they left behind only scant vestiges of their
occupation, the Basques did bequeath an impressive
legacy of place names in Eastern Canada: more than
300 names can be traced to Basque sources or activities.
Many of those place names are found around the
shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Selma Barkham, an
acclaimed expert on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
Basque activities on Canada's east coast, has docu-
mented the establishment of their fishing stations on the
west coast of the Island of Newfoundland and the south
coast of Labrador. She reported in 1989 that the Basques
Receiving and Exporting Names 107
extended their fishing operations after 1590 to the lies de
la Madeleine and the western shores of the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, including the area of the town of Gaspe.
Gaspe, where Jacques Cartier erected a cross and
claimed the land for the king of France, has long been
thought to be a name of Mi'kmaq origin. Basque writer
Miren Egana Goya challenged that conclusion in 1992,
and claimed that Gaspe was derived from the Basque
word kaizpe, suggesting 'shelter/ She cited seventeenth-
century Basque maps by Denis de Rotis and Pierres
Detcheverry, and the pilot books of Martin de Hoyarsa-
bal (1579) and Detcheverry (1677). But not everyone
agrees with her findings: Selma Barkham, for one, has
supported the conclusion that Gaspe has Mi'kmaq roots.
Gaspe first occurred on Dutch maps in the 1590s, in
the form of Gafpei. During the next century it appeared
in many forms on maps and in books: gaspi, Gachepe,
Gachepay, Gaschepay, Gaspay, and finally Gaspe in French
colonizer Nicolas Denys's Description ... de I'Amerique sep-
tentrionale, published in 1672.
In 1609, historian Marc Lescarbot listed Gachepe among
words of Native origin. Until recently, it was widely
accepted that Gaspe was derived from the Mi'kmaq
word gespeg, meaning 'end of the point of land,' a sug-
gestion advanced in 1833 by surveyor Joseph Hamel.
This was confirmed by Father Pacifique, who worked
among the Mi'kmaq at Restigouche, Que., in the early
years of the twentieth century, and who was described in
1928 by William F. Ganong, a New Brunswick natural
scientist, as the best living authority on the Mi'kmaq.
Ganong observed that the Mi'kmaq often adopted
foreign names of prominent places, but he concluded
that there was ample evidence Gaspe was from the
Mi'kmaq language, expressing the idea of the 'last place
of a territory.'
108 Naming Canada
Ganong also considered 'Aspy/ in the name Aspy Bay,
near Cape North on the east side of Cape Breton Island,
to have the same origin as Gaspe. Selma Barkham has
recently endorsed this conclusion. However, in a 1985
study of fishermen's contributions to early east-coast car-
tography and toponymy, she had concluded the name
meant 'beneath the headland' in Basque, but did draw
attention to Isle de Gaspey for Cape Breton Island on sev-
enteenth-century maps.
One of the early European names for the Island of
Newfoundland may have had a Basque connection. On
many sixteenth-century Portuguese maps, the name
Tierra de Bacalaos occurred in the area of the present
island. A seventeenth-century French writer, using the
form Isles de Bacaleo, attributed the name to the Basques.
A 1710 French document, from the Basque town of Saint-
Jean-de-Luz, claimed Basque fishermen were the first to
discover Newfoundland in the fifteenth century, and to
call it Bacallao, meaning 'cod.' Barkham has contended
that it is more likely the Basques borrowed the word
from the Portuguese. Ultimately, the English name New-
foundland supplanted the Portuguese/Basque name
about 1502. Nevertheless, the small Baccalieu Island, off
the north end of the Avalon Peninsula, two small islands
called Bacalhao - one near Twillingate, and the other out-
side Labrador's Hamilton Inlet - and Baccaro Point in
southwestern Nova Scotia are reminders of Portuguese/
Basque codfishing on Canada's east coast.
Near the southwest point of Newfoundland is the
well-known ferry terminal of Port aux Basques, now part
of the town of Channel-Port aux Basques. The Portu-
guese called the southwest point itself Cabo do Rei
('king's point'). When Captain James Cook surveyed the
west coast in 1767, he rendered the Portuguese name as
Cape Ray. Cook recorded the Basque variants Cap
Receiving and Exporting Names 109
d'Array and Cadarrai as Codroy, today reflected in several
local names, including Grand Codroy River.
Farther up the coast, the name Port au Port Bay is
derived from the Basque Ophorportu, explained by
Barkham as 'port of relaxation' or 'holiday port/ perhaps
suggesting calm waters in the area enclosed by the huge
hook of Port au Port Peninsula.
Continuing almost 250 kilometres to the northwest,
the bays and harbours were either unprotected or too
deep for the small Basque fishing craft to anchor safely.
The next surviving Basque name is Ingornachoix Bay,
from the Basque Aingura Charra, meaning 'bad anchor-
age.' North of the bay is the town of Port au Choix, on a
narrow isthmus joining Point Riche Peninsula to the
mainland. Selma Barkham reported that, when the fish-
ermen learned how to place buoys, a small harbour with
a narrow entrance on the outside of the peninsula
became Portuchoa, 'the little port,' while the present Back
Arm inside the peninsula became Portuchoa (^aharra, 'old
little port.' Cook adopted the French adaptation of the
name in 1767.
New Ferolle Peninsula, 40 kilometres farther north,
was named Ferrolgo Amuixco Punta by the Basques, prob-
ably for El Ferrol in Spain's Galicia, where the whalers
spent the winter. It was called 'new' to distinguish it
from the original harbour of Ferolle, called Ferrol fyharra,
at present-day Plum Point, north of the peninsula.
In The Canadian Encyclopedia Rene Belanger suggested
a Basque origin for Mingan, on Quebec's North Shore
north of lie d'Anticosti. The Commission de toponymie
du Quebec, however, has concluded it is more likely a
Breton name, meaning 'rounded stone.' On the eastern
side of nearby lie Nue de Mingan, remains of ovens used
by the Basques to render whale blubber account for the
name Les Fourneaux, made official by the commission in
110 Naming Canada
1986. Other ovens may have been situated on La Grande
Basque and La Petite Basque, two of the seven islands at
Sept-lies. Baie du Havre aux Basques is at the south end
of the lies de la Madeleine. Anse aux Basques is a cove
near Chandler/55 kilometres south of Gaspe.
Basque fishing and whaling activities were especially
intense on the St. Lawrence where it is joined by the
Saguenay. Ten kilometres upriver is Anse du Chafaud
aux Basques, where Samuel de Champlain reported in
1612 he found Basque fishermen drying fish on their
echafauds ('scaffolds' or 'flakes'). Twenty-five kilometres
downriver from the mouth of the Saguenay is another
cove called Anse aux Basques.
Opposite the mouth of the Saguenay, and near Trois-
Pistoles on the east shore of the St. Lawrence, is lie aux
Basques. Several ovens on the island have been aban-
doned for some 350 years, but the locality name Les
Fourneaux remains on current maps. In 1981, the govern-
ment of Quebec created the regional county municipality
of Les Basques, with an area of 1,130 square kilometres
and a population of some 10,500. Trois-Pistoles is its
main urban centre. In 1996 the federal electoral district
of Kamouraska-Riviere-du-Loup became Kamouraska-
Riviere-du-Loup-Les Basques.
Several other names may have Basque roots, including:
Scatarie Island, offshore from Cape Breton Island, from
the Basque escatari, 'stacks/ reflected in a the offshore Cor-
morandiere Rocks, some as high as more than 6 metres;
Placentia, in Newfoundland, transplanted from the port
of that name (now Plencia) in the Basque country of
Spain, and confirmed, among others, by E.R. Seary in
Place Names of the Avalon Peninsula (1971); Burin Penin-
sula, also in Newfoundland, from the Basque word burua,
'head'; Cap Degrat, at the north end of Newfoundland's
Northern Peninsula, from the Basque word grat, meaning
Receiving and Exporting Names 111
a place where codfish is prepared; more than 140 places -
including Barachois-de-Malbaie, near Gaspe - incorpo-
rating the generic term 'barachois' or 'barasway/ derived
from the Basque barra-txo-a, meaning 'small bar'; and
finally, more than 100 names incorporating the Basque-
derived word orignal, used by the French to identify the
North American moose.
Spanish Names along Our West Coast
In 1596, an old sea captain called Juan de Fuca met
Michael Lok, an English trader, in Venice, and told a fan-
tastic tale of exploration and discovery along North
America's northwest coast four years earlier. The mari-
ner explained that he had been instructed by the Viceroy
of Mexico to seek the fabled Straits of Anian, a water
body believed to provide a convenient, practical sea pas-
sage between Europe and the Far East.
Nearly thirty years later, Lok's tale was recounted in
Purchas His Pilgrimes, a world history by Rev. Samuel
Purchas. Lok reported that the sea captain had claimed
to have discovered, between the 47th and 48th parallels,
a wide inlet leading into a broader sea with many
islands, and that there was 'an exceeding high Pinacle, or
spired Rocke, like a piller' at the entrance to the strait.
Some 150 years later, in 1778, when Capt. James Cook
explored the same coast, he missed the entrance because
bad weather forced him to sail north far from shore. Nine
years later, Capt. Charles W. Barkley, an English fur
trader, sailed by the entrance. Knowing about Lok's story,
he decided the name of the old seaman should be com-
memorated. The latter had been born loannis Phokas (not
Apostolos Valerianbs, as often reported) on the Greek
Island of Kefallinia (Cephalonia), but in the service of the
112 Naming Canada
Spanish for some forty years he bore the name of Juan
de Fuca. A year after Barkley's trip, Capt. John Meares
entered and charted the strait. He partially retained Bark-
ley's designation, giving it the name John de Fuca.
Thus Barkley and Meares made the Lok tale seem
authentic, although many historians and explorers there-
after wondered whether de Fuca had only woven a
clever tale, and that it was simply a matter of luck that
the area's geography partially fitted Lok's interpretation.
In 1792, Capt. George Vancouver used Straits of Juan de
Fuca on his chart, although he questioned the tale's
authenticity. Research by historians in Spanish and Mexi-
can archives has failed to reveal any evidence of Juan de
Fuca's voyage.
Capt. John Walbran, who knew the British Columbia
coast intimately and who studied its geographical names
thoroughly at the turn of the twentieth century, agreed
with Barkley's decision, declaring that de Fuca 'was
undoubtedly the discoverer of the strait which bears his
name.' Walbran went on to declare that a spire at the
entrance to the strait next to Tatooche Island in present-
day Washington state fitted the description by Lok, and
thus it received the name Fuca Pillar.
Curiously, the Geographic Board of Canada delayed
until 1934 its approval of the name of the water body
which forms Canada's boundary south of Victoria and
Vancouver Island, and then identified it as Juan de Fuca
Strait. The United States board approved the style Strait
of Juan de Fuca, so both forms occur on present-day
maps and charts.
During his voyage of discovery, Capt. Vancouver
became friends with the Spanish naval officer Juan Fran-
cisco de la Bodega y Quadra, and decided that the main
island on the west coast should be called Quadra and
Vancouver's Island. Ultimately the single name Vancou-
Receiving and Exporting Names 113
ver Island came into use. In 1903, the Geographic Board
of Canada named Quadra Island near Campbell River
for the Spaniard.
There were several Spanish voyages along Canada's
west coast from 1774 to 1792. Among the explorers
honoured with names of geographical features are Gon-
zales Lopez de Haro (Haro Strait), Alexandra Malaspina
(Malaspina Strait), Jacinto Caamano (Caamano Sound),
Dionisio Alcala Galiano (Galiano Island), and Cayetano
Valdes (Valdes Island). Cortes Island and Hernando
Island recall the conqueror of Mexico, Hernando Cortes.
Other noted Spanish officers and administrators com-
memorated include Pedro Alberni (Alberni Inlet), Luis de
Cordova (Cordova Bay), Manuel Antonio Flores (Flores
Island), Juan Maria Lasqueti (Lasqueti Island), Felix de
Texada (Texada Island), Vicente Tofino de San Miguel
(Tofino Inlet), and Ciriaco Ceballos (Zeballos Inlet).
Many Spanish names have been superseded, among
them Gran Canal de Nuestra Senora del Rosario la Mari-
nera for the present Strait of Georgia, Rio Florida Blanca
for Fraser River, Entrada de Juan Perez for Dixon
Entrance, Puerto de Revillagigedo for Sooke Inlet, Rada
de Valdes y Bazan for Royal Roads, and Bocas de Win-
thuysen for Nanaimo Harbour.
All told, Spanish exploration on Canada's west coast is
recalled by about 100 names. These names, from Alberni
to Juan de Fuca and Quadra, have provided us with a
rich toponymic heritage.
Hispanic-American Names across the Land
Spanish explorers contributed to Canada's toponymic
fabric on the Pacific coast, especially around Vancouver
Island. Some of the more than 100 names of Spanish
114 Naming Canada
origin on the west coast recall late eighteenth-century
exploration - from Juan de Fuca Strait to Port Alberni
and Malaspina Strait - and are reviewed on pages 111-
13. The community names Vittoria and Corunna and the
township names Mariposa, Oso, and Zorra, among
others, in Ontario recall battles between the British and
the French in Spain during the Peninsular War, 1808-14.
There are, however, a number of Canadian names that
have been derived from Hispanic sources in the Western
Hemisphere.
Situated on Ontario's Mississippi River, 45 kilometres
southwest of Ottawa, Almonte (pronounced 'AL-
MAWNT') is one of the province's prettiest urban settings
in the 5,000-population range. Founded in 1819 by David
Shepherd, Shepherd's Falls became Shipman's Mills in
1823 when Daniel Shipman bought the site, and built grist
and saw mills. In 1837, its post office was called Ramsay,
derived from Ramsay Township, and was located on the
west side of the river. The east side developed as Victori-
aville, named after the newly crowned queen. Ramsay
and Victoriaville were united in 1853 as Waterford, which
recalled the practice by men and horses of wading across
the river above the falls. As Waterford was already the
name of a place south of Hamilton, the postal inspector
rejected the proposal. Two local residents, John Haskins
and Col. J.D. Gemmill, suggested Almonte in 1856 for
Juan Nepomucene Almonte, the Mexican ambassador to
the United States. It appears they admired the ambassa-
dor for his fierce determination in promoting his coun-
try's rights at a time when there were widespread fears of
American threats of expansion both to the north and to
the south. On 1 January 1998, Almonte joined with the
municipal townships of Pakenham and Ramsay to form
the town of Mississippi Mills.
Receiving and Exporting Names 115
Juan Almonte was born in 1804, a son of Jose Maria
Morelos, a leader of Mexico's independence movement
in the early 1800s, who was executed in 1815 for insur-
rection. His mother was Brigida Almonte, an Aztec. Edu-
cated by a French teacher in New Orleans, Almonte rose
to become a prominent military leader, fighting with dis-
tinction in several battles, including the Battle of the
Alamo in Texas, in 1836. As well as serving as Mexican
ambassador in Washington, he represented his country
in London and Paris, where he died in 1869.
Spanish River, the longest river flowing from the north
into Lake Huron, was first identified on a 1657 French
map as Aouechissaton. Over the following 170 years it
was identified as R Tortue ('turtle river'), Estiaghicks, and
R. Eskimanitigon. In 1822, British Admiralty surveyor
Henry Wolsey Bayfield was the first to refer to it as Span-
ish River.
Several theories have evolved to explain the origins of
the name. One record suggests it was given by Bayfield
in contrast to nearby French River. Dr. J.J. Bigsby, a geolo-
gist with the Canadian Boundary Commission, passed
along the shores of Georgian Bay in 1823, and wrote in
his The Shoe and Canoe that the area had been occupied by
Spanish Indians. There is a claim that a Spaniard from
the lower Mississippi during the old fur-trade days took
refuge north of Lake Huron, and married an Ojibwa
woman. Another tale claims an Ojibwa raiding party
ventured far to the south, and returned with a Spanish
woman. She married an Ojibwa chief, with the family
taking on the surname L'Espagnol, with that evolving
into Espaniel, a family name among the present-day
Ojibwa. Another anecdote claims an Ojibwa chief, Span-
ish by birth, was captured by the Indians at a young age,
and later married the daughter of a chief. When he
116 Naming Canada
became a chief he was assigned the area of the Spanish
River as his hunting grounds, with the name recalling his
roots. In the mid-1980s two Mexican coins minted in
1742 were found near the town of Massey, near the
mouth of Spanish River, leading to speculation that they
were lost by Spanish-speaking voyageurs.
The Spanish River Pulp and Paper Company built a
mill in 1899, and called the place Espanola, meaning
'Spanish woman.' Purchased by the Abitibi Power and
Paper in 1928, the mill was closed down during the
Depression. Restructured as a prisoner-of-war camp in
1940, the mill was reopened in 1943 by the Kalamazoo
Vegetable Parchment Paper Company, after the closing
of the camp. Espanola was a company town until it was
incorporated as a town in 1958. It now has a population
of about 5,350.
The community of Toledo, Ont., 30 kilometres north-
east of Brockville, had at least four other names before its
post office was given this name in 1856. It may have been
called after the Ohio city, but it may also have been
named after the noted Spanish city.
More than one place in Canada was called California in
the mid-1800s, when men heard the call to join in a gold
rush while others set out to open new farming settle-
ments; these were then labelled as though they might be
sources of considerable fortune, but as likely were named
in derision, as they failed to provide instant wealth. At
least three settlements in New Brunswick were called Cal-
ifornia, but only the adjoining communities of Upper and
Lower California, near Perth-Andover, remain as testa-
ments to the search of fortunes during hard times. Two
settlements in Eastern Ontario were also called California,
but both have long ago been reclaimed by forests.
Two places in Saskatchewan have interesting origins
with a Hispanic-American flavour. The village of Val-
Receiving and Exporting Names 117
paraiso, in the north-central part of the province, was
named in 1904 when the Canadian Northern Railway
was constructed from Portage la Prairie to Prince Albert.
The name was proposed by postmaster George Green
after the seaport city in Chile. That place had been
named after a village in Spain. Situated only 10 kilome-
tres from the towns of Tisdale, to the east, and Star City,
to the west, Valparaiso never became a large urban cen-
tre, declining from 110 people in 1941 to only 30 in the
1990s. However, it continues to have a village council
with a mayor and two councillors.
The town of Alameda in southeastern Saskatchewan,
55 kilometres east of Estevan, was named in 1883 by
Christian Royer after the California city on the south side
of Oakland. He had briefly visited California in the
1850s, but returned to Canada and took up land at the
site of the village.
Spaniards Bay, Nfld., a town on the west side of Con-
ception Bay, is located on a narrow cove called Span-
iard's Bay The bay's name was noted in 1610 by pioneer
settler John Guy. It may have been given by English fish-
ermen, who likely grouped Portuguese, Basques, and
Spaniards under the single ethnonym. The town of Pasa-
dena, Nfld., northeast of the city of Corner Brook, was
named in the late 1930s after the city in southern Califor-
nia. This name is not, as might be presumed, derived
from the Spanish language. It was devised in 1874 from
the Chippewa (Ojibwa) language of the American Mid-
west, and means 'crown of the valley.'
Eldorado, Ont., the site of a gold rush in the late 1860s,
is located in Hastings County, north of Belleville. Subse-
quently dolomite, hematite, marble, slate, and talc were
mined in the area. Meaning 'the gilded one' in Spanish,
the name refers to the mythical city of gold in South
America. The community of Cordova Mines, northeast
118 Naming Canada
of Eldorado, was named in 1900, when a gold mine was
opened there by the Cordova Mining Company. The
company's name may have been given in honour of the
Spanish city of Cordoba, noted for its fine gold- and
silver-filigree ornaments.
Plumas, Man., is a small community near Neepawa.
Originally named Richmond in 1879, it was renamed
eight years later by postmaster James Anderson, who
had arrived there in 1878 from Plumas County, Califor-
nia. In Latin the name means 'feather/ The area of the
California county is renowned for its birds with beautiful
plumage.
The famous Bonanza Creek, in the Yukon, was first
known as Rabbit Creek. When gold was discovered in it
in 1896 by George Carmack, Skookum Jim Mason and
Tagish Charlie, Carmack proposed naming it after the
Spanish word for rich ore deposits. Its largest tributary,
Eldorado Creek, was named later that year by miner
Knut Halstead.
Crimean Victories Commemorated across Canada
In 1854, in support of Turkey, Britain and France
declared war on Russia. An expedition, under the allied
command of Lord Raglan and General Saint-Arnaud,
was mounted from Varna (in present-day Bulgaria) to
destroy the Russian naval base at Sevastopol.
After landing on the west coast of the Crimean Penin-
sula on 14 September 1854, the allied forces engaged the
Russians in a bloody battle at Alma, and moved on to
Sevastopol, where they wintered after costly engage-
ments at Balaklava and Inkerman.
The war continued through 1855, with the allies
destroying Kinburn, the Russian base at the mouth of the
Receiving and Exporting Names 119
Dnieper, and the Russians taking Kars, in present-day
eastern Turkey, after a heroic defence by the British gen-
eral Fenwick Williams. In March 1856, Russia accepted
the Treaty of Paris which, among other terms, gave for-
mal recognition to the neutrality of the Black Sea.
The Crimean War has been commemorated in many
place names across Canada.
News of the victory at Alma reached Canada in late
October 1854 when the area of Riviere Saguenay near Lac
Saint-Jean was being surveyed. The surveyors named an
island in the river after the battle. The site ultimately
became the city of Alma, which today has a population
of 26,000. The territorial Alma Parish in New Brunswick
was named in 1855 by a person who, on observing the
site of the present village of Alma at the mouth of the
Salmon River, was reminded of the heights above the
Crimean battlefield of Alma. A community in Nova
Scotia, another in Ontario, and possibly a third in Prince
Edward Island were named Alma in honour of the vic-
tory in the Crimea.
The Battle of Balaklava was fought on 25 October 1854.
The name Balaclava was given to communities in Ren-
frew and Grey counties in Ontario, and Balaklava was
given to an island in Queen Charlotte Strait in British
Columbia.
The Russian army was defeated at Inkerman on 5
November 1854. A territorial parish in New Brunswick,
and a community in Dundas County, Ont., 40 kilometres
southeast of Ottawa, were named for the victory.
The city of Sevastopol was finally captured in Septem-
ber 1855 after a siege of nearly a year. The name Sebasto-
pol was given to a township in Renfrew County, Ont.
Two defences of Sevastopol, Malakoff, and Redan, are
recalled in the names of two small communities in
Ontario, one in Carleton County, the other in Leeds
120 Naming Canada
County. Malakoff, east of Moncton, N.B., was named by
a surveyor to commemorate the battle.
Outside the Crimea itself, an engagement in 1855 at
the mouth of the Dnieper River brought the name of the
fortress called Kinburn into prominence. Kinburn, in
Carleton County, Ont., became a post office at that time,
and was named for the allied assault. Another Kinburn
in Huron County, Ont., may have been named before
1855 for a place in Scotland.
The valiant defence of Kars by General Fenwick Will-
iams occurred when the community of Wellington on the
Rideau River applied for a post office. As the illustrious
hero of Waterloo had been already commemorated else-
where in Upper Canada, the name Kars was given to this
little place 30 kilometres south of Ottawa. A territorial
parish in New Brunswick and a township in Northern
Ontario were also named Kars, and in 1888 Karsdale was
given as a postal name in Nova Scotia.
General Williams, the great hero of Kars, was born in
Annapolis Royal, N.S. He became commander-in-chief of
British forces in North America in 1859, and from 1865 to
1867 was lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia. He was
honoured in Nova Scotia with the community names
Port Williams in Kings County and Fenwick in Cumber-
land County, as well as Fenwick Township beside Kars
Township in Northern Ontario.
Also in Ontario: Varna, a community in Huron
County, south of Goderich, recalls the Black Sea port
where the allied forces gathered in 1854 for the expedi-
tion to the Crimea; Odessa, a community in Lennox and
Addington County, is a reminder of an April 1854 bom-
bardment of the prominent Black Sea port; and Kertch, a
small place in Lambton County between London and
Sarnia, commemorates an 1855 battle at the eastern end
of the Crimea.
Receiving and Exporting Names 121
Brudenell Township in Renfrew County, Ont, Cardi-
gan Strait in the Arctic, and Cardigan Rocks in Queen
Charlotte Strait, B.C., recall James Brudenell, Seventh
Earl of Cardigan, the leader of the famous charge of the
Light Brigade at Balaklava.
Raglan Township in Renfrew County, Ont.; the com-
munity of Raglan in the city of Oshawa, Ont.; Raglan
Range on Melville Island, N.W.T.; and Raglan Point on
Balaklava Island in British Columbia were all given for
James Henry Fitzroy Somerset, Lord Raglan, who died of
cholera at the siege of Sevastopol in 1855.
Two other points of Balaklava Island were given
names after officers: Nolan Point for Captain Edward
Louis Nolan, who carried the order for the charge of the
Light Brigade and was killed at the Battle of Balaklava;
and Scarlett Point for Sir James York Scarlett, who led the
charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaklava. Adjoining Bal-
aklava Island are Lucan Islands, which recall George
Charles Bingham, Third Earl of Lucan, a commander of
cavalry in the Crimean War. Lucan, a village 25 kilome-
tres northwest of London, Ont., is also believed to have
been named for him.
Griffith Township, adjacent to Sebastopol Township, in
Renfrew County, probably honours the leader of the
Scots Greys at the Battle of Balaklava, Colonel Henry
Darby Griffith.
Cathcart in Brant County, Ont., was named for Sir
George Cathcart, who was killed at the Battle of Inker-
man in 1854.
St. Arnaud Hills on Melville Island, Nun., recalls the
commander-in-chief of the French army, Marshal Jacques
A. Leroy de Saint-Arnaud, who became ill at the Battle of
Balaklava and died at sea in 1854.
Canrobert, a Canadian Pacific railway point in Ange-
Gardien, 16 kilometres southwest of Granby, Que., and
122 Naming Canada
Canrobert Hills on Melville Island, Nun., were named
for General Francois Certain Canrobert, who had suc-
ceeded Marshal Saint-Arnaud at the Battle of Balaklava.
The commander of the French fleet during the
Crimean War was Admiral Ferdinand Alphonse Hame-
lin. He was honoured with the name Mount Hamelin on
Melville Island, Nun. Hamelin's second in command,
Admiral Bruat, is remembered in Mount Bruat, also on
Melville Island.
Many thousands of soldiers died in the Crimea from
untended wounds and disease. Into the horrible carnage
came the indomitable founder of modern nursing, Flo-
rence Nightingale, who earned a reputation for her pro-
found dedication to caring for the wounded and to
improving sanitary conditions in field hospitals.
The community of Florence in Lambton County, Ont.,
was named for the Italian city in 1856, having been ear-
lier called Zone Mills and Victoria. It may be more than
coincidence in the naming of this place that the heroic
'lady with the lamp' gave the name Florence promi-
nence. The village of Florenceville, the 'frozen french
fries capital' in New Brunswick, received its name from
the Angel of Crimea in 1855, having been earlier called
Buttermilk Creek. About 1865, two adjacent elevations in
the Coast Mountains of British Columbia were named
Mount Florence and Mount Nightingale. The commu-
nity of Nightingale, between Calgary and Drumheller,
Alta., was named in 1911 in honour of the illustrious
nurse.
Numerous streets and avenues commemorate the vic-
tories and officers of the Crimean War, among them
being Raglan Street, the main street in Renfrew, Ont., and
Alma Street in Vancouver.
Surprisingly, the most prominent name of the war,
Crimea, was not applied to a Canadian feature. Nor was
Receiving and Exporting Names 123
Yalta, the Crimean resort community made famous as
the meeting place of the allied victors of the Second
World War.
Ladysmith to Mafeking: Names from South Africa
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Anglo-Boer War
became the first war to be fought in the daily press
around the world, as well as across the veld and on the
kopjes of South Africa. From Monday to Friday, Can-
ada's daily newpapers devoted their front pages to the
hard-fought victories and the bloody defeats of Britain's
military forces in their struggle to conquer the smaller,
but better-led Boer forces. Two, and sometimes three,
pages of the Saturday editions reported extensively on
the marches, the sieges, the hardships, and the horrors of
war, and each story was accompanied by numerous pho-
tographs of Britain's gallant officers.
War correspondent Winston Churchill launched his
momentous career in South Africa. He was often right in
the thick of the fighting, and even preceded the divisions
of Field Marshal Frederick Roberts in the capture of Pre-
toria on 5 June 1900. During that year, both his name and
a church on a hillside 15 kilometres west of Charlotte-
town prompted postal authorities to accept Churchill as
the name of a new post office. Although the office lasted
for only thirteen years, the little community of some fifty
people still remains.
The taking of Pretoria was barely heralded in the
press. Other than a school district in Manitoba and a
street or bridge in a few cities, Pretoria was not assigned
to Canadian geographical features. In contrast, the 118-
day siege of Ladysmith, from 30 October 1899 to 28 Feb-
ruary 1900, was front and centre almost every day. The
heroic stories filed from Ladysmith won considerable
124 Naming Canada
sympathy around the world, especially in the countries
of the British Empire.
The little Natal village, 200 kilometres northwest of
Durban, and on the road to Johannesburg, had been
named in 1850 for the Spanish-born wife of Governor Sir
Harry Smith. In 1812, Juana Maria de los Dolores de
Leon had escaped to the British lines during a battle at
Badajoz, met the then Captain Smith, and later that year,
at the young age of fourteen, married him. During
Smith's long military and civil career, she accompanied
him to Asia, Africa, and North America.
When news of the relief of Ladysmith reached Canada
on 1 March 1900, James Dunsmuir, a coal-mining opera-
tor at Oyster Harbour on Vancouver Island (he was later
a lieutenant governor of the province), named the settle-
ment Ladysmith, and the post office was renamed later
that year. The town now has a population of some 5,000.
Upper Thorne Centre post office in Quebec's Pontiac
County was changed to Ladysmith on 1 March 1900.
At present the rural community has a population of
nearly 100. Another Ladysmith post office was opened
on 1 April 1900, 20 kilometres south of Sarnia, Ont., but
the office was closed in 1912, and the name subsequently
dropped out of use.
In 1913, the Surveyor General of Ontario named
Ladysmith Township, north of Dryden in northwestern
Ontario. Five adjoining townships were given names for
other prominent South African places and British officers
in the news: Colenso, Mafeking, Redvers, Buller, and
Wauchope.
Colenso, southeast of Ladysmith, Natal, had been
named in 1855 for Anglican bishop John William
Colenso. In 1879, when Sir Garnet Wolseley defeated the
Zulus near Colenso, a post office was opened with this
name, 25 kilometres northeast of Owen Sound, Ont. It
Receiving and Exporting Names 125
was closed in 1915, and the name is now unknown
locally.
The siege of Mafeking lasted for 217 days, from 13
October 1899 to 16 May 1900. Its defence was managed
brilliantly by Colonel Robert Baden-Powell. The place
name was derived from a Tswana word meaning 'place
of rocks/ and is now officially spelled Mafikeng. Mafe-
king post office was opened on 15 June 1900, 20 kilome-
tres north of Goderich, Ont. The office was closed in 1915,
and, although the name remains in official use, the cen-
sus has not recorded anyone living there in recent years.
In the early years of the twentieth century, the Cana-
dian Northern Railway extended its line from Swan
River, Man., to Prince Albert, Sask., and named three of
its stations in Manitoba Mafeking, Baden, and Powell.
Mafeking is now a community of 275 people, but neither
Baden nor Powell has more than a dozen homes.
Near Matachewan, in Ontario's Timiskaming District,
Baden Township adjoins Powell Township. Baden-
Powell Lake in Algonquin Park, was name by London,
Ont., scouts in 1969, after Robert Baden-Powell, the
former military leader and distinguished founder of the
Boy Scout movement.
In 1906, the Canadian Northern Railway built another
line west of Swan River, Man., to Norquay and Sturgis,
Sask. A station 25 kilometres southwest of Swan River
was called Durban, for the largest city in Natal (now offi-
cially called Natal-KwaZulu). The city had been named
for Sir Benjamin D'Urban, who had served as governor
and commander-in-chief of British territories in South
Africa from 1834 to 1838. A decade later he was
appointed commander of the imperial forces in Canada,
and died in Montreal in 1849.
Natal, a community in the District Municipality of
Sparwood, B.C., and at the west side of the Crowsnest
126 Naming Canada
Pass, was given its name during the Anglo-Boer War
by the Canadian Pacific Railway. Natal Township, in
Ontario's Sudbury District, was named in 1913 by the
province's surveyor general.
Sir Redvers Duller was a popular, but indecisive mili-
tary commander during the war in South Africa. Red-
vers, a town in Saskatchewan, 105 kilometres northeast
of Estevan, was named in 1901. It grew from 843 people
in 1981 to 937 in 1991, in contrast with decreased popula-
tions by most Saskatchewan towns of its size during the
same period. Wauchope is on the Canadian Pacific Rail-
way, 15 kilometres west of Redvers. It was named for
Gen. Andrew Wauchope, a Scot who commanded the
Highland Brigade at the Battle of Magersfontein, where
he was killed on 11 December 1899.
One of the most crushing defeats of the British by the
Boer forces, led by Gen. Louis Botha, took place at Spion
Kop (meaning 'lookout hill'), 15 kilometres south of
Ladysmith. A hill at the mining village of Phoenix, B.C.,
between the cities of Grand Forks and Greenwood, was
named Spion Kop. And Spionkop Ridge and Spionkop
Creek are in southwestern Alberta.
Louis Botha served as prime minister of the Union of
South Africa from 1910 to 1919. His wise and tolerant
leadership in melding the British and the Boers was
widely hailed. In 1909, the Canadian Pacific Railway
gave the name Botha to a station, 13 kilometres east of
Stettler, Alta. On the same line a station was named
Veldt, from the Afrikaans word Veld/ literally meaning
field, but used in general to describe an open, grassy
landscape. In 1916, Botha River in northwestern Alberta
was called after the South African statesman.
Jan Christiaan Smuts, another Boer military leader,
succeeded Botha as prime minister of South Africa, and
subsequently became a distinguished statesman on the
Receiving and Exporting Names 127
world stage. In 1918, Mount Smuts, in the Rocky Moun-
tains, 90 kilometres southwest of Calgary, was named
when Smuts was a member of the British war cabinet.
When the Canadian Northern built a line in the 1920s
from Saskatoon to Melfort, a station 50 kilometres north-
east of Saskatoon was named Smuts.
Sir Alfred Milner was appointed British high commis-
sioner in South Africa in 1897, and two years later his
unwise decisions precipitated the events that led to the
outbreak of war between the British and the Boers. In
1902, he negotiated the peace with the Boers, and
returned to England three years later. Milner Township
in Ontario's Timiskaming District is 35 kilometres south
of Matachewan. The community of Milner in British
Columbia's District Municipality of Langley was named
for him. In Vancouver Island's Prince of Wales Range,
northwest of Campbell River, the 1,310-metre high
Mount Milner was named for Viscount Milner. In the
same range, Mount Roberts was named after Field Mar-
shal Frederick Roberts, who replaced Redvers Buller as
the commander of the British forces in South Africa in
1899, and Mount Kitchener was given for Lord Herbert
Kitchener, Roberts's chief of staff. Mount Roberts, near
the 49th parallel west of Rossland, B.C., was also named
for the field marshal.
Few persons are more prominent in the history of
southern Africa than Cecil John Rhodes, who distin-
guished himself in the development of the Kimberley
diamond mines and, as a parliamentarian and an imperi-
alist, vigorously pursued the creation of a 'British domin-
ion from the Cape to Cairo.' A township in Ontario's
Sudbury District was named for him, and nearby town-
ships were called after Roberts, Kitchener, and Botha.
Mount Rhodes is in the Rocky Mountains adjacent to the
Clemenceau Icefield in British Columbia. It is near
128 Naming Canada
Mount Livingstone and Mount Stanley, named in 1927
for those illustrious explorers of the 'dark continent/
David Livingstone, a Scottish missionary and Henry
Stanley, an American newspaper reporter.
Kimberley, B.C., a city of 6,530 in the Purcell Mountains,
may have been named about 1897 by Col. William Rid-
path, of Spokane, Wash. Presumably he had hoped that
the mines bought the previous year by his mining syndi-
cate would be as rich as those of South Africa's Kimberley.
Except for Ladysmith, Que., South African names rep-
licated in Canada were confined to Ontario and the four
western provinces. In Atlantic Canada, the naming pro-
cess of geographical features had been largely complete
by 1900. In Quebec, there was little sympathy for the
names of a faraway war involving the suppression of a
minority racial group seeking to assert its independence
from the British Crown. And in the North, where almost
no South African names were assigned, the events of the
Anglo-Boer War were probably unknown to the turn-of-
the-century explorers until well after their front-page
publicity.
On the Western Front: Names from
First World War Battles
Few European names are more honoured in Canada than
Vimy. And rare is the city, town, or village that does not
have a First World War monument with Vimy proudly
displayed among the French and Belgian names of
places where fierce and bloody battles were fought and
more than 60,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders lost
their lives. Across Canada, more than 125 mountain,
lake, river, township, village, and street names are per-
petual reminders of these places.
Receiving and Exporting Names 129
Near the France-Belgium border, 125 kilometres south-
west of Brussels and 160 kilometres north of Paris, Cana-
dian soldiers valiantly fought with the Western Allies
against German forces. They took part in many battles
during the four-year war, but it was their capture of Vimy
Ridge in April 1917, with 3,598 Canadian lives lost, that
hastened Canada's elevation to equal partnership among
the nations of the world.
In Ontario, the military barracks at Kingston is named
Vimy; a locality 60 kilometres east of Timmins is called
Vimy Ridge; and Vimy Ridge Island is in Lake of Bays
near Huntsville, Ont. As well, thirty-five towns and cities
from St. John's, Nfld., to Duncan, B.C., have a street
named Vimy.
Several townships in Quebec recall other Western
Front battle sites, including six near Val d'Or: Vimy,
Denain, Ypres, Cambrai, Lens, and Festubert. Many lakes
and rivers in the same part of the province also reflect the
names of engagements and skirmishes: Yser, Douai,
Arras, Loos, St-Pol, Flanders, Courcelette, Courtrai,
Langemarck, Messines, Poperinghe, Farbus, Verdun,
Somme, Givenchy, Bruges, Armentieres, and Amiens.
At Canadian Forces Base Valcartier, west of Quebec
City, there are mountains named for Vimy, Mont Sorrel,
and Cambrai, and a river named after the Battle of the
Somme, where more than 24,000 Canadians lost their
lives in the summer and fall of 1916. The military post
office on the base is called Courcelette, honouring a vic-
torious Canadian advance in September 1916.
Vimy is also the name of a hamlet 65 kilometres north
of Edmonton, and there is an imposing crest named
Vimy Ridge in Waterton Lakes National Park in south-
western Alberta. The crest's steep northern flank is called
Vimy Peak.
In Wells Gray Provincial Park, north of Kamloops,
130 Naming Canada
B.C., a few features also recall the sites of battles - Vimy
Lakes, Vimy Ridge, and two creeks named Lys and
Fleurbaix.
In the Canadian Rockies, Valenciennes River, Flanders
Mountain, Mons Peak, and Verdun Glacier recall battles
and actions on the Western Front.
During the First World War, the highlands 115 kilome-
tres east of Edmundston, N.B., were opened for settle-
ment. A French-speaking community there, which was
called Anderson Siding until 1920, changed its name to
St-Quentin to honour a battle that took place in 1918. St-
Quentin is now a village of 2,300, serving a large farming
and logging region.
In 1915, H.G. Richards of Saskatchewan was killed
during the Battle of Hooge in Belgium. In the 1950s, his
brother proposed that a new customs post 140 kilometres
south of Swift Current be named Hooge. Officials liked
the spirit of Richards's idea but instead of Hooge they
chose the name Monchy, a place near Hooge where a
decisive battle in the breaking of the Hindenberg Line
took place in 1918.
Messines, Que., 100 kilometres north of Ottawa, was
named in 1921, replacing the name Burbridge, which had
been given for the federal deputy minister of justice who
had prosecuted Louis Riel in 1885. Messines, Belgium,
was the site of important offensives in 1917 and 1918.
Armentieres, as in the marching song 'Mademoiselle
from Armentieres/ is a French town on the Belgian border
where a number of engagements took place. It appears
twice on the British Columbia coast: as the name of a
channel on the west side of the Queen Charlotte Islands
and as the name of a rock on the west side of Vancouver
Island, 45 kilometres southwest of Port Alberni.
Flanders, Belgium, the scene of many First World War
battles, is the name of a township in Northern Ontario, a
Receiving and Exporting Names 131
railway siding 255 kilometres west of Thunder Bay, and a
locality 25 kilometres east of Sherbrooke, Que. The
French form, Flandre, occurs as a township in Pontiac
County, Que., and is near Artois, a township named after
a region in France.
Several townships across Northern Ontario also derive
their names from the battles and engagements that took
place along the Western Front. Among them are Verdun,
Langemarck, Marne, Mons, Somme, and St. Julien.
One name almost always seen on First World War
monuments is Passchendaele, the site of some of the
war's worst slaughters. In 1931, the Post Office Depart-
ment gave the name to its Dominion No. 4 office on Cape
Breton Island. In 1940, the office became Glace Bay Sub
Office No. 3, but Passchendaele remains the name of a
neighbourhood in Glace Bay, N.S.
Only one Western Front battle name appears north of
the 60th parallel, and that is Somme Creek in the Yukon,
about 260 kilometres northwest of Whitehorse.
Heavenly Places from Coast to Coast
Giving names suggesting perfection on earth, or greater
beauty than actually exists, is as old as civilization. Wit-
ness the biblical naming of Canaan, the land of milk and
honey; or the naming of Greenland by Eric the Red in the
tenth century.
There are names from one end of Canada to the other
that reveal this seeking for perfection, for a heaven on
earth, for some sort of never-never land. Perhaps the
people who assign such names hope that an ordinary,
even ugly, place will seem more beautiful, and thus a bet-
ter place to live. Others may give such names as an ironic
twist, knowing that the place has few good qualities.
132 Naming Canada
In about 1670, Nicolas Denys, the governor of Acadia,
was delayed by inclement weather for a week at the
mouth of a stream flowing into Northumberland Strait,
30 kilometres northeast of present-day Moncton. He did
not consider his stay unpleasant and called the stream
'Riviere de Cocagne/ Cocagne River recalls the fabled
'Land of Cockagne/ which was described in a thirteenth-
century English satire as a mythical land of good food
and happy times.
As early as 1684, the French called a section of the
Annapolis Valley Taradis terrestre/ Subsequently, when
the English arrived in the 1760s, they gave the name Par-
adise Brook to a tributary of the Annapolis River. The
adjoining communities of Paradise and West Paradise,
8 kilometres east of Bridgetown, have together about
575 people.
Although it is a region with extensive rocky land-
scapes and an often harsh climate, Newfoundland has
more places called Paradise than any other province. The
town of Paradise is 12 kilometres west of St. John's.
There is another community with the same name about
50 kilometres north of Grand Falls-Windsor, and a third
on the Labrador coast near Hopedale. Paradise River is a
community about 200 kilometres east of Happy Valley-
Goose Bay, Labrador. Thirteen physical features, such as
Paradise Arm, Paradise Cove, and Paradise Sound, are
similarly blessed.
Quebec has more than fifty features named Paradis,
but many may have been derived from personal names.
Ontario has fifteen lakes, points, and other features
named Paradise. The pleasantly named Cootes Paradise,
a marsh in the Hamilton suburb of Dundas, was named
in the late 1700s for Thomas Coote, a British officer and
keen sportsman.
The village of Paradise Hill, with a population of 455,
Receiving and Exporting Names 133
is located 45 kilometres northeast of Lloydminster, Sask.
This is the only 'paradise' in Saskatchewan; Manitoba
has none, but Alberta has five, and British Columbia,
twenty. In the Yukon, there is a Paradise Creek, named in
1903 for its attractive setting.
References to the biblical 'Garden of Eden' occur in
several Canadian names. Garden of Eden and Eden Lake
in Pictou County, N.S., were named in 1830 when the
area was settled by William McDonald, nicknamed
Adam. Mount Adam north of the lake was named for
him. The contradictory Garden of Eden Barrens is
located south of the lake.
Ontario has fifteen features with Eden, including Eden
Mills, Edenvale, Glen Eden, and two places called Eden
Grove. Manitoba has five communities with Eden,
including Edenburg, 20 kilometres west of Emerson, and
Eden, 15 kilometres north of Neepawa.
There are four places with Eden in Saskatchewan.
However, one of them, Edenbridge, does not get its first
element from the biblical garden, but from the Yiddish
plural of 'Jew/ as the place was originally a Jewish settle-
ment. Edenwold, a village 35 kilometres northeast of
Regina, named in 1890 by Austrian settlers, combines the
biblical Eden with the German wald meaning 'forest';
postal authorities misread the 'a/ Alberta has two fea-
tures with Eden, a lake and a First Nations reserve.
British Columbia has seven names with Eden combi-
nations. Eden Mountain on Vancouver Island is adjacent
to mountains named for Cain and Abel. The village of
Kaleden in the Okanagan Valley was named in 1909 by
Walter Russell, selecting the first element from the Greek
word meaning 'beautiful/ and the second from the bibli-
cal garden.
There are six features in the Northwest Territories with
Eden, but only one, Eden Island, has any relation to the
134 Naming Canada
biblical garden, the others being personal names. The
island in Frobisher Bay was named in 1960 in association
with a hydrographic station called Eve located there.
In about 1783, a surveyor called Buffington drew up a
survey plan near the mouth of the Magaguadavic River
in present-day New Brunswick, and lots were granted. It
was subsequently discovered that a large lake existed
where many of the lots were shown on the plan. Either
Capt. Peter Clinch or Lt.-Gov. Thomas Carleton is re-
ported to have said that the possibility of acquiring the
grants in the lake was comparable to that of achieving
the perfection described in Sir Thomas More's Utopia,
and therefore assigned it the name Lake Utopia.
Twelve kilometres west of Barrie, Ont., is the small
community of Utopia, named in the 1840s for More's fic-
tional island. Utopia Lake, 40 kilometres north of Van-
couver, was the site of the Utopia copper claim filed in
1908. Perhaps it was named because the lake is the
utmost source of Britannia Creek and is nestled in a val-
ley almost perfectly round.
Heaven occurs in four names in Ontario, including
Blue Heaven Lake and Little Heaven Island, but is not an
element in names elsewhere in Canada. There are three
features with 'del' in Quebec. More common are those
with Valhalla, the Norse palace where the souls of slain
heroes feast. Ontario has four Valhallas, including two
called Valhalla Lake. Two communities, one in Manitoba
and another in Alberta, are known by the name of Val-
halla. In British Columbia, the word occurs in six names,
including Valhalla Ranges, northwest of Nelson. Several
other names in the ranges reflect a Norse theme. Valhalla
Mountain on Baffin Island is near several other moun-
tains named in association with Norse mythology.
Nirvana, a Sanskrit word suggesting a perfect state,
occurs in two names in Canada. Lac Nirvana is in
Receiving and Exporting Names 135
Quebec's Pare de la Verendrye. Nirvana Pass is in British
Columbia's Pantheon Range, which has many features
named for mythological gods.
Achieving harmony in any community is difficult, but
Nova Scotia has three places with the word, including
Harmony Mills in Queens County. Prince Edward Island
has a place called New Harmony.
In 1901, a Finnish Utopian community was established
on Malcolm Island, between Vancouver Island and the
mainland, and named Sointula (Finnish for 'harmony').
Although the colony was disbanded in 1905, today Soin-
tula is a fishing village with a population of about 675.
And then there are the heavenly names given by real
estate developers...
Canadian Names around the World
From Abilene and Buckingham to Valparaiso and Zur-
ich, Canada has been a great importer of place names.
Little known, however, is Canada's export of place
names to other countries. Some of them, such as Ingle-
wood, had been previously brought from the Old World
to Canada. But most names carried to other countries -
mainly to the United States and Australia - are genuine
'home-made' Canadian names. Some, like Canada and
Quebec, have even found their way back to the British
Isles and France.
On the Island of Bute in Scotland, Canada Hill over-
looks the mouth of the Firth of Clyde. From this vantage
point, islanders used to watch vessels carrying friends
and relatives to 'exile' across the Atlantic.
On the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, adjoining the
Royal Courts of justice in central London, is a footpath
called Canada Walk. Canada Way in Hammersmith,
136 Naming Canada
5 kilometres west of London's Marble Arch, is part of a
1930s housing development that includes Common-
wealth Avenue and Australia Road.
New Canada is a major rail junction just southwest of
Johannesburg, South Africa. When and why the name
was chosen is unknown to the names authority in that
country.
On the Paramatta River in Sydney, Australia, is Can-
ada Bay. This is where a party of French Canadians was
exiled in 1839 after the aborted rebellions of 1837-8 in
Lower Canada.
In the United States, Little Canada is a northern sub-
urb of St. Paul, Minn. Settled in the 1840s by Benjamin
Gervais and other French Canadians from Lower Can-
ada, Little Canada became a township in 1858, a village
in 1953, and a city in 1974. Today the suburb has a popu-
lation of 8,000.
The names of Canada's two largest provinces are well
represented in Europe and the United States. Ontario, a
city of 100,000 people, located 55 kilometres east of Los
Angeles, was founded in 1882 by George and William B.
Chaffey, who were born in Brockville, Ont. Their success
in developing irrigation projects for the citrus industry in
San Bernardino County led to an invitation in 1887 to
undertake similar work in Australia.
Ontario, Ore. (population 9,000), is situated on the
west side of the Snake River - the Columbia River's larg-
est tributary - 65 kilometres northwest of Boise, Idaho.
It was named in about 1883 by James W. Virtue for
his native province. Although Virtue was one of the
founders of the town, he actually settled 120 kilometres
northwest of there in Baker, where he became the sheriff.
Quebec is a popular designation for places and streets
in France, England, the United States, and Mexico. Jean
Poirier, the dean of Quebec toponymy, has counted fifty-
Receiving and Exporting Names 137
one 'Quebec' streets and roads in France alone. In 1980,
the city of Paris named Place du Quebec in its Latin
Quarter in honour of the close ties between France and
Quebec. In Acapulco, Mexico, the Plaza de Quebec was
inaugurated in 1983 as a sign of friendship between the
citizens of Acapulco and the people of Quebec.
Quebec is also a village 8 kilometres west of Durham
in northern England. This authentic Canadian name first
appeared as the name of a farm on a British topographi-
cal survey map in 1862. The mists of time have obscured
the reason why the name was given.
Eighty kilometres southeast of Nashville, Tenn., is an
unincorporated village called Quebeck. The unusual
spelling was given in 1889 by J.S. Cooper, the town's
founder, who constructed a sawmill there. The name was
inspired by Cooper's travels in Quebec, where he was
impressed with the province's lumber industry.
Toronto may be the most common Canadian name
transferred abroad. The best-known is Toronto, Ohio, a
city of 7,000 on the Ohio River, 50 kilometres west of
Pittsburgh. It was named in 1881 by Thomas M. Daniels
in honour of the home city of W.F. Dunspaugh, the chief
stockholder of the Great Western Fire Clay Company,
then a principal industry in eastern Ohio.
In 1844, George W. Thorn, a native of Ontario's capital,
founded the village of Toronto, Iowa, about 40 kilome-
tres northwest of Davenport. There are a number of
smaller American centres named Toronto, in Indiana,
Kansas, Missouri, and Tennessee.
There is also a town called Toronto in New South
Wales, Australia, 140 kilometres north of Sydney. Ac-
cording to the philatelic journal The Canadian Connection,
it was named in 1888 to mark a visit that year by Ned
Hanlan, the Ontario-born world sculling champion in
1880. The town is located on Lake Macquarie, Australia's
138 Naming Canada
largest permanent salt lake, which is noted for its water
sports.
Montreal, Canada's second-largest metropolitan area,
is the name of two small communities in Arkansas and
Missouri. There is also a city of 900 called Montreal in
Wisconsin; it is near the Montreal River, which forms
part of the Wisconsin-Michigan boundary.
Incidentally, none of the places called Ottawa in the
United States traces its origin back to Canada's capital.
American cities such as Ottawa, 111., and Ottawa, Kans.,
were named for the Ottawa (now known as the Odawa),
who migrated from the area north of Lake Huron to the
American Midwest.
Inglewood, Calif., is another Canadian export. Located
13 kilometres southwest of downtown Los Angeles, the
city of 725,000 is the home of the Great Western Forum,
where the National Hockey League's Los Angeles Kings
team plays its home games. Inglewood owes its origin to
a visit in 1887 by the sister-in-law of N.R. Vail, a devel-
oper. She lived in the little Ontario community and
railway junction nestled in the Credit River valley,
20 kilometres northwest of Brampton. Inglewood, Ont.,
was named in 1885 by Thomas White, the local member
of Parliament, after a place in England.
Except for a few street names in cities such as Atlanta,
Orlando, and Los Angeles, it as difficult to find any of
Western Canada's cities, towns, and villages repeated
outside of Canada. An exception is Klondike, which
occurs in several villages and townships throughout the
United States. At least one book, Michigan Place Names,
claims the name recalls the gold rush that took place in
the Klondike region of Alaska!
As I was completing research for this essay in 1994, an
acquaintance told me that an ancestor of his wife, a Sim-
coe, Ont., farmer and preacher named Abraham Austin,
Receiving and Exporting Names 139
built a Baptist church in 1884 at a crossroads 75 kilome-
tres north of Birmingham, Ala. First called Austin City, it
was renamed Simcoe that same year. The little village of
three churches and several houses still exists. I wonder
how many other Canadian names are dotted across the
United States and in other countries of the world?
Revealing Special Characteristics
of Place Names and Generic
Terms
Cities: Source of Pride, Broken Dreams
Teeming millions grow
And the anxious world rolls on;
Brilliant cities tall and wide
Boast their numbers and their pride.
-from the sonnet 'Liberty' by Archibald Lampman
For growing municipalities, the ultimate stamp of suc-
cess is to achieve city status. Indeed, in the past many
frontier communities added the title to their names to
give the impression of stability and permanence.
The exception is the province of Quebec. Since 1968, it
has used the term ville, not cite, to designate urban cen-
tres, be they cities or towns. Montreal and Quebec City
(officially, Quebec) were once known as cites, but there
are now only two incorporated cites in the province:
Cote-Saint-Luc and Dorval on the Island of Montreal.
Over the past eighty years, the number of incorpo-
rated cities in Canada has nearly doubled as a result of
increasing urbanization. That number would be tripled if
the 75 Quebec villes with more than 15,000 people were
included.
Most of Canada's 137 incorporated cities are in
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 141
Ontario and British Columbia, with 51 and 34 cities,
respectively. In 1911, there were 74, with British Colum-
bia leading the way with 25, followed by Ontario with 19
and Quebec with 10.
The most populous incorporated city in 1911 was
Montreal, with 470,500 inhabitants, followed by Toronto,
with 376,500. Although Toronto now is referred to as
Canada's largest city, it was technically in second place,
with a population of 635,395, in 1994. The largest city in
population then was Calgary, but on 1 January 1998, Tor-
onto became a city of 2,385,421 by absorbing the four cit-
ies and one borough surrounding it.
The city with the smallest population - 725 people - is
Greenwood, B.C., located near the United States border
east of the Okanagan Valley. In 1911, it had 778 people,
but it was not the least populated then. That year, the city
of Sandon in the West Kootenay had only 151 people,
down from about 5,000 when it was incorporated in
1898. Sandon is now a ghost 'city.'
Founded in 1785, Saint John, N.B., has the distinction
of being Canada's oldest city.
Timmins, Ont., covers the largest area of any Canadian
city, embracing several urban centres and vast expanses of
lakes, rivers, and unpopulated woodland over 3,000
square kilometres. The smallest city, with only 2.79 square
kilometres, had been Vanier, but it was amalgamated with
Ottawa on 1 January 2001. The smallest city in the area is
now Outremont, Que., with 3.67 square kilommetres.
No place with 'city' in its name is incorporated as
such. Labrador City, Nfld., a town of 9,061 people, is the
largest of these so-called cities. Others, such as King City,
Ont., and Crystal City, Man., have maintained the title in
their names with great pride and vigilance. The commu-
nity of King City, 30 kilometres north of Toronto, had
long been known by that name on registered plans, but
postal authorities decided in 1841 that King would be
142 Naming Canada
enough. The Post Office Department rejected a change to
King City in 1932, even though the Geographic Board of
Canada authorized the change. Ontario incorporated
King City as a police village in 1934. Finally, after persis-
tent requests, the postal authorities accepted the change
in 1953.
In the south end of Welland, Ont., is a little neighbour-
hood that proudly calls itself Dain City. Located where
the Canadian National tracks cross an earlier route of the
Welland Canal, it was officially called Air Line Junction
in 1880 and Welland Junction in 1910. But in 1980, Dain
City - named after a family that lived there during its
early development - was recognized by the Ontario Geo-
graphic Names Board.
Places with the word city are rare in the Atlantic prov-
inces. The only one other than Labrador City is Forest
City in southwestern New Brunswick, a small commu-
nity adjacent to Forest City, Me.
In Western Canada, many settlements included 'city'
in their names with the expectation they would one day
grow to live up to that title. Unfortunately, in many cases
those dreams remained unfulfilled.
Dominion City, on the Roseau River, 80 kilometres
south of Winnipeg, was first called Roseau. But when it
was confused with Rosseau, Ont., Dominion was pro-
posed in 1878 for a new railway station on the line link-
ing Winnipeg to St. Paul, Minn. During the following
two years of boom times, 'city' was attached to the name.
Today, Dominion City has fewer than 400 people.
On the Little Saskatchewan River, 30 kilometres north
of Brandon, Man., is a town of 406 people called Rapid
City. The town was named in 1878 when an assembly of
settlers rejected Saskatchewan City as being too long,
and unanimously passed a resolution to append 'city' to
a rough English translation of Saskatchewan.
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 143
Crystal City is a village of 437 people on Crystal Creek,
110 kilometres southeast of Brandon. It was named about
1883 by its founder, Thomas Greenway, premier of Mani-
toba from 1888 to 1900. Greenway was optimistic it
would become a great city. The village still proudly
advertises itself as the Triendly City of the South/
Located 100 kilometres southeast of Prince Albert,
Sask., is Star City, a town of 507 people. It was founded
by Walter Starkey, who homesteaded there in 1900. He
chose the first syllable of his last name and added 'city'
in the hope it would become a prominent place.
In 1954, after the discovery of uranium north of Lake
Athabasca, Uranium City, Sask., became a town and
municipal district. In 1973, E.T. Russell - author of What's
in a Name - optimistically described it as having passed
its boom stage to become a stable community of 1,000
residents. But its municipal offices were closed down in
1985 after Eldorado shut down its mining and milling
operations.
Bow City, officially called Eyremore until 1958, was
established on the north bank of the Bow River in 1924,
120 kilometres northwest of Medicine Hat. It never really
developed beyond a few houses, with its population
varying between 10 and 20 over the past thirty years.
The West Kootenay region of British Columbia has seen
many instant cities come and, with few exceptions, disap-
pear over the past 100 years. At the turn of the century,
between the head of Kootenay Lake and Upper Arrow
Lake were places called Duncan City, Trout Lake City, Cir-
cle City, and Dawson City. Near the northern tip of Lower
Arrow Lake there were Burton City, Cariboo City, and
Mineral City. With the exception of Burton, with a popu-
lation of 130, little evidence remains of any of them.
Slocan, 30 kilometres northwest of Nelson, was an
incorporated city from 1901 to 1958, when it was reduced
144 Naming Canada
to the status of a village. However, its Canadian Pacific
station has retained the name Slocan City.
Queen Charlotte, the unofficial capital of the Queen
Charlotte Islands, was grandly named Queen Charlotte
City in the 1880s; this has remained a second official
name for the community of 280 people.
The Yukon has also been the home of many instant cit-
ies. Among those that lasted long enough to be recorded
were Calico City, Canyon City, Caribou City, Conrad
City, Klondike City, Lynx City, Silver City, and Wind City.
The most noted of all was Dawson City, which existed as
an incorporated city from 1902 to 1904. It is now an
incorporated town still widely known as Dawson City.
Most of these 'cities' sprouted overnight along rail
lines or in bustling mining camps. Unfortunately, more
often than not, the title did not work as a talisman to pro-
tect them from disappearing, if not during a single sea-
son, at least after a generation.
Sorting Out Ontario's Municipal Make-Up
Have you ever wondered what makes a city a city, or a
town a town? On paper the definitions of each seem clear
enough, but many exceptions exist. In Ontario, for exam-
ple, population is used to define a city, a town, a village,
and a municipal township. As we sort through the prov-
ince's maze of municipal divisions, distinctions among
them often become blurred.
While you might expect that most towns would have
less population than places classified as cities, the town of
Markham is found to have more than ten times as many
people (165,000) as the city of Elliot Lake (11,600); the
township of Oro-Medonte in Simcoe County also has
more people (17,000) than Elliot Lake.
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 145
When the settlement of York became the city of Tor-
onto in 1834, the new municipality had only 9,000 resi-
dents, growing to 30,000 by 1850. Since then, the
minimum requirement for a city has been set at 15,000
residents for towns wishing to apply for city status, and
at 25,000 for townships wanting to upgrade to the same
level. The province at the end of 2000 had forty-eight cit-
ies, ranging from Toronto's 2,300,000 to three with fewer
than the minimum requirement: Pembroke, Elliot Lake,
and Dryden.
Pembroke had more than 16,500 people in 1971 when
it became a city, but has since declined to fewer than
13,500. The former uranium mining community of Elliot
Lake, between Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie, has had
four levels of incorporation since 1957. It was first cre-
ated as a local improvement district by the province,
with three appointed trustees to manage the urban infra-
structure of the burgeoning community of nearly 25,000.
After the decision by the United States in the early 1960s
to drop uranium contracts with Canadian mining com-
panies, the population plunged below 7,000. In 1966,
Elliot Lake became a municipal township, with an
elected council. Twelve years later, when it was incorpo-
rated as a town, its population had climbed to more than
8,000. Promoting itself as a retirement centre and tourist
destination, the municipality grew to 15,000 when it was
made a city in 1991. Since then its population has dipped
to 11,600. Dryden had been a town until 1998, when it
was allowed to upgrade to a city, although it had a popu-
lation of only 7,731.
Perhaps the most unusual city was Nanticoke in the
Regional Municipality of Haldimand-Norfolk. Covering
a largely rural area of 653 square kilometres, and extend-
ing 28 kilometres inland from the Lake Erie shore, the
city was created in 1974, with the prospect that a huge
146 Naming Canada
coal-fired generating station, a steel plant and a refinery
would attract more industry and result in a population
of some 130,000 in the city, and 300,000 in the region.
However, an economic recession in the late 1970s and
early 1980s curtailed growth, with the city population
rising to only 22,000 in the late 1990s, and the region
being held at 97,000. Legislation was passed in the
Ontario legislature in December 1999 to disband the
region, and amalgamate the city of Nanticoke, and the
towns of Haldimand and Dunnville to form a new town
of Haldimand on 1 January 2001.
Until the early 1970s, the traditional Ontario town was
defined as an urban complex of 2,000 people or more,
concentrated within small areas. Examples of such towns
include Port Hope, Perth, Petrolia, and Penetanguishene,
each with less than 12 square kilometres and fewer than
15,000 people. But at the end of 1999, Ontario had 18
towns with more than 250 square kilometres each, and 34
towns with more than 15,000 people.
With a population of 165,000, Markham is the most
populous of Ontario's 117 towns. In 1994,1 asked Mayor
Frank Scarpitti if there were any intention of making it a
city. 'While there will be debate whether it should be a
town or city/ he told me, 'Markham will continue to
convey the qualities of outstanding lifestyle amenities,
low tax rates, and safe well-planned neighbourhoods,
regardless what we call our community.' At the other
end of the scale are twenty-one towns with fewer than
the 2,000 required for town status, with Latchford (306)
and Charlton (277) in Timiskaming District being the
smallest.
The concept that the word 'town' should describe vast
areas of mostly rural lands originated in a 1969 study of
Muskoka District by Donald Paterson. He perceived an
urgent need for integrated planning, managed develop-
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 147
ment, and controlled pollution in some of Ontario's pre-
mier lake and cottage country. With the creation of the
District Municipality of Muskoka in 1970, three towns
were enlarged to embrace large areas of adjacent town-
ships, with Gravenhurst expanding to nearly 490 square
kilometres, Bracebridge to 620 square kilometres, and
Huntsville to almost 690 square kilometres. The purpose
of creating such towns was to design 'area municipali-
ties' with uniform assessment over an area of dispersed
permanent and summer communities, with a sufficient
tax base to provide basic levels of municipal services,
and to ensure better planning, regulated development,
and controlled garbage and sewage disposal.
This new type of giant town was subsequently
repeated in the regional municipalities developed after
1972. When the Regional Municipality of Sudbury was
established in 1973, the new towns of Rayside-Balfour,
Onaping Falls, Capreol, Walden, Valley East, and Nickel
Centre were created outside the city of Sudbury. They
ranged in size from Capreol, at 186 square kilometres, to
Walden, with 769 square kilometres. Less than 5 per cent
of the area of each of the regional municipality's towns
was actually devoted to urban uses. On 1 January 2001
the region, the city, and the six towns were amalgamated
to become the city of Greater Sudbury.
Gananoque, Prescott, St. Marys, and Smiths Falls are
known as separated towns in the province, meaning that
they do not participate in their respective county govern-
ments.
Have you ever heard of Clarington? With a population
of 59,000 and an area of 576 square kilometres, it is in the
Regional Municipality of Durham. Created as the town
of Newcastle in 1974, it contained the well-known urban
centre of Bowmanville. In 1991, after some fifteen years
of public petitions, 59 per cent of the electors voted to
148 Naming Canada
change the name Newcastle. After a lengthy consultative
process, a name-change committee proposed Claring-
ton (an acronym formed from the names of the former
townships of Clarke and Darlington). In order to retain
provincial grants available to towns, the committee rec-
ommended keeping the status of a town municipality,
but, because the electors expressed a dislike of the term
'town/ the committee proposed that Clarington be called
simply a 'municipality/ Since then, five more 'municipal-
ities' have been designated in the province, among them
being Leamington and Tweed. (The 1999 Ontario Munici-
pal Directory listed 21 'municipalities/ but its compilers
had been misled by the awkward descriptions of them in
the legislation.)
A village in Ontario is defined as an urban municipal-
ity with a minimum of 500 people and a maximum of
2,000. There were 19 villages with a population exceed-
ing the maximum limit in 1994, but in five years that
number was reduced to 11. Among the province's 116
incorporated villages in 1994, there were 16 with fewer
than 500 people. By 1 January 2000, the number of incor-
porated villages was cut down to 45 as a result of merg-
ers. Many of those will likely disappear into larger
municipalities in the next few years.
There were 472 incorporated township municipalities
in the province in 1994, but the number had been
reduced five years later to 318 through amalgamation or
redesignation. A municipal township is supposed to
have 1,000 residents, but 127 had fewer than that in 1994,
and that number was reduced to 84 on 1 January 2000.
During the first ten years of the twenty-first century,
most of these will be merged with adjacent municipali-
ties, perhaps leaving a few remote townships in North-
ern Ontario.
In 1997 Ontario had 815 municipalities in total. Fol-
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 149
lowing instructions from the provincial government,
mergers and amalgamations took place at a rapid rate
across the province, with only 564 remaining at the
beginning of 1999. Twelve months later the number had
been further reduced to 517. By the beginning of 2001,
the number dropped to 447.
Legacy of the Voyageurs on the Prairies
In the West, an isolated, often flat-topped elevation is
called a butte, meaning 'small hill' in French. The word
was likely first applied by French-speaking voyageurs,
hunters, and trappers in the eighteenth century. It is one
of several terms, such as prairie, meaning 'meadow,' and
portage, meaning 'carrying place/ that were absorbed
into the English language.
Butte (pronounced 'byoot') occurs in the names of
sixty-six physical features and five communities in the
four western provinces and the two western territories.
Some are the most prominent feature for many kilome-
tres around, examples being Lone Eagle Butte, north of
Medicine Hat; Sarcee Butte, near Drumheller, Alta.; and
Castle Butte, south of Regina. Nahanni Butte, adjacent to
the Liard River in the Northwest Territories, is not a true
flat-topped erosional remnant, but is called a butte
because it is isolated from other hills.
Some of the names reveal fascinating tales of the West.
Massacre Butte, near the head of the Crowsnest River in
Alberta, was the place where twelve members of the
Fiske Expedition were killed in 1867 by the Blood led by
Medicine Calf. The town of Picture Butte, 12 kilometres
north of Lethbridge, is named for petroglyphs on a
former butte, which was excavated and is now the site of
a subdivision.
150 Naming Canada
Frenchman Butte, beside the North Saskatchewan
River, northeast of Lloydminister, Sask., recalls the tale of
a canadien, possibly a voyageur from Fort Vermilion, who
was killed there by Aboriginals about 1800. Henry and
Harry's Butte, near Shaunavon, Sask., is named after two
half-brothers, Henry Thormeset and Harry Westvig, who
homesteaded there.
The most common term for ravines and glacial spill-
ways in the West is coulee (pronounced 'KOO-lee'),
which occurs in 219 official names. The word comes from
couler, meaning 'to flow' in French.
Coulees occur in areas where the topography has been
extensively altered by glaciers, heavy rains, and melting
snow. They are usually steep, extending back from a
broad valley to the flat landscape above. A few, such as
Chin Coulee and Etzikom Coulee in southern Alberta, are
huge glacial troughs, often a kilometre or more wide, that
cut across the short-grass prairie for some 50 kilometres.
Opinion is divided as to whether a coulee is a flowing
water feature, a valley, or a combination of the two. Some
descriptions in the toponymic records are contradictory.
Philp Coulee, in Alberta, is described as 'a land feature
[that] flows north from Montana into the Milk River/
Coulees were best described by geologist Robert Bell
in 1875: They are valleys or ravines with steep sides,
often 100 feet or more in depth, which terminate or close
sharply, often at both ends, forming a long trough-like
depression; or one of the extremities of a coulee may
open into the valley of a regular water course. The cou-
lees sometimes run for miles and are either quite dry or
hold ponds of bitter water, which evaporate in the sum-
mer and leave thin encrustations of snow-white alkaline
salts/
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the
southern Prairie provinces were laid out in townships,
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 151
ranges, and sections. The surveyors, accustomed to gul-
lies and ravines back east, struggled with the unfamiliar
term, often writing 'cullies' and 'coolies' in their reports.
Some coulee names have interesting origins. Etzikom
Coulee takes its name from the Blackfoot expression for
'Crow Spring/ because the Crow war parties used to
obtain water in that coulee. Chin Coulee is a translation
of the Blackfoot mistoamo ('beard') because the slopes
looked like a bearded chin from a distance. Blackstrap
Coulee in central Saskatchewan recalls a tale of a pioneer
settler of the Temperance Colonization Society in 1883,
who spilled a crock of molasses on a bank of the coulee.
Although coulee occurs in names from the Red River
Valley in Manitoba to the Peace River Valley in north-
eastern British Columbia, the densest concentration of
named coulees is in the extensively eroded landscape
surrounding the Cypress Hills of southwestern Saskatch-
ewan and southeastern Alberta, and in the valleys of the
South Saskatchewan, Oldman, and Belly rivers in south-
ern Alberta. A marked characteristic of these hills and
valleys is an annual water deficit for crop production.
Various irrigation schemes have been implemented since
the turn of the century to tap into the water collecting in
the coulees, thus making them economically significant
features in the landscape.
There are large areas of the Prairies with no named
coulees at all, such as the Souris River Valley in south-
western Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan, and
the North Saskatchewan River Valley of Alberta. Farmers
and ranchers living there are likely to consider coulee a
word out of a wild west novel, like gulch or canyon. The
ravines and gullies in such areas usually contain flowing
water during most of the year and, if they are given
names, are usually called creeks.
All told, French-speaking explorers and map makers,
152 Naming Canada
and later, English-speaking travellers and homesteaders,
used words like coulee and butte for unfamiliar land-
forms, and thus contributed to the rich toponymic tapes-
try of the Canadian West.
Of Tickles and Rips, Barachois and Bogans
Giving names to land and water features is a fundamen-
tal activity of mankind, creating a meeting-place of cul-
ture with topography and hydrography. The Atlantic
provinces have a fascinating variety of terms describing
land and water features.
How many of us are aware that the generic term for a
named feature, be it a lake, creek, hill, or bay, has been
imprinted on our minds since early life so that we
readily use the same term when we encounter similar
features during our travels? Each of us is familiar with
about 40 terms, and the kinds of features they apply to.
However, English speakers in Canada use nearly 500 dif-
ferent terms in official names for Canadian land, water,
and permanent ice features.
Some terms, however, are used for quite different
kinds of features. Take gully, for example. In central Can-
ada most people consider a gully to be a small ravine or a
cut on a hillside formed by a heavy rain. But in the Mari-
time provinces, the term, derived from the French goulet
('neck'), is usually applied to narrow salt-water channels
joining water bodies behind sand bars with the sea. The
best-known ones in New Brunswick are Tabusintac
Gully and Big Tracadie Gully. In Newfoundland, which
has more than 250 officially recognized names with gully
or gullies, the term is applied to three different kinds of
features: a small pond with adjacent wetlands (Tom
Howes Gully, Tilleys Gullies); a flowing watercourse
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 153
(Black Hummock Gully); and a coastal cove (Partridge
Berry Gully).
Tickle occurs in nearly 250 approved names for water
features along the coasts of Newfoundland and Labra-
dor, and in 7 names in Nova Scotia. It is a narrow,
treacherous salt-water channel, often characterized by
hazardous tidal currents and rocks, both submerged and
exposed. Among the many intriguing names in New-
foundland are Blind Mugford Tickle, Pinchgut Tickle,
Headforemost Tickle, and Ingargarnekulluk Tickle.
Outside the Atlantic provinces, stretches of water-
courses with no perceptible flow are usually unnamed in
Canada. However, such features are frequently named in
Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. The
commonest word for a quiet stretch of water in New-
foundland is steady, approved in 71 names, including Eli-
jaks Steady, Old Shop Steadies, and Rattling Brook
Steadies. A similar feature in Nova Scotia is best known
as a stillwater, where there are more than 175 with names
like Black Rattle Stillwater, Corkum Stillwater, and Dev-
ils Funnel Stillwater. Nova Scotia also has 41 authorized
names with deadwater, two being Coolan Deadwater and
Barrio Deadwater. The most widely used term in New
Brunswick for a smooth section of a river is deadwater,
with nearly 60 names bearing the term. Pocomoonshine
Deadwater, Pocowogamis Deadwater, and Semiwagan
Deadwater are examples.
Barachois is used extensively for a coastal salt-water
pond on the south and west coasts of Newfoundland, and
along the Gulf of St. Lawrence shores of the three Mari-
time provinces and Quebec. Originally applied by the
Basques and the Acadian French to the gravel bar in front
of the pond where fishing boats could be drawn up, the
term was extended to the pond protected by the bar. Sub-
sequently, it became an element in many other names.
154 Naming Canada
In Newfoundland, the term barachois has not been
standardized into a single spelling. The most frequent
spelling there is barasway, as in Barasway de Cerf, Bell-
eoram Barasway, L'Anse au Loup Barasway, Peltry
Barasway, and 62 other approved names. As well, 29
names in Newfoundland use the form barachois, exam-
ples being Rocky Barachois Bight, Barachois Outside
Pond, and Middle Barachois River. Just to be contrary,
there is a locality on Hermitage Bay called Barachoix,
with Barasway Harbour the name of the adjacent cove.
Nova Scotia has 34 barachois features, among them
being Gabarus Barachois and MacLean Barachois. The
term occurs eight times in New Brunswick and twice in
Prince Edward Island. The community of Barachois-de-
Malbaie on Quebec's Peninsule de la Gaspesie has a pop-
ulation of more than 500.
A backwater channel adjoining a river in northern
New Brunswick is commonly known as a bogan. The
term, derived from the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet languages,
is given to 30 names, including Fanton Bogan and
Mersereau Bogan. A synonymous term of Mi'kmaq and
Maliseet origin is padou, which occurs in two names
upriver from Fredericton - Pickards Padou and Sugar
Island Padou. Both terms occur in the name Banks of
Padou Bogan on the Tobique River and, with a variant
spelling, in Drakes Perdue Bogan on the Southwest
Miramichi River.
A low-lying, seasonally flooded section along a river
where wild hay can be cut is often called intervale. Nova
Scotia has 16 named intervales (for example, Framboise
Intervale) and New Brunswick has 12 (Meduxnekeag
Intervale).
In Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, several flat, wet
areas with low-growing vegetation are known as heaths.
An example in Nova Scotia is Spinneys Heath; in New
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 155
Brunswick, Dorsey Heath. A similar feature is also called
a savannah in Nova Scotia, where Black Georges Savan-
nah and Dumpling Savannah are found.
A common term for rapids on rivers in southwestern
New Brunswick is rips. Winding Stairs Rips and Meet-
inghouse Rips are two such rapids. Some turbulent
waters in Passamaquoddy Bay also have named rips.
Aboiteau, a French word for a one-way sluice, has been
extended to Parrsboro Aboiteau, a pond in Nova Scotia.
Drook and droke are sometimes used to describe a grove
of trees in Newfoundland, but in names they apply to
brackish watercourses there and in Nova Scotia.
Among other unusual generic terms occurring in the
names within one or more of the Atlantic provinces are:
gulch (a ravine), thoroughfare (a channel), soi (a salt-water
cove), thrum (an exposed rock in the sea), nub (a small
island), tolt (an isolated hill), vault (a ravine), mocauque (a
cranberry barren), runround (a subsidiary river channel),
flowage (a shallow pond), gut (a narrow salt-water chan-
nel), blow-me-down (a steep headland), brandies (sub-
merged rocks), cay (an exposed rock in the sea), dyke
(a small watercourse), lead (a channel), mash and mish
(a marsh), and oven (a coastal cave).
Shakespeare Remembered in Many Canadian Names
'I would to God thou and I knew where a commodity of
good names were to be bought.'
- Falstaffto Hal, Henry IV, Part 1,1, 2, 92
It was just a picture. But an evocative picture that pro-
duced the name of a Canadian city, and subsequently
gave us a world-acclaimed dramatic festival.
As the story goes, Canada Company co-commissioner
156 Naming Canada
Thomas Mercer Jones presented a portrait of William
Shakespeare to William Sargint. It was hung in front of
Sargint's inn at the point where the Huron Road, on its
route from Guelph to Goderich, made a slight turn to
the right to cross the Little Thames River, a tributary
of Ontario's North Thames. Built in the spring of 1832,
the Shakespeare Hotel was the first building in Little
Thames. Within the next few months, the tributary
became the Avon River, and the rising village was
renamed Stratford on Avon - a name Jones may have
been instructed to give it by the company's headquarters
in London, England.
Stratford post office was opened in the fall of 1835,
with this shorter form of the name eventually prevailing.
It is interesting to note that its counterpart in England is
called Stratford upon Avon, with the River Avon flowing
not southeast into the River Thames, but southwest into
the River Severn.
Although Stratford is widely known as the Canadian
home of a Shakespearean festival, launched in the spring
of 1953, the city is not overwhelmingly tarted up with
references to the bard at every corner. Only 12 streets, out
of a total of 239, have names associated with Shakespeare
and his plays. A main north-south thoroughfare is
Romeo Street, but there isn't one for Juliet. There is some
consolation for her: a pontoon boat that treads the
Avon's Lake Victoria is called Juliet III.
Behind the Perth County courthouse are the beautiful
Shakespearean Gardens, designed in the early years of
the twentieth century to reflect the plants and flowers
mentioned in Shakespeare's works. In a city well known
for its lovely green spaces, there is a park on the city's
south side named for Anne Hathaway, the bard's wife.
All ten of the city's public schools have Shakespearean
identities. As well as schools called Shakespeare and
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 157
Anne Hathaway, there are ones called Avon, Falstaff,
King Lear, Hamlet, Romeo, Juliet, Portia, and Bedford.
Although some eighteen businesses in Stratford have
capitalized on the word 'festival' to promote their out-
lets, almost none has utilized a Shakespearean connec-
tion to promote itself. Near the site of Sargint's original
inn there is The Jester Arms, featuring English pub food,
and on Romeo Street North is the invitingly named As
You Like It Motel.
Thirteen kilometres east of Stratford is the community
of Shakespeare, with a population of 600, settled in 1832
by David Bell. Its post office was Bell's Corners from
1849 to 1852, when the Post Office Department asked the
residents to suggest a new name, to avoid confusion with
another Bell's Corners in Carleton County. At a public
meeting, Shakespeare was proposed, because it was
quite near the head of the Avon River.
Over the years, several Shakespearean names were
given in Northern Ontario. Shakespeare Island in Lake
Nipigon was named in 1869 by geologist Robert Bell. In
1916, Louis V. Rorke, who was later to become Ontario's
Surveyor General, named Shakespeare Township, 60
kilometres southwest of Sudbury, and Macbeth Town-
ship, 60 kilometres northeast of that city. In 1930, Rorke
proposed an alternative for each of several common lake
names in the area of Quetico Provincial Park. Among his
selections from Shakespeare's plays were Mercutio,
Modo, and Othello. Othello was not accepted, with the
secretary of the Geographic Board of Canada declaring
he saw no reason to change Wet Lake.
Hamlet Township, 100 kilometres northeast of Kap-
uskasing, was named in 1962. Hamlet was the name of a
post office 10 kilometres southwest of Perth, Ont., from
1865 to 1879, when it was renamed Stanleyville. Twenty
kilometres north of Orillia is the locality of Hamlet,
158 Naming Canada
named by the Post Office Department in 1932. On the
closing of the office in 1955, the name was rescinded.
After local protests, it was reinstated in 1978.
Shakespeare has been widely honoured in British
Columbia, where its magnificent mountainous land-
scape motivated many to seek his muses for inspiration
in naming mountains and railway stations.
In the 1920s, climber Neal Carter scaled a mountain 18
kilometres southeast of the present resort municipality of
Whistler and named it Angelo Peak, likely for the naval
officer in Othello. With a bit of whimsy, he made up the
name Diavolo Peak to identify a mountain beside Angelo
Peak, stating he had had a devilish time ascending it. In
1964, a team led by climber Karl Ricker explored the
same area of Garibaldi Provincial Park, with the object of
ascertaining high-level ski-touring routes. Finding the
area sparsely named, Ricker formed a naming group,
which included Dr. Carter. In commemoration of the
400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, they bestowed
Mount lago, from Othello, Mount Benvolio, from Romeo
and Juliet, and Mount Macbeth.
In 1934, two adjacent mountains, 70 kilometres north-
west of Campbell River, on Vancouver Island, were
named for two of the greatest lovers of literature. Mount
Romeo and Mount Juliet are separated by Montague
Creek, taken from Romeo's family name, with Capulet
Creek, from Juliet's family, being a tributary of Mon-
tague Creek.
In 1916, the Kettle Valley Railway built a line from
Princeton, B.C., through the Tulameen and Coquihalla
valleys to Hope, on the Fraser River. Seven stations in a
stretch of 60 kilometres in the Coquihalla Valley were
named for Shakespearean characters: Othello, Lear, Jes-
sica, Portia, lago, Romeo, and Juliet. After the Canadian
Pacific closed the Coquihalla Valley section in 1962, the
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 159
seven names were rescinded. However, Othello, only
5 kilometres from Hope, had developed into a small
community, so its name was restored in 1985. The same
year, the snow-avalanche section of the province's minis-
try of transportation and highways proposed the name
Ophelia Creek for a small tributary of the Coquihalla
River, 15 kilometres upstream from Hope. Juliet Creek is
a tributary of the north-flowing Coldwater River, where
the Juliet stop was located.
In 1960, climbers Robert West and Art Maki visited
a large snowfield on the east side of Duncan Lake, some
50 kilometres north of Kaslo, on Kootenay Lake. Inspired
by the name Duncan, West named the snowfield Mac-
beth Neve, and the breathtaking peaks surrounding the
snowfield Mount Macbeth, Mount Banquo, and Mount
Macduff. Subsequently, the snowfield was renamed
Macbeth Icefield, and a fourth peak was called Mount
Lady Macbeth.
In 1964, geographer David Harrison undertook a geo-
morphological study north of McBeth Fiord, on the east
side of Baffin Island. Influenced by the fiord's name,
given in 1945 for Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sgt.
Hugh A. McBeth - who had led a patrol in the area in
1943 - Harrison proposed naming Cawdor Mountain,
Thane River, Thane Lake, and Siward Glacier from
Shakespeare's Macbeth, in honour of the 400th anniver-
sary of the bard's birth. The names were rejected on the
grounds that confusion might arise as to the origin of
McBeth Fiord.
Falstaff Island, on the west coast of Hudson Bay near
Rankin Inlet, is the only apparent Shakespearean name
in the three northern territories. It was possibly named
by geologist J. Burr Tyrrell, who, in company with his
brother, James, explored the coast and adjacent river
basins in 1893. Arctic explorers preferred descriptive
160 Naming Canada
names and the names of their crew, royalty, noblemen,
financial supporters, colleagues, family members, and
friends. Perhaps few travelled with copies of Shakes-
peare's plays.
There is a pair of Shakespearean names in Manitoba.
Oberon, from A Midsummer's Night Dream, is a former
railway station and post office, 20 kilometres south of
Neepawa, and Portia, from The Merchant of Venice, is the
site of a former school district, 100 kilometres to the
northeast.
Near the head of the Ottawa River, 140 kilometres east
of Val-d'Or, Que., are two small lakes called Timon and
Yorick, suggesting someone was familiar with two of the
bard's plays. Two adjacent widenings of the Riviere
Jacques-Cartier, midway between Quebec City and Chi-
coutimi, are named Lac Oberon and Lac Titania, the king
and queen of the fairies in A Midsummer's Night Dream.
In Nova Scotia's Guysborough County a place called
Nerissa had a post office from 1900 to 1926, but the place
has long been abandoned. The name likely came from
the maidservant to Portia in The Merchant of Venice. It was
rescinded in 1976, with Nerissa Round Lake remaining
as a memento of the former community.
Christinas Creek ... and Other Yuletide Honours
Christmas is a joyous time, a season for celebration and
glad tidings. It is not surprising, therefore, that many of
the words and expressions associated with Christmas
should be applied to geographical features across Canada.
In the remote forests of central New Brunswick a tur-
bulent brook goes by the name of North Pole Stream. It
was called that by the lumbermen in the mid-1800s,
either because it was the farthest north that they had cut
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 161
trees or because it was especially cold when they ven-
tured towards its head.
In 1964, Arthur R Wightman, then the New Brunswick
member on the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geo-
graphical Names, gave the name North Pole Mountain to
a 210-metre height at the head of the stream, stating that
he was naming it for the mythical home of Santa Claus.
To an adjoining peak he gave the name Mount St. Nicho-
las. This, in turn, inspired him to name eight nearby
peaks for St. Nick's trusty reindeer. To the right of Mount
St. Nicholas (looking downstream), he named Mount
Dasher, Mount Dancer, Mount Vixen, Mount Prancer,
and Mount Comet; to the left, Mount Blitzen, Mount
Donder, and Mount Cupid.
Wightman derived these names from the famous
poem by Clement Moore, A Visit from St. Nicholas, better
known by its opening lines: "Twas the night before
Christmas, when all through the house ...' First pub-
lished anonymously in 1823 in the Troy, N.Y., Sentinel, it
was republished in the Globe of Toronto in 1854 under
Moore's name. The version in the Globe refers to Dunder
and Blixen, and turns Vixen into Nixen!
Continuing with this enchanting theme, Wightman
proposed honouring the most famous reindeer of all,
Rudolph of red-nosed fame. He was informed that such
a name smacked of commercialism and did not have the
sanction of long recognition in the literature of the
Christmas season. So there is no Mount Rudolph in New
Brunswick.
On the British Columbia-Alberta boundary, some 25
kilometres north of Kicking Horse Pass, is a towering
mountain with the name St. Nicholas Peak. It was named
in 1908 by A.O. Wheeler, a topographical surveyor, who
was impressed with a resemblance to the profile of Santa
Claus on one side of the mountain.
162 Naming Canada
In the Yukon, two streams are called Christmas Creek.
On the one that flows into Christmas Bay of Kluane
Lake, Richard Fullerton and Rev. John Pringle, a Presby-
terian minister, found and staked a claim on Christmas
Day, 1903. On the other, a tributary of Matson Creek west
of Dawson, gold was discovered on 25 December 1911.
British Columbia also has two streams named Christ-
mas Creek, and one of them has Tiny Tim Lake near its
headwaters. Christmas Hill and Christmas Point, and
even Yule Rock and Yule Lake, are in the province too,
but unfortunately none of the stories associated with
them has been collected for the official records.
In Alberta, a tributary of the Athabasca River is called
Christmas Creek, and Manitoba has three lakes called
Christmas Lake. One of these is a translation of the Cree
for Christmas, Makosakeesekoiv. Another was named in
1948 to honour Richard Edward Christmas, who was
killed overseas during the Second World War while serv-
ing with the Royal Winnipeg Rifles.
On the Saskatchewan-Northwest Territories boundary
is Santy Lake. It was not named for 'Santy' Claus, but for
Flight Sgt. Samuel F. Santy of Moose Jaw, another casu-
alty in the Second World War. Santa Lake in the Parry
Sound district of Ontario was named for Pte. Ambrose
Santa of Drayton, Ont., who was killed overseas in 1944.
In Ontario, there are two islands in lakes in Muskoka
District Municipality called Christmas Island. Both were
named in 1968: one had been given as a Christmas gift;
the other is almost exactly halfway between the equator
and the North Pole, home of Santa Claus. Santa's Village,
a tourist attraction in Bracebridge, was named for the
same reason. Another Christmas Island, near Kenora,
was named in 1980 because the pine trees growing on it
portrayed an image of the festive season.
Nova Scotia has two islands named Christmas as well,
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 163
both in Bras d'Or Lake, and may be named after a local
Mi'kmaq family. The one near Eskasoni is known in
Mi'kmaq as Abadakwitcetc ('a small portion set aside').
The other is 12 kilometres to the west; the community of
Christmas Island is located nearby.
On the south coast of Newfoundland, at the mouth of
La Poile Bay, is a prominent point called Christmas
Head. Near the town of Grand Falls-Windsor is a body
of water called Upper Christmas Pond, but the lake, for-
merly called Christmas Pond, upstream from Upper
Christmas Pond, is officially Lewis Pond.
Quebec has several features and places with the names
Saint-Nicolas and Saint-Noel, with some of them no
doubt associated with Christmas. Numerous lakes and
other features in the province are called Noel. Near
Joliette, northeast of Montreal, is the town of L'Epiph-
anie, which honours the Twelfth night of Christmas,
sometimes called Little Christmas. The municipality of
Biencourt, east of Riviere-du-Loup, was formerly called
La Nativite.
And what is Christmas without the traditional Christ-
mas feast?
Begin the celebration with Pointe a Champagne (Que.)
in Committee Punch Bowl (Alta., B.C.), with a reading
from Charles Dickens Point (Nun.). Seat your guests
around Dinner Place Creek (Man.). On each plate serve
generous slices of roast Turkey Point (Ont), accompa-
nied by baked Potato Creek (Yukon), boiled Carrot River
(Sask.), and Peas Brook (N.S.), and, of course, large dol-
lops of Cranberry Point (P.E.I.). After the main course
offer steamed Pudding Burn (B.C.), flambed with Brandy
Brook (N.B.), and a piece of pie made with Bakeapple
Bay (Nfld.). Complete the dinner with Coffee Creek
(Ont.) and selections from Lac des Bonbons (Que.).
Season's greetings!
164 Naming Canada
Of Valentines and Other Matters of the Heart
On 14 February 1718, a French missionary celebrated the
first mass in a new settlement on the west side of Riviere
Richelieu, some 20 kilometres south of present-day Saint-
Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que. In honour of the occasion, the
settlers were given permission to name the place Saint-
Valentin.
Valentine's Day embodies a pleasant mix of mystical
romance, playfulness, and innocent amorous entreaty,
usually expressed through florid, gushy cards, flowers,
and chocolates. Why is there a joyous but somewhat friv-
olous day dedicated to a saint? Why Valentine? Why the
middle of February?
Valentine's Day has its roots in the ancient Roman fer-
tility festival of Lupercalia, observed on 15 February,
when the first urgings of spring touched all the senses.
Legend has it that one, perhaps two, Christians by the
name of Valentine weremartyred in Rome about 14 Feb-
ruary in the third century. The early church adroitly asso-
ciated the name of the saint, or saints, with the pagan
celebration to sanction the festive practices of its Chris-
tian believers.
Besides Saint-Valentin, there are twenty-four features -
mostly islands, lakes, and hills - in Canada with valentine
or valentin. Many were named because of their distinc-
tive heart shape, such as Valentine Lake in central New-
foundland and Valentine Lake near Hearst, Ont. An
elevation with two pronounced summits overlooking
Powell River, B.C., is known as Valentine Hill.
Some valentine names honour people. Valentine
Creek, which flows north into Lake Diefenbaker in Sas-
katchewan, is named for George Valentine, an early
settler. Valentine Lake, southwest of Miramichi, N.B.,
derived its name from A. Valentine Mitchell, a trapper
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 165
who lived near it and adjacent Mitchell Lake at one
time.
Among Newfoundland's many delightful names is
Cupids, a town of 870 people located on the west side of
Conception Bay, 30 kilometres due west of St. John's.
John Guy of Bristol, who was appointed governor of
Newfoundland in 1610, chose Cuper's Cove for the cen-
tre of a colony of thirty-nine settlers. Possibly because of
the practice of suppressing the r by people in southern
England, the forms Cupid's Cove and Cupids easily
evolved, the latter form noted in 1630 by Nova Scotia
founder William Alexander. Considering that Cupid was
the Roman god of love, it is endearing to know that the
wife of Nicholas Guie (not known to be related to the
governor) gave birth at Cupids in the spring of 1613 to
the first white child born in Newfoundland (see also
pp. 216-19).
In Ontario, Cupid Island is in Georgian Bay's Thirty
Thousand Islands, and Cupids Rock is in the St. Marys
River southeast of Sault Ste. Marie. The Greek equivalent
of Cupid is Eros, and this is reflected in the name Eros
Lake, southeast of Geraldton, Ont. Beside it is Erato
Lake, given for the Greek muse of lyric poetry.
In matters of the heart, Newfoundland stands out
again as the province with the most appealing names.
On the east side of Trinity Bay are Heart's Content, an
incorporated town, noted by John Guy in 1612 as 'Hartes
content'; Heart's Desire, also an incorporated town, pos-
sibly associated with a seventeenth-century vessel by the
same name; and Heart's Delight, united in 1972 with
nearby Islington to form a town with a population in
1991 of 880. On the west side of Trinity Bay is the com-
munity of Little Heart's Ease, with a population of 430.
The words heart and coeur occur in more than 100
names across Canada, often because of the shape of the
166 Naming Canada
feature. Noteworthy is Heart Shoal in Georgian Bay,
whose outline on charts at the 10-fathom level is dis-
tinctly heart-shaped. Hearts Hill, a hamlet southwest of
North Battleford, Sask., is adjacent to a range of hills
with the configuration of a heart. Also in Saskatchewan,
in Prince Albert National Park, is Hanging Heart Lake,
whose northern part is shaped like a heart, although
there is a legend that a heart was once found hanging
from a tree. In Alberta, Heart Lake Indian Reserve is
located beside a heart-shaped lake with a long point
extending from its north side. Near Mount Waddington
in British Columbia is Heartstone Peak, a mountain
named for the large heart-shaped outcrop apparent on its
south side.
At Motion Head in Newfoundland, a few kilometres
'up the shore
7
 (actually south) from St. John's, is Bow and
Arrow Shoal. If it could be aimed northwest, it would
point at Merrymeeting Point, 4 kilometres away; or to
the southwest for the same distance, at Hearts Point.
Except for Prince Edward Island and the Yukon, each
of the provinces and territories has at least one feature
with the words love, lovers, or amour. Both Newfoundland
and Nova Scotia have little bays called Lovers Cove.
Ontario has two narrow, secluded channels called Lovers
Lane, one in the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence,
the other in Georgian Bay's Thirty Thousand Islands. It
also has a Lovers Isle on the west side of the Bruce Penin-
sula and a Lovers Creek near Barrie.
Two lakes with love in Manitoba are named for people:
Love Lake near Neepawa for John Love, a homesteader;
and Love Lake near Sherridon for Ernest Love, a mine
official who was once chased by a bear when he was fish-
ing there.
North of Nipawin, Sask., is a village called Love,
named in 1930, possibly for an official of the Canadian
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 167
Pacific Railway, which passes through the community.
There is another story of a lumberman becoming capti-
vated by a young woman who cooked for logging crews
at this rail siding, but it has the marks of a tall tale evolv-
ing from a name already given.
Quebec has several features with amour, including
Havre des Belles Amours, Ruisseau d'Amour, Baie des
Amoureux, and Lac de 1'Amour. In Labrador, adjacent to
the Strait of Belle Isle, is a place called L'Anse-Amour
but, alas, this is likely a misnomer, as the adjoining bay is
called Anse aux Morts, perhaps recalling multiple
drownings there.
A number of great lovers in history and legend are
recalled in place names. On Vancouver Island, the first
couple of the Creation are remembered in Adam River
and Eve River. (On the current large-scale topographical
map of the area, the compiler left the single river formed
by the two unnamed, shrewdly leaving it to the map
reader to discover which is tributary to the other!)
Between the two rivers are prominent peaks called
Mount Romeo and Mount Juliet.
In the Coast Mountains north of Vancouver, among a
group of peaks named for classical figures, are Mount
Eurydice and Mount Orpheus, separated by Styx Glacier.
These names are drawn from the legend of the eternal
separation of Orpheus from his great love, Eurydice, by
the River Styx. Among the highest peaks of the northern
Rockies in northeastern British Columbia are Mount
Ulysses and Mount Penelope, named in 1961 and com-
memorating the Greek legend of Odysseus (Ulysses in
Latin) and his faithful wife.
Now, for that favourite Valentine (Ont.) girl, send her a
Bouquet Point (P.E.I.) of Flowers Cove (Nfld.) and a Gift
Lake (Alta.) of a Box Canyon (B.C.) of Chocolate Cove
(N.B.). She will send you back a pretty Card Lake (N.S.)
168 Naming Canada
edged with Lacey Point (N.W.T.). After that you will go
together to Dancing Hill (Man.) at Happyland Creek
(Sask.), where you will exchange a Secret Creek (Yukon)
and Lac Kiss (Que.).
Giving the Devil His Due
Name givers and explorers have largely bypassed the
Creator in Canada's place names. Gods Lake in Mani-
toba, Bay of Gods Mercy at the north end of Hudson Bay,
and Islands of God's Mercie in Hudson Strait are rare
exceptions. In contrast, the Devil and his associated
names - Satan, Diablo, Mammon, Lucifer, Beelzebub,
Sorcerer, and Windigo/Wendigo - have been widely
honoured in Canadian place names. His traditional
homes - Hell, Hades, and Enfer - are also prominently
recorded from Newfoundland to the Yukon.
Newfoundland has thirty official 'devil' names, with
several places called Devils Cove. Some of the more
imaginative applications are Devils Dancing Place, a
marsh on the Avalon Peninsula; Devils Dancing Table, a
hill on the south coast; and Devils Dressing Place,
another hill, this one beside White Bay on the north coast
of the island. The province also has two places called
Devils Kitchen, as well as a Devils Knob and a Devils
Lookout Island. The French form diable occurs in Diable
Bay and L'Anse au Diable Brook. 'Hell' turns up in New-
foundland names twelve times, including Backside of
Hell Cove adjacent to Granby Island, Labrador; Hell Fire
Pond on the Avalon Peninsula; and Hell Grapple Head
on Black Island in the Bay of Exploits. Hells Al, a hill on
the Avalon Peninsula, was found by Memorial Univer-
sity students in 1981; the name's significance was not
determined. The Torngat Mountains in northern Labra-
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 169
dor derive their name from the Inuktitut for 'home of the
spirits.'
Prince Edward Island has only a single devilish name:
Devils Punchbowl Provincial Park, at the site where
more than 100 years ago John Hawkins lost a puncheon
of rum in a deep hole and then recovered it.
There are forty names with devil in Nova Scotia.
Among them are The Devils Burrow, a marsh near Wind-
sor; Devils Cupboard, a cove on the Eastern Shore; Dev-
ils Funnel Stillwater, a pond near Liverpool; and Devils
Limb, an island on the South Shore. Hell names are
found in Hell Rackets, a reef in Mahone Bay; Hells Gates,
a channel in Medway Harbour; and Helluva Hole, a
pond near Windsor. Main-a-Dieu, in Cape Breton
County, appears to mean 'hand of God/ but is really
derived from a Mi'kmaq word for the Devil.
New Brunswick has eighteen devil names, examples
being: Devil Pike Brook in Kings County; Devils Back
Brook in Northumberland County; Devils Elbow Rapids
in Restigouche County; Devils Half Acre, a hill in Albert
County; another Devils Half Acre, a shoal in Passama-
quoddy Bay; and Devils Hand, an 8-metre-high rock in
Charlotte County, with huge finger grooves. Hellcat
Brook, Hells Gate Rapids, and Hells Kitchen, a deep
ravine in Fundy National Park, are examples of the prov-
ince's eight hell names.
Quebec has honoured the prince of demons in sixty-six
place names, most of them in the French diable. Lac Bat-
le-Diable, near Havre-Saint-Pierre, commemorates the
achievements of one William Cormier, a local hunter and
fisherman who was given the nickname which means
'beat the Devil.' Other diable names include Crique du
Diable in Labelle County, Pointe au Diable in Soulanges
County, Pont du Diable in Frontenac County, and several
Rapides du Diable, Riviere du Diable, and Ruisseau du
170 Naming Canada
Diable. Quebec's twenty-three hell names are mostly
with the French enfer, although there is a Lac Helluva
near Schefferville. The province also has a Lac Hades, a
Lac Lucifer, and a Mont du Sorcier. Windigo, the name
for mythical cannibals of the Ojibwa and other Aborigi-
nals, occurs in twenty names in Quebec.
Ontario has given the Devil his due in seventy-eight
places. My first encounter in the 1940s with a devil place
name was the precipitous Devils Glen near Collingwood.
I was told it was so named because a wrong step would
surely lead to death. Then there is Devil Door Rapids,
Devils Cellar Rapids, Devil Shoepack Falls, Devil's Ware-
house Island, and Devils Punchbowl Lake. Hell occurs in
seven names in Ontario, including Hellangone Lake in
Parry Sound District and Helldiver Bay in Kenora Dis-
trict. Windigo, or Wendigo, is reflected in thirty-two
names; Windigo Lake, Wendigo Lake, and Windigo
Island each occur several times. Ontario also has three
names with Hades, one being Hades Islands in Lake of
the Woods. And there are four Styx names; River Styx is
a treacherous area in the Cataraqui River section of the
Rideau Canal system.
The Devil has nineteen names in Manitoba. Interesting
ones are Daredevil Hill near Neepawa; Devils Punch
Bowl, a crater-like ravine near Brandon; and Devils Por-
tage near The Pas. Manitoba has two features called Win-
digo Lake as well as a Wendigo Beach, Wendigo River,
and Wendigo Point.
Saskatchewan has recognized the Devil in eight
names, among them Great Devil Rapids and Little Devil
Rapids on the Churchill River. Helldiver Lake is near
Cumberland House. Hellfire Creek, close to the U.S. bor-
der south of Gravelbourg, is said to have been named by
a homesteader who found the area 'as hot as hell's fires.'
Alberta also has eight Devil names, including Devil's
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 171
Bite, a hill southwest of Calgary with one side gouged
out, and Devils Thumb, a mountain near Lake Louise.
Hell-Roaring Falls is a tributary of the Smoky River,
south of Grande Prairie.
The rugged landscape and tumultuous rivers of Brit-
ish Columbia have evoked the Devil in twenty-nine
place names. Among them are Devils Claw Mountain in
Cassiar District, Devils Club Mountain in Cariboo Dis-
trict, Devils Den Lake in Alberni District, Devils Spire in
Kootenay District, and Devils Thumb in Cassiar District.
(Devil's Tongue, Devil's Tooth, and Devil's Rectum are
unofficial names in the province.) In 1960, some moun-
tains in an area of the Coast Mountains known as the
'White Inferno' were named for the mythical chief lords
of Satan: Beelzebub, Azazel, Belial, Dagon, Moloch, and
Rimmon. Mount Satan and Ogre Mountain also occur in
the same group. North of the group is Purgatory Glacier
and Styx Mountain. Also in the province are Lucifer
Peak, Sorcerer Mountain, and Witch Spirit Lake. Hell
appears in fifteen names in British Columbia, including
the turbulent Hells Gate in the Fraser Canyon, Hell Gate
in the Grand Canyon of the Liard, Hell Raving Creek in
the Coast Mountains, Hellroarer Creek east of Okanagan
Lake, and Hellsgate Slough beside the Skeena River. A
set of dangerous rapids on the North Thompson River is
called Porte d'Enfer Rapids.
In the Northwest Territories, Hell Roaring Creek is a
tributary of the South Nahanni River, and Hell's Gate
Rapids is a variant for Figure of Eight Rapids on the
same river. Devil Island, in northern Nunavut, recalls the
1900 expedition of the Norwegian explorer Otto Sver-
drup, which faced starvation on this island between
Devon and Ellesmere islands. Hell Gate, in the same
area, was also named by Sverdrup, who described the
passage as a surging mixture of raging water. Tuurngata-
172 Naming Canada
lik Island, on the south side of Baffin Island, gets its
name from the Inuktitut expression 'it has devil spirits/
The Yukon has three Devil names: Devilhole Creek,
Devil's Club Creek, and Devils Elbow. Hellsgate Rapid is
a perilous section of the Yukon River.
A computer search of the Canadian Geographical Names
Data Base produced the lists of devil and hell names. The
printouts also dumped out such personal names as
Mandeville, Mitchell, and Burchell. When the first print-
out was made, smoke arose from the computer terminal,
burning out a transistor!
Telenaming the Landscape
From Signal Hill in St. John's, Nfld., to Mount Marconi in
southeastern British Columbia, and from Telegraph Nar-
rows near Belleville, Ont., to Beacon Mountain in the
Arctic Archipelago, Canada has a country-wide web of
names relating to sending and receiving messages.
Signal Hill is probably Canada's best-known name
associated with communicating over long distances. Its
fame derives from experiments conducted there in 1901
by Guglielmo Marconi, who proved wireless transmis-
sion could be sent across the Atlantic. But the name has a
much older history, reputedly dating from the late 1500s
when a signal cannon was placed on the summit of the
152-metre height at the entrance of St. John's Harbour. Its
earliest cartographic reference is James Cook's 1762 chart
of the harbour. The hill, with its imposing Cabot Tower,
was declared a national historic site in 1958.
In 1902, Marconi had four 65-metre towers constructed
at Table Head in Glace Bay, N.S., and exchanged mes-
sages with Poldhu, Cornwall, England. The station was
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 173
reconstructed south of the town in 1904, with the com-
munity there becoming known as Marconi Towers. The
original site at Table Head is now the Marconi National
Historic Site.
The inventor of radiotelegraphy has been honoured in
other names across the country. A 63-metre hill with a
radio tower in the lies de la Madeleine is known as Butte
du Marconi. Lac Marconi is east of Val-d'Or, Que., and
Marconi Township is north of Sudbury, Ont. Mount Mar-
coni, in the Rocky Mountains, 60 kilometres east of Win-
dermere, B.C., was named in 1919 after the 1909 recipient
of the Nobel Prize for Physics.
Samuel Morse's invention in 1837 of the telegraph -
the transmission of encoded messages through the open-
ing and closing of electrical circuits - did not result in
place names in Canada given directly for him, probably
because it was too early in the process of commemora-
tive naming in Canada to give an American inventor
such an honour.
In the mid-1860s the Collins Overland Telegraph Com-
pany set out to connect New York with Paris by running
a line across Bering Strait. More than 250 men were
engaged to string the line through British Columbia, and
more than $3 million were spent before the project was
abandoned in 1866, when it was learned the Atlantic
cable had been successfully laid under the ocean.
The surveys and subsequent construction of the Col-
lins line provided several new place names in British
Columbia and Yukon. At the mouth of the Skeena River,
just south of Prince Rupert, large supplies of wire and
other materials were landed in 1865, with the channel
separating the mainland and Kennedy Island being
named Telegraph Narrows that year. When the survey
reached a widening of the Bulkley River, a tributary of
the Skeena, it was named after Michael Byrnes, one of
174 Naming Canada
the explorers of the route. Burns Lake, as it was spelled,
is considered the geographical centre of British Colum-
bia, with the village of Burns Lake having a population
of some 1,700. During a geological reconnaisance in
1875-6, George M. Dawson found the name Telegraph
Range in use, 75 kilometres southwest of Prince George,
with the Collins line having skirted its northeast side.
Although the Collins line did not get much beyond the
Skeena River, its arrival had been anticipated when the
surveyed route crossed the Stikine River in 1866 at an
unnamed stream that became known as Telegraph
Creek, with the small community of Telegraph Creek
subsequently developing there. The planned route
resulted in the names Telegraph Bay in Atlin Lake in
northern British Columbia and Telegraph Mountain in
Yukon, directly north of Lake Laberge. A member of one
survey team was Michel Laberge, whose name was
given in 1870 to the widening of the Yukon River, just
north of Whitehorse.
Some 175 kilometres east of Edmonton is a small tribu-
tary of the North Saskatchewan River called Telegraph
Creek. About 1885, poles were erected at its mouth in
anticipation of a line crossing the North Saskatchewan.
However, it was deemed too difficult to cross the river at
that point, with the poles inspiring a name even though a
line did not pass that way.
Telegraph Narrows in Ontario's Bay of Quinte com-
memorates a line that crossed from the mainland to
Prince Edward County, often nicknamed Quinte's Isle.
Within the narrows is the small Telegraph Island. Else-
where in Canada there are Telegraph Coulee, 45 kilome-
tres northwest of Saskatoon, Sask., Colline du Tele-
graphe, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, 60
kilometres northeast of Quebec City, lie de la Ligne du
Telegrap)\e on the north shore of the Gulf of St.
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 175
Lawrence, and Telegraph Hill, 15 kilometres north of
Saint John, N.B.
The founder of the American Telegraph Company,
which laid the cable under the Atlantic in 1866, was
Cyrus West Field (1819-1892). In 1861-2, explorer
Charles Francis Hall named Cyrus Field Bay, the first bay
north of Frobisher Bay, on the east side of Baffin Island.
When the Canadian Pacific was constructed through the
Rocky Mountains in 1884, Field was there to observe
progress. Field, the first station west of the divide, and
nearby Mount Field were named for him.
The resort community of Dwight, 18 kilometres east of
Huntsville, Ont., was named in 1871 after Harvey P.
Dwight (1828-1912), then a Toronto-based official of the
Montreal Telegraph Company, who enjoyed fishing in
the area, and gave the place a telegraph office.
Telephone Lake in Morse Township (after prospector
John Morse) northwest of Sudbury, Ont., with a line
passing over a nearby hill, recalls the invention of Alex-
ander Graham Bell. Telephone Bay in Opinicon Lake,
north of Kingston, was named because a line was strung
across the bay. Telephone Lake in western Manitoba was
named when a line was strung for 105 kilometres over
rugged Duck Mountain, with it only reaching the lake,
two-thirds of the way, at the end of a season.
In 1951, a group of lakes north of Baddeck, N.S., were
named Baddeck Lakes. A 1973 National Geographic map
of the Atlantic provinces identified them as Grosvenor
Lakes, after Bell's nephew, Gilbert H. Grosvenor, editor
of the magazine from 1900 to 1954. In 1973, the local
name was found to be Bell Lakes, although it was
unclear whether they had been named for the inventor,
who spent his summers at Baddeck. This name was con-
firmed by provincial authorities as being given in
honour of him, and special commemorative maps were
176 Naming Canada
presented to museums and archives in Nova Scotia and
Ontario.
In 1949, the Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company
constructed a radio tower west of Timmins, Ont, and
some 25 kilometres southeast of Foleyet. Three years
later a radio tower was built by the Hydrographic Ser-
vice on a small island south of Resolution Island, at the
entrance to Hudson Strait. Although both towers were
dismantled long ago, Radio Hill and Radio Island will
remain as reminders of an important means of telecom-
munication a half-century ago.
Glaciologist Fritz Muller observed an imposing moun-
tain on Axel Heiberg Island in 1966, and named it Beacon
Mountain because he was reminded of coastal beacons
used to guide ships past dangers and into harbours. The
well-known Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, B.C., recalls
two Hudson's Bay Company beacons placed about 1840
in such a way as to point towards the dangerous Brotchie
Ledge.
A television repeater station was erected on a hill at
Lumby, B.C., 23 kilometres east of Vernon in the early
1960s, with the site becoming known as Satellite Hill.
Another kind of satellite was involved in the naming of
the last piece of Canadian land discovered. In 1976, Betty
Fleming, of the federal Department of Energy, Mines and
Resources, was examining Landsat photos when she
found a small 25-by-45-metre island, 33 kilometres
southeast of Cape Chidley, Labrador's most northern
point. When a Hydrographic Survey crew flew over it in
a helicopter to confirm its existence, they observed a
polar bear on it. Landsat Island was a natural name for it,
and this was given to it in 1979. In 1978 the Soviet satel-
lite Cosmos crashed in a lake near the Thelon River in the
Northwest Territories. Cosmos Lake was given to it by
Canadian military personnel, and confirmed in 1980.
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 177
From sixteenth-century fires and cannons through the
years of wireless transmissions to the modern era's
pulses from outer space, Canada's toponymy has re-
flected the development of communications. Perhaps
future cyberian surfers will also contribute to the naming
of landscape features.
A Giggle, er, Gaggle of Ha! Hals
The townsfolk of Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! have long
endured the amusement and disbelief of visitors, who are
curious to learn how the place ever acquired such a com-
ical name, and perhaps wonder which Louis among the
saints was distinguished by his laughter. Perched by the
side of a 380-metre hill, the village of 1,530 is just off the
Trans-Canada Highway, 70 kilometres east of Riviere-du-
Loup, Que.
For many years, it has been speculated that the 'Ha!
Ha!' part of the name recalled either a Huron word for
'portage' or an early explorer's exclamation. However,
neither claim has any basis in fact.
The French word haha really means an unexpected bar-
rier, or a dead end. Its use can be traced to the time of
Joan of Arc in the fifteenth century. It was accepted by
the French Academy in 1762 as a legitimate word to
describe ditches outside openings in a wall around a
park. The openings afforded a vista of the surrounding
countryside while the hahas marked the park bound-
aries. On farms and in gardens in the south of England, a
ha-ha is a sunken fence that segregates livestock from a
manor house without interrupting the view across the
estate's fields.
In Canada, the word haha first appeared on early maps
of New France. A 1686 French map and eighteenth-
178 Naming Canada
century English maps show an island, a river, and a
mountain called 'Haha' in the Bay of Fundy region.
So where is the unforeseen obstacle for which Saint-
Louis-du-Ha! Ha! is named? Eight kilometres east of the
village is 40-kilometre-long Lac Temiscouata. As early
travellers headed north by canoe, they discovered that
the lake curved to the northeast - away from their desti-
nation of the St. Lawrence River and Quebec City. The lit-
tle bay on the west side (mentioned in early records as
Baie du Ha! Ha!, but never officially named) represented
an unexpected and inconvenient dead end for travel by
canoe. Travellers were forced to portage 80 kilometres
west to Notre-Dame-du-Portage on the St. Lawrence.
They walked through the community of Saint-Louis-du-
Ha! Ha!, named after its founder, Louis Marquis. The
municipal parish of Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! was estab-
lished in 1874.
But why the exclamation marks? It seems they were
the result of another interpretation of the origin of the
village's name disseminated by surveyors and writers,
including Joseph Bouchette, the surveyor general and
map maker of Lower Canada in the early 1800s;
Bouchette's son, Joseph Bouchette, Jr., the deputy sur-
veyor general; and Arthur Buies, a noted nineteenth-cen-
tury historian and writer. They wrote that astonished
explorers exclaimed 'ha! ha!' when they found their
route was blocked, and subsequently named the body of
water a 'Ha! Ha!'
A number of place names with the expression Ha! Ha!
also dot Quebec's Saguenay region. Eighty kilometres
from the mouth of Riviere Saguenay, the waterway
appears to divide into two major branches. The northern
branch leads to Lac Saint-Jean, where the river rises. The
southern branch is just as wide, but Baie des Ha! Ha!
comes to a dead end within 10 kilometres. The plural
Characteristics of Place Names and Generic Terms 179
form of the name is due to two coves at the head of the
bay that act as hahas by giving the illusion of leading to
another waterway. Flowing into one of the coves from
the south is the 55-kilometre-long Riviere Ha! Ha! It
drains two lakes called Lac Ha! Ha! and Petit lac Ha! Ha!
Baie des Ha! Ha! is also a prominent 15-kilometre inlet
on the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The bay
gives the appearance of being the outlet of a major river,
but in fact it leads only to several rocky barriers and
small streams. The name Baye du Haha was in use as
early as 1715. Ha Ha Rock is a 2-metre submerged haz-
ard in Ontario's Georgian Bay.
Newfoundland has two widely separated inlets with
'Ha Ha' as part of their names. Ha Ha Bay is a 4-kilome-
tre inlet near the north end of the Northern Peninsula, 15
kilometres west of L'Anse aux Meadows. A sand bar (or
haha) at the south end of the bay, separating it from the
appropriately named Isthmus Cove, prevents passage to
Pistolet Bay to the south. On the east side of the bay
stands Ha Ha Mountain, a 70-metre hill. Ha Ha Point is
at the east entrance of the bay. The nearby community of
Raleigh was originally called Ha Ha, but was renamed
earlier this century by the Newfoundland Nomenclature
Board. Several names of French origin in the area - Pisto-
let Bay, Falaise Point, Piton Point - suggest the bay was
named by French fishermen or explorers.
The Ha Ha is an inlet at the town of Burgeo, on the
south coast of Newfoundland. The head of this inlet is
separated by a narrow isthmus (or haha) from another
inlet called Long Reach. The Ha Ha was also likely
named by the French during early exploration.
The proper spelling of place names such as Baie des
Ha! Ha! has long been a source of debate among histori-
ans and map makers. In 1938, the Societe Historique du
Saguenay determined that 'haha' was the proper form,
180 Naming Canada
and encouraged historians to refer to the local inlet as
Baie des Hahas. In 1947, Father Victor Tremblay wrote an
extensive treatise on the origin of the word haha and con-
cluded that the substantial historical and geographical
evidence favoured the forms Baie du Haha and Baie des
Hahas.
The Quebec Geographic Board (predecessor of the
Commission de toponymie) informed the federal names
office in 1947 that the correct form for the Saguenay inlet
was Baie des Ha! Ha!, although acknowledging that
'haha' was an old French word meaning an unexpected
barrier on a route. However, the Ottawa names office
advised federal map and hydrographic chart makers that
the correct name to use was Ha Ha Bay, the form autho-
rized by Ottawa in 1901. It was only in 1960 that Baie des
Ha! Ha! was approved for federal mapping.
Names with Ha! Ha! in Quebec and Ha Ha in New-
foundland almost all identify water features that have
land barriers. The present erroneous spellings have con-
siderable historical precedence, so it would be most
unlikely that the Commission de toponymie in Quebec
or the Geographical Names Board in Newfoundland
would consider 'correcting' such names as Baie des Ha!
Ha! to Baie des Hahas, or Ha Ha Bay to Haha Bay.
Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! and The Ha Ha, among a
dozen 'haha' place names, reflect more than 300 years of
Canadian heritage - and quite unintentionally provide
us with a little surprise and merriment.
Aboriginal Place Names: We All Have Our Favourites
No place names distinguish a country better than those of
Aboriginal origin. And each of us likely has a favourite.
For some, it may be Antigonish, the small Nova Scotia
town made famous for the cooperative movement which
began there in the early 1930s. Reported to mean 'where
the bears tear the branches off trees/ the name more
likely means 'flowing through broken marsh/ in refer-
ence to the outlet of Rights River.
Quebec is another favourite, meaning 'where the waters
narrow/ in reference to the St. Lawrence upriver from lie
d'Orleans. Its counterpart in Nova Scotia is Chebucto, the
Mi'kmaq name for The Narrows in Halifax Harbour. The
usual meaning given for Chebucto, 'a great long harbour/
is really just a variation of the idea of a narrow water body.
Ontario, a pleasing name to many, is usually considered to
be Iroquoian for 'handsome lake/ but may be better inter-
preted as deriving from the Huron for 'large lake.'
The southern British Columbia names Keremeos and
Similkameen are deemed especially pleasing by some.
Both are derived from Salish, the first meaning 'wind
passage in the mountains/ the latter, 'swimming river/
Adopting Names of Native
Origin and Acknowledging
Names Used by Indigenous
Peoples
182 Naming Canada
My own favourite is Kitwanga (pronounced 'KIT-wahn-
gaw'), the name of a small community east of Prince
Rupert, meaning, in Tsimshian, 'people of the place of
many rabbits/
No one can really deny the musical charm and sweet
lilt of Athabasca, 'where there are reeds'; Madawaska,
'land of porcupines/ in New Brunswick; in Ontario,
Madawaska literally translates as 'reeds at the forks of
the river/ but the original name, Matouachita, points to
Matouoiiescarine, 'people of the shallows/ who were
encountered by Champlain in 1613; Wascana, 'pile of
bones/ the Cree name for Regina; Minnedosa, 'swift
water' in Siouan, the equivalent of the Cree Saskatch-
ewan; Winnipeg, 'murky water' in Cree, the equivalent
of the Siouan Minnesota; Wawanesa, 'whippoorwill/
adapted from Wawonaissa in Longfellow's Song of Hia-
watha; Coaticook, from Abenaki for 'river of pines/ a
town south of Sherbrooke; and Muskoka, from Ojibwa
Musquakie, their name for two chiefs given to Ontario's
premier cottage country.
Some people, however, dismiss names of Aboriginal
origin because of either their simplicity in meaning or
the awkwardness of their pronunciation.
Some names that mean only 'big bay' (Malpeque), 'big
water' (Meelpaeg Lake, Nfld.), 'big river' (Koksoak,
Yukon), and 'fine river' (Oromocto) are occasionally ridi-
culed because of their ordinariness. Names that are diffi-
cult to pronounce are avoided by many - Musquodoboit,
'flowing out in foam'; Magaguadavic, 'big eels place';
Kashagawigamog, 'long and narrow'; Kaministiquia,
'place of islands in the river'; Illecillewaet, 'swift river';
Auyuittuq, 'place which does not melt' (the national
park on Baffin Island); and Chinguacousy, 'young or lit-
tle pines/ the township surrounding Brampton, Ont.,
where I was born.
Adopting Names of Native Origin 183
Sometimes similar origins are revealed in names that
do not appear to have common roots, examples being
Timiskaming, Temiscouata, and Chicoutimi, with their
reference to deep water; Baddeck and Petitcodiac, with
their characteristic feature of bending sharply; and Sau-
geen, Mississauga, and Saguenay, with their reference to
a river mouth.
Most spellings are only imperfect renderings of what
Aboriginal people may have said to explorers, who then
provided their interpretations to publishers and map
makers. Names with the idea of 'ochre' were variously
rendered as Romaine, Onaman, and Wunnammin, all
from related languages. Chippewa and Ojibwa are differ-
ent names for the same language. The Handbook of Indians
of Canada (1912) lists 169 variants of Ottawa - Ahtawwah
through Outaouais to Watawawiniwok.
The varied Aboriginal languages in Canada have
given our toponymy certain distinctiveness and rustic
beauty. Increased knowledge of these languages and an
appreciation of the nomenclature derived from them are
among the elements in the understanding of Canadian
geography and history.
Indigenous Names for Aboriginal Places
On 1 January 1987, the municipality of Frobisher Bay
became officially known as Iqaluit. The name, meaning
'place of fish' in Inuktitut, was long used by the Inuit for
their community at this major centre of the eastern Arctic
on Baffin Island.
Settlement in the area of Frobisher Bay has its roots in
the establishment of a Hudson's Bay Company post on
the south side of Frobisher Bay in December 1914, some
125 kilometres southeast of the present municipality. The
184 Naming Canada
post, actually a simple 3-metre by 4-metre hut, was
moved up the bay to Fletcher Island in the spring of
1915. Five years later it was transferred across the 35-
kilometre-wide Frobisher Bay to Waddell Bay. From 1921
to 1949, the post was located on Cormack Bay, some 70
kilometres southeast of present Iqaluit. In the fall of 1949,
the Frobisher Bay post was moved to Apex Hill, 6 kilo-
metres southeast of the United States air base, built near
the head of the bay in 1942. In 1951, the area of the air
base was officially named Frobisher, and that of the trad-
ing post was called Frobisher Bay. The latter became
Apex in 1965.
In 1971, the municipal hamlet of Frobisher Bay in the
area of the air base was incorporated. It became a village
in 1974, a town in 1980.
In December 1984, the residents of Frobisher Bay voted
310 to 213 to have the name replaced by Iqaluit. This was
subsequently confirmed by the Northwest Territories
Executive Council, to take effect on the first day of 1987.
In 1965, the small Inuit community between the town-
site and Apex Hill was officially named Ikaluit. As the
community is within the town of Iqaluit, this variant
spelling was dropped in 1989.
As to the name for the water feature, originally called
Frobisher's Strait in 1576 by Martin Frobisher, there are
no plans to change Frobisher Bay.
Recognition of Aboriginal community names in prefer-
ence to non-Aboriginal names began in the western Arc-
tic, where Tuktoyaktuk replaced Port Brabant in 1950.
Vilhjalmur Stefansson reported that Tuktuyaktok/ mean-
ing 'place where there are caribou/ was in use when he
was there in the winter of 1907. However, the Hudson's
Bay Company introduced the name Port Brabant in 1936,
and this was adopted by the Geographic Board a year
later. In 1948, postal officials requested the acceptance of
Adopting Names of Native Origin 185
Tuktoyaktuk for the new post office, but HBC and the
noted ethnologist Diamond Jenness recommended Tuk-
tuk. The board disliked this popular variation of the
Aboriginal name, and adopted Port Brabant for the post
office. Two years later the board accepted the local name
Tuktoyaktuk for the community and post office.
Much of the recent work in Aboriginal name restora-
tion has been undertaken by the Commission de topony-
mie du Quebec to reflect more closely the usage of the
Inuit. Examples were the change of Port Harrison to
Inoucdjouac (although Port Harrison remained the
postal name), Notre-Dame-d'Ivugivic to Ivujuvik, and
Notre-Dame-de-Koartac to Koartac. Even Port Burwell
was changed to Killiniq by the Quebec commission,
although the community, since abandoned, was in the
Northwest Territories (now Nunavut).
In 1979 and 1980, the commission decided that the
actual names and the romanized spellings used by the
Inuit in their own communities should take precedence.
The following year Canada Post agreed to change its
postal designations to conform to local preferences. The
main changes that resulted in Quebec were:
• Inukjuak, from Port Harrison (1908) and Inoucdjouac
(1965)
• Kangiqsualujjuaq, from George River (1876) and Port-
Nouveau-Quebec (1965)
• Kangiqsujuaq, from Wakeham Bay (1930s) and Mari-
court (Wakeham) (1965)
• Kangirsuk, from Payne Bay (1940s) and Bellin (Payne)
(1965)
• Kuujjuaq, from Fort Chimo (1830^3,1866) and Fort-
Chimo (1965)
• Quaqtaq, from Koartak (1940s) and Notre-Dame-de-
Koartac (1961) and Koartac (1965)
186 Naming Canada
• Salluit, from Sugluk (1947) and Saglouc (1965).
As early as 1756 there was a trading post at Great
Whale River on the east coast of Hudson Bay. The com-
munity was renamed Poste-de-la-Baleine in 1965, and
the post office was changed to this in 1979. The Quebec
commission officially recognized the Inuit name Kuuj-
juaraapik in 1979 for the Inuit part of the village, and
Whapmagoostui for the Cree part. Canada Post changed
the post office to Kuujjuaraapik in 1992.
How well some of the Aboriginal names are being
received throughout the Indigenous communities of the
North remains to be seen. In arranging for air travel from
Kuujjuaq to other communities, it has been said that
some Inuit travellers will use the previous name (George
River) to ensure that they get to Kangiqsualujjuaq, if
that's where they're going, and not to Kangiqsujuaq.
Elsewhere in Canada, the trend of changing commu-
nity names to those used by Aboriginal people, where
they form the majority of residents, is slowly picking up.
In British Columbia, the Indian band council of Port
Simpson requested in 1985 that its community be
changed to Lax Kw'alaams. Meaning 'place of wild
roses' in Tsimshian, this name had long been used by the
Indigenous people. The change was officially made in
July 1986, based on agreement by the names committee
members for British Columbia and the federal Depart-
ment of Indian and Northern Affairs. Canada Post also
renamed its post office. Port Simpson itself was named in
1831 for Capt. Aemilius Simpson, who was then
employed in the Nass River area in the marine service of
the Hudson's Bay Company.
In 1989, the name of the hamlet of Eskimo Point, Nun.,
on the west coast of Hudson Bay, was changed to Arviat.
In 1992, Spence Bay, Nun., at the south end of Boothia
Adopting Names of Native Origin 187
Peninsula, became Taloyoak, and the Dene name Lut-
selk'e was substituted for Snowdrift, on the southeastern
shore of Great Slave Lake. Coppermine became Kugluk-
tuk and Fort Norman became Tulita, both in 1996.
By the end of the century there may be few English and
French names of Aboriginal communities left in Canada.
As reviews are made of each community name, don't be
surprised to see Cambridge Bay become Ikaluktutiak,
Coral Harbour change to Salliq, Hall Beach to Sanirajak,
Resolute to Qausuittuq, and Chesterfield Inlet to Igluli-
gaarjuk. Some other Dene community names may also be
changed, such as Nahanni Butte to Tthenaagoo.
Since our adjustment to Tuktoyaktuk is complete, and
since references to Inukjuak and Kuujjuaq can usually
now be made without adding their former names, we
shouldn't worry too much as more and more changes are
made from English and French names to Indigenous
ones.
Miramichi: Jacques Cartier in the
'Land of the Mi'kmaq'
One of the intriguing names of Eastern Canada is
Miramichi. The name is best known as that of a river
which drains a basin of 12,740 square kilometres in New
Brunswick. Its principal branches are colloquially called
the 'Sou'West,' the 'Nor'West,' and the 'Little Sou'West/
Miramichi is also a component of the longest geographi-
cal name in Canada: Lower North Branch Little South-
west Miramichi River.
In the form 'the Miramichi,' the name applies to a
broad region of rugged terrain and dense woods from
Boiestown to the city of Miramichi and beyond. The
name occurs in the community Nelson-Miramichi,
188 Naming Canada
opposite Newcastle; and in the present community of
Miramichi, east of Chatham, where a post office by that
name existed from 1940 to 1970; a century earlier another
post office by that name served the Chatham area.
Miramichi has even been applied three times beyond
New Brunswick: to Pembroke, Ont., which briefly was
called Miramichi in the early 1800s; to a brook and a
small community south of Inverness on Cape Breton
Island; and to a pond in Massachusetts.
One of the original 1867 House of Commons ridings
was Northumberland-Miramichi. In 1988, it became sim-
ply Miramichi. Three of the fifty-eight provincial constit-
uencies have it as part of their names: Miramichi Bay,
Miramichi-Newcastle, and Southwest Miramichi.
Miramichi has its roots in the 1534 voyage of Jacques
Carrier. Although his narrative makes no mention of it,
maps derived from his historic voyages are the first to
record it in the form of Merchemay (1541) and Mecheomay
(1550). Similar forms appeared on later maps and docu-
ments, occurring as Misamichy on Samuel de Cham-
plain's 1632 map, Mizamichi on Nicolas Sanson's 1656
map, and Mizamichis on Chrestien LeClercq's 1691 map.
Meanwhile, in 1632, Jean Guerard produced a map on
which he inscribed Grand Miramichi (for today's Resti-
gouche River) at the head of Chaleur Bay, and Petit
Miramichi in the area of the present Miramichi. Lusta-
gooch ('good river') and Lustagoocheech ('little good
river') are the Mi'kmaq names for the Restigouche and
the Miramichi, respectively.
The form with the 'r' on Guerard's map may have
been a misprint, but it was repeated by Charles Lalement
in 1645 and 1659, by Nicolas Denys in 1672, and by his
son Richard, the first European settler in the Miramichi.
Thereafter, map makers gave precedence to Miramichi.
In a thorough analysis of the roots of the name, Wil-
Adopting Names of Native Origin 189
liam Francis Ganong concluded in 1926 that Carder
had learned it from the Montagnais in the area of
Natashquan, opposite lie d'Anticosti on Quebec's North
Shore. On telling them where he had sailed, they proba-
bly said that Cartier had been in the 'land of the
Mi'kmaq/ or, in their words, 'Maissimeu Assi.' This
expression was then transformed into Mecheomay and
related forms.
This derivation certainly seems to have more merit
than several other origins given in various references,
such as 'happy retreat/ 'ugly beaver/ 'place of many ber-
ries/ and 'river of many branches/
Britain's redoubtable Lord Beaverbrook was raised in
Newcastle, where his father, William Aitken, was a Pres-
byterian minister. When raised to the peerage in 1917, he
intended first to call himself 'Lord Miramichi/ but the
eminent Miramichi historian Louise Manny cautioned
him that he might become known as 'Lord Merry
Mickey/ and thus bring discredit upon himself and the
region. He turned then to Beaver Brook, a small village
north of Newcastle where he had once borrowed a
fringed surrey from the Catholic priest for an Orange
parade. Thus Max Aitken became Lord Beaverbrook.
The correct pronunciation of Miramichi often distin-
guishes the locals from the outsiders. With emphasis on
the first and last syllables, it closely resembles 'MEER-a-
me-SHEE.'
Saskatoon: A Home-Made Name from a
Home-Grown Fruit
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan - a handsome prairie city
founded on teetotalism - has a name that is pure Cana-
dian.
190 Naming Canada
Indeed, what could be more Canadian than Saska-
toon? Its naming occurred during a religious service
when a branch of delicious berries was presented to the
leader of a new settlement on the banks of the South
Saskatchewan River.
During the summer of 1881, the government of Can-
ada advertised land on the Prairies for one dollar an acre.
In Toronto, some abstemious individuals saw this as an
opportunity to establish an alcohol-free community.
They banded together to form the Temperance Coloniza-
tion Society and applied for a block of half a million acres
(200,000 hectares) straddling the South Saskatchewan.
The following spring, the society's leader, Methodist
missionary John Neilson Lake, and a number of society
members boarded the Canadian Pacific train for
Moosomin in what was then the District of Assiniboia.
Prom there, they journeyed by wagon 430 kilometres to
the northwest, arriving at their destination towards the
end of July.
On 18 August 1882, Lake chose a site for the centre of
the new colony near the present corner of Saskatoon's
Broadway Avenue and Main Street, a short distance from
the east bank of the South Saskatchewan. In his diary
(written twenty years later), Lake noted that he planned
to name the new settlement Minnetonka. He chose the
name because Chief White Cap of a Siouan band at
nearby Moose Woods recommended the site chosen, and
because it was Siouan for 'big river,' a reference to the
South Saskatchewan.
On Sunday, 20 August, Lake led a religious service at
his camp. According to Adam Turner in his book, Early
Days in Saskatoon (1932), Gerald Willoughby, a member
of Lake's party, brought a branch of reddish purple ber-
ries to the service. It seems likely that the branch was
given to Willoughby by one of the Cree chain bearers in a
Adopting Names of Native Origin 191
survey party that was laying out a plan for the town, and
that the chain bearer told him about the importance of
the berry in the Native diet and in making pemmican.
Willoughby (who had become the party's interpreter of
Cree and Siouan) informed Lake that the purple berries
were called misaskwatomina in Cree.
To Lake, this sounded like sas-ka-toon and he an-
nounced this would be the name of the new settlement.
The literal translation of the Native name is said to be
'fruit of the much wood.' Saskatoon berry is also called
the early berry, serviceberry, and Juneberry (Amelanchier
alnifolia).
Towards the end of the twentieth century, a number of
provincial historians and writers, including Bill Barry,
author of People Places: Saskatchewan and Its Names (1997),
cast doubt on the veracity of John Lake's story, observing
that ripe saskatoon berries could not be found as late as 20
August. Barry was inclined to accept a story given by
Edward Ahenakew in 1919 that the site, known as man-
imkisdskwatdn in Cree, was where they cut saskatoon
branches for arrow shafts. He concluded that it was 'likely
that Lake had that phrase in mind when he chose the
name.' Barry and others argued that it would be quite
unlikely that Lake could have derived Saskatoon from
misaskwatomina. However, in 1810 geographer David
Thompson spelled the name of the fruit Sarskutum, and in
1859 artist Paul Kane referred to Sasketome berries.
Although fur trader Daniel Harmon rendered the Cree
word as Mi-sas-qui-to-min-uck in his 1800 journal, and Sir
John Franklin reproduced the word as meesasscootoomeena
in 1820, most nineteenth-century references missed the
first syllable. In May 2000 I heard a Cree scholar pro-
nounce the word, and, although I was standing within
two metres of him, I did not hear the first syllable, mis; but
the second syllable, sas, was clearly heard.
192 Naming Canada
In November 1999,1 asked Clarence Peters, a horticul-
turalist in Regina with particular expertise with the
saskatoon tree and its season of bearing edible fruit,
whether ripe berries could be found in late August. He
replied that it could have been a pear-shaped subspecies
of the saskatoon that was found, which he said his family
had collected just north of Saskatoon during his youth,
and found them 'best from early to late August, when
they were starting to wrinkle like a prune. Frequently we
allowed them to ripen and dry on the trees and collected
them during harvest, even towards the end of August. I
think it is quite conceivable that the berries would have
been picked in mid August.' As the story told by Lake
was confirmed by other residents of Saskatoon 100 years
ago, I see no reason for challenging it.
By the spring of 1883, the Regina Leader was carrying
advertisements for the Temperance Colony, City of
Saskatoon.' However, the settlement languished until
1890, when a railway from Regina to Prince Albert was
rerouted to cross the South Saskatchewan at Saskatoon.
Because it was easier to obtain water for the steam
engines on the low flood plain along the west side of the
river, the Saskatoon station was constructed there.
The first Saskatoon post office was built in 1884 on the
east side of the river at the corner of Broadway Avenue
and Eleventh Street. A new post office, called West
Saskatoon, was established on the west bank in 1900 to
serve the growing community there. Before long, the
burgeoning west side had appropriated the name Saska-
toon for its post office.
Thomas Copland, a leading merchant and land agent,
was asked to resolve the confusion by devising a new
name for the east-side post office. His proposal, as
reported to the chief geographer of Canada, James
White, on 3 November 1905, was to spell Saskatoon
Adopting Names of Native Origin 193
backwards, slightly modified, producing Nootaska. The
Post Office Department amended it to Nutana, which
Copland noted was a great improvement even though it
obscured the origin of the name. Later, Adam Turner
stated, and many others have repeated, that Nutana was
a Siouan word for 'first born/ but such a claim came
about through a misunderstanding by the deputy post-
master general in Winnipeg in 1901 when replying to
Thomas O. Davis, M.R, who had submitted the Siouan
word for 'first born/ In his reply, the postal official
referred to Davis's submission as 'Nutana/ and others
subsequently reached the same conclusion. The name
likely submitted by Davis was Wenonah or Winona, cele-
brated by Longfellow in The Song of Hiawatha. The same
epic poem provided the names Nokomis, Sask., and
Wawanesa, Man. There are places called Winona in
Ontario, Minnesota, and Indiana.
Nutana continued as a post office until 1919, when it
became Saskatoon No. 1. Nutana remains today as the
name of a neighbourhood between the river and the cam-
pus of the University of Saskatchewan. It also occurs in the
names of twelve businesses and institutions, and in the
name Saskatoon Nutana, a provincial electoral district.
In 1903, the villages of Saskatoon and Riversdale on the
west side and Nutana were amalgamated to form the
town of Saskatoon. Three years later, the now-expanding,
self-proclaimed 'Miracle City of the West/ which even
billed itself as the 'Fastest Growing City in the World/
was incorporated as a city in the newly created province
of Saskatchewan. By 1908, three transcontinental railways
- the Canadian Northern, the Canadian Pacific, and the
Grand Trunk Pacific - converged on what became known
as the 'Railway Hub of the West.' Prone to labels, Saska-
toon also is called the 'City of Bridges/ having seven of
them over the South Saskatchewan.
194 Naming Canada
In 1921, Saskatoon had a population in excess of 25,000
people, and by 1961, the figure stood at 95,526. The 1986
census recorded Saskatoon as the largest city in
Saskatchewan, when its residents numbered 177,641 to
Regina's 175,064. By the end of the century its population
surpassed 220,000.
Saskatoon is an authentic Canadian name acquired
from the immediate surroundings of the city. Its unique-
ness is emphasized by the tale of two British visitors
travelling west by rail. Wondering where they were
when the train stopped after crossing a wide river, one of
the travellers got off the train to inquire and was told:
'Saskatoon, Saskatchewan/ Reboarding the train, the
traveller announced with disappointment: They don't
speak English here.'
The name Saskatoon also occurs elsewhere in Western
Canada. There is a Saskatoon Lake in both northeastern
Saskatchewan and northwestern Alberta. In the same
area of Alberta are Saskatoon Hill, Saskatoon Lake, and
Saskatoon Island Provincial Park. Across the border in
British Columbia is Saskatoon Creek. In southern Alberta,
near the Crowsnest Pass, is Saskatoon Mountain.
Both the place and the name that John Lake created on
the western landscape were symbolically brought to Tor-
onto in the 1950s by the naming of Saskatoon Drive, now
in the central part of Toronto's Etobicoke. One can imag-
ine this would have pleased Lake, who died in 1925 in
Toronto at the age of 91.
Medicine Hat: Mystery, Romance, and
Hints of Magic Below
The story of how Medicine Hat got its name is so inter-
twined with folk tales that the truth can no longer be
Adopting Names of Native Origin 195
authenticated. The most publicized story is that a Cree
medicine man had his hat blown into the South
Saskatchewan River during a battle with the Blackfoot,
When that happened, the Cree warriors fled, leaving the
Blackfoot to declare the site 'Saamis,' or 'place of the
medicine man's hat/
The Geographic Board report of 1919 published that
account, and it was repeated in 1928 in Robert Douglas's
Place Names of Alberta. However, both these publications,
so as not to show any preference among the tales, pre-
sented four other stories:
• A hill east of Medicine Hat was said by Walter
Johnson, the first settler there in 1882, to be shaped like
a medicine man's head-dress.
• A medicine man took a fancy to a hat taken from a
white settler who, together with his companions, had
been massacred.
• A brave was rewarded with a fancy head-dress by a
medicine man after he rescued a girl.
• A chief had a vision of a figure rising out of the river
and wearing the plumed hat of a medicine man.
When this essay was first published in Canadian Geo-
graphic in 1984, I reported that there were at least two
other stories that explained the origin of the name: (1) A
Blackfoot warrior was directed in a dream by a figure
wearing a head-dress to drown his betrothed so that he
might become a great chief. He drowned her, became a
powerful chief, and declared the site 'Saamis'; (2) Will-
iam Van Home, the renowned builder of the Canadian
Pacific Railway, was told in 1883 by two Metis hunters
that a Cree brave named Thunder Bear ran off in 1862
with the young wife of an old Cree chief. The wife is said
to have dreamed that if Thunder Bear would give the old
196 Naming Canada
chief a war bonnet with the tail feathers of seven eagles,
he would leave Thunder Bear in peace at the site where
the river (South Saskatchewan) comes closest to the
Cypress Hills. When Van Home was told the story he is
said to have remarked: That hat was good medicine to
appease the irate chief/ and thereupon named the place
Medicine Hat.
In 1994 Marcel M.C. Dirk published a small booklet
entitled But Names Will Never Hurt Me, and reported that
there were at least twelve explanations for the origin of
the name, with at least six of them displaying only subtle
variations of a single theme.
Shortly after Medicine Hat achieved city status in
1906, Rudyard Kipling paused there on a transcontinen-
tal trip. On learning that the area was sitting on top of a
huge natural-gas field, he declared that it had 'all Hell
for a basement with Medicine Hat for a trap door.'
In 1910, some newcomers to the community suggested
that the city should have a more prosaic name, such as
Gasburg or Smithville. Members of the city's Cypress
Club were outraged, and delegated Frank Fatt, the post-
master, to appeal to Kipling for support in retaining the
original name. Kipling responded forthwith from
England:
To my mind/ he wrote, 'the name of Medicine Hat...
echoes the old Cree and Blackfoot tradition of red mys-
tery and romance that once filled the prairies. Also it
hints at the magic that underlies the city in the shape of
your natural gas.
'Believe me, the very name is an asset, and as years go
on will become more and more of an asset. It has no
duplicate in the world; it makes men ask questions, and
... draws the feet of the young men towards it. It has the
qualities of uniqueness, individuality, assertion and
power. Above all, it is the lawful, original, sweat-and-
Adopting Names of Native Origin 197
dust-won name of the city, and to change it would be to
risk the luck of the city, to disgust and dishearten old-
timers, not in the city alone, but the world over, and to
advertise abroad the city's lack of faith in itself.
'Men do not think much of a family which has risen in
the world, changing its name for social reasons. They
think still less of a man who because he is successful
repudiates the wife who stood by him in his early strug-
gles. I do not know what I should say, but I have the
clearest notion of what I should think of a town that
went back on itself...
'Forgive me if I write strongly, but this is a matter on
which I feel keenly ... I have a huge stake of interest and
very true affection in and for the city and its folk.
'... The Calgary Herald writes [that a new name would
have] a sound like the name of a man's best girl and
looks like business at the head of a financial report.
'But a man's city is a trifle more than a man's best girl.
She is the living background of his life and love and toil
and hope and sorrow and joy. Her success is his success;
her shame is his shame; her honour is his honour; and
her good name is his good name.
'What, then, should a city be rechristened that has sold
its name? Judasville.'
Canada Has Its Mississippi River Too
Picture it. I am driving over a long bridge on Ontario's
Highway 7, some 60 kilometres southwest of Ottawa,
when my out-of-province passenger stops talking in
mid-sentence, and asks incredulously: 'Did that sign say
Mississippi River? Is this near the head of North Amer-
ica's greatest river?' The answers are yes and no.
Canada's Mississippi River, a tributary of the Ottawa,
198 Naming Canada
rises in the Madawaska Highlands of Central Ontario,
and, in its 201-kilometre length, drops 323 metres. In its
upper section, it flows south through the picturesque
Upper and Lower Mazinaw lakes, in Bon Echo Provin-
cial Park. After draining the smaller Marble and Georgia
lakes, it swings east to flow through Kashwakamak,
Crotch, Dalhousie, and Mississippi lakes. Just east of the
town of Carleton Place, it turns northwest, and after
tumbling over falls and rapids at Appleton, Almonte,
Blakeney, Pakenham, and Galetta, its main course flows
into Lac des Chats, a reservoir on the Ottawa River. Its
second outlet, the Mississippi Snye, flows east for 6 kilo-
metres, emptying into the Ottawa below the Chats Falls
dam and generating station.
Although the double outlet of the Mississippi was well
known to explorers and settlers from the early 1800s,
Canadian topographical maps and sailing charts until
the 1970s incorrectly identified the final 2 kilometres of
the main outlet plus the snye as the Ottawa River (South
Branch)!
The name Mississippi is puzzling for this particular
river. While the name suggests in some Algonquian lan-
guages, such as Cree, the biggest river among surround-
ing rivers, it is not only smaller than the adjoining
Madawaska River, it is mere mite beside the mighty
Ottawa (1,190 kilometres), which itself is known in the
Algonquin language as Kitchisippi, 'great river'; and is a
barely a trickle compared with the magnificent Father
of Waters, at 3,780 kilometres, which drains the Ameri-
can plains into the Gulf of Mexico. It might be concluded
that the name of Canada's Mississippi is really an error
for another name in Ojibwa, Mississauga, or Algon-
quin, with the early explorers and map makers having
got it wrong, much as they evolved Madawaska from
Matouachita.
Adopting Names of Native Origin 199
Samuel de Champlain ascended the Ottawa River in
1613, but made no mention of a river entering the
Ottawa above Chats Falls, and did not portray it on his
subsequent maps. Rivers flowing northeast into the
Ottawa were not shown or named on maps until the late
1600s. On Guillaume Delisle's 1703 Carte du Canada, four
were identified: their present-day river names are South
Nation, Rideau, Madawaska, and Bonnechere. But dur-
ing the whole of the eighteenth century nary a squiggle
was made on maps to identify the Mississippi, nor was
there apparently any mention of it in reports and pub-
lished materials.
When Britain took over the area of present-day Eastern
Ontario after 1763, its map makers portrayed only well-
known features, with minor features ignored if they had
not been surveyed. Until surveyors laid out the town-
ships northwest of the Rideau River in the second and
later decades of the nineteenth century, maps of that area
were intentionally left totally blank.
In May 1816, Alexander McDonell, a superintendent of
locating settlers in Upper Canada, reported to the secre-
tary of the lieutenant-governor that he had 'been
informed by Indians and others that in the rear of the
River Tay there was a much larger River which empties
into the Ottawa/ He directed surveyor William Graves to
investigate the river. Graves reported that it was fine,
and the land between the two rivers was of an excellent
quality. Neither of them identified it by name.
The earliest reference to the river is in Graves's 1816
diary of his survey of Bathurst and Drummond town-
ships. On 16 July, he referred to it as the Mifsippy River.
Elsewhere in his diary and in his field book he used four
other spellings. In a field book by one of his assistants, the
name is written Missisippi River. The first mention of
Mifsifspee Lake (upriver from present-day Carleton Place)
200 Naming Canada
is in Willson Conger's 1817 survey diary of Beckwith
Township. Also that year, John Ryder mentioned Mafsas-
sippa River in his survey diary of Beckwith and Goulbourn
townships. In 1818, a government map of the eastern part
of Upper Canada identified R
r
 Mifsifsippy, but did not
name the lake, although its outline was accurately por-
trayed. The modern spelling for the the river was first
published on the 1818 Sketch of the Rideau Settlement, but
the compiler assigned Mississippi Lake to present Bennett
Lake, west of Perth. An 1821 map of Bathurst District not
only spelled Mississippi River and Mississippi Lake as we
write them now, but also gave the name Mississippi Lake to
Bennett Lake, and, as well, called Silver Lake on present-
day Highway 7 West Mississippi Lake.
Speculation that the name Mississippi may have
evolved from Mazinaw was raised in 1968 by Carleton
Place historian Howard Brown. Derived from one of the
Algonquian languages, Mazinaw refers to the painted
pictographs on Mazinaw Rock on the east side of Upper
Mazinaw Lake, according to pictographer Selwyn Dewd-
ney (1909-1979), the father of Canadian scientific rock
study. It might not be too difficult, on hearing Mazinaw-
zeebi, 'painted image river,' to render it by the more famil-
iar Mississippi River. Perhaps its name could have been
derived from the name of the Mississauga, a division of
the Ojibwa, who migrated from the north shore of Lake
Huron to the area of the upper Mississippi River in the
mid 1700s. In 1827, Hudson's Bay Company factor
Charles Thomas, based at Chats Falls, referred to the river
as Tomississippi and Tomissipii, but neither appears to have
an obvious meaning in Ojibwa or Algonquin, according
to the nineteenth-century dictionaries of those languages.
In 1823, engineer Samuel Clowes and surveyor
Reuben Sherwood examined the course of the Missis-
sippi to determine its suitability as a route for the pro-
Adopting Names of Native Origin 201
jected canal from Lake Ontario to the Ottawa River.
Although finding it a fine and copious stream, it was
concluded in the report to the lieutenant-governor that
'the bed of the Mrfsif sippy was far too elevated, and that
as the lockage to attain and descend from the Summit
Pound would be enormously expensive no Canal would
be practicable in that direction/
The Kingston and Pembroke Railway was built from
Kingston to Renfrew between 1872 and 1884, reaching the
Mississippi River in 1878. When a post office was named
Mississippi Station on the south side of the river in 1879,
the community of Mississippi, with a store, hotel, and
meeting hall, grew up around it. In 1959, the station was
closed, but the post office continued in use until 1987, and
Mississippi remains a small, but viable community.
In 1884, the Mississippi River figured in an important
piece of British law. The most prominent lumber baron
on the river in the 1870s and '80s was Peter McLaren of
Perth. He had a lumber mill in Carleton Place that cut
some 100,000 feet of lumber a day, and had constructed a
number of dams, sluices, and slides along the length of
the Mississippi. By 1886, McLaren employed some 450
men in 10 shanties, as well as a number of other part-
time wood cutters. He believed the improvements he
had made on the Mississippi entitled him to prevent any-
one else running logs down his slides. Boyd Caldwell,
another lumber baron with limits on the Mississippi and
its tributary, the Clyde, won the approval of the Ontario
government three times to use the Mississippi waterway
for his logs and square timber, but Sir John A. Mac-
donald's Canadian government rejected the provincial
permits. Britain's Privy Council supported Caldwell's
claim by passing the Rivers and Streams Bill in 1884.
Since that time, it has been unlawful for anyone in Can-
ada to have a monopoly over a navigible waterway.
202 Naming Canada
The 20-kilometre-long Mississippi Lake is a very pop-
ular destination for vacationers, with some 1,300 sum-
mer cottages around its shores. The first steamboat on
the lake in 1867 was aptly named The Mississippi. On
1 January 1998 the town of Almonte and the townships
of Pakenham and Ramsay were amalgamated to create
the town of Mississippi Mills.
The source of the Mississippi is only a few metres east
of the source of the Little Mississippi River, which drains
the intricately shaped Weslemkoon Lake to the north for
25 kilometres, where it joins the York River, a major trib-
utary of the Madawaska. In the days before European
contact, the two river systems likely formed important
components of canoe travel between Lake Huron and the
upper St. Lawrence River. There is a strong tradition that
a great battle was fought in the area of the headwaters of
the Mississippi. And as well, it is believed the same area
may be where Champlain spent the winter of 1616 with
the Huron.
Throughout its length, the Mississippi River possesses
charm and four-season splendour for the tourist, the cot-
tager, the back-to-nature lover, and the basin's immense
variety of farmers, woodsmen, merchants, professionals,
and townspeople. It seems surprising, then, to find the
first evidence of the name as late as William Graves's
diary of 1816, when the neighbouring Rideau, Mada-
waska, and Bonnechere rivers had been recorded for
more than 100 years.
In Canso, Survival Is a Tradition
Canso, N.S., knows how to survive adversity. The bur-
dens it has shouldered in its long history - isolation,
harsh climate, shallow soils, unreliable fish stocks,
Adopting Names of Native Origin 203
depressed fish prices, oil spills, drownings, and fish-
plant closings - have strengthened its fibre and durabil-
ity. As recently as 1990, the community had to fight for
its survival through a yearlong campaign to reopen its
fish plant: the tenacious effort restored 500 jobs and
impressed Canadians from coast to coast.
Canso is located at the seaward end of Chedabucto
Bay's south shore, 200 kilometres northeast of Halifax.
Several islands shelter its harbour from the open waters
of the bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The town has a popu-
lation of 1,230, with another 500 in the adjacent commu-
nities of Hazel Hill, Tittle Road, and Durells Island.
European fishermen were attracted to Canso's shel-
tered harbour from the first decade of the 1500s. For the
next 200 years, French, Portuguese, and Basque fisher-
men built wharves, fish flakes, and shelters on the shores
of the islands and mainland, and fished for cod. The
English took over Canso when most of Acadia (now
mainland Nova Scotia) was transferred to Britain in 1713
by the Treaty of Utrecht. Fishermen, merchants, and
traders from New England - with the protection of a
British garrison - developed a prosperous fishery on
Grassy Island in Canso Harbour, and English records
declared it to be 'the best and most convenient fishery of
any part of the King's dominions.'
Those advantages also marked Canso as a military tar-
get. In 1744, French forces from Louisbourg, Cape Breton
Island, captured and burned the settlement, calling
down the wrath of both the English and the New
Englanders. A British fleet with New England militia
attacked and captured the Louisbourg fortress the fol-
lowing year - after training on Grassy Island. The island,
which has remained largely undisturbed for nearly 250
years, is now a national historic site.
Canso was razed again during the American Revolu-
204 Naming Canada
tion when privateers, led by the notorious John Paul
Jones, attacked the community in 1776. The devastation
discouraged settlement, and even twenty-five years later
there were only about six families living in the area. Per-
manent settlement finally began around 1812, a 'way
office' for mail transfer was established in 1834, and by
mid-century the population had increased to 250 fami-
lies. Two cable companies operated their headquarters in
Canso and neighbouring Hazel Hill - for communica-
tions with Europe - from 1881 to 1961, providing a
source of employment aside from fishing and fish pack-
ing. Canso was incorporated as a town in 1901.
Canso's name is derived from the Mi'kmaq language.
Rev. Silas Rand, a nineteenth-century authority on the
language, gave the Mi'kmaq word as camsook or kamsook,
meaning 'opposite the lofty cliff.' In a 1914 study of
Canso, Dr. William F. Ganong, a renowned authority on
Maritime Native names and their meanings, said the root
kam meant 'across' or 'beyond,' and sook meant 'cliff/
Ganong concluded that the line of cliffs on the south
shore of Chedabucto Bay provided the source for the
name, and this conclusion has been repeated in a number
of studies of place names. However, residents suggest
the name may owe its origin to a mirage, seen from the
Canso shore, of an impressive height of land on Isle
Madame, 13 kilometres to the north. Although this hill is
only 65 metres high at Cape Auguet, its image - seen
over water - seems magnified under certain atmospheric
conditions that distort light rays.
The Mi'kmaq origin was noted as early as 1609 by the
French writer Marc Lescarbot in his Histoire de la Nouvelle
France, but that did not prevent later searches for a Euro-
pean origin. At least one writer linked the name to the
Spanish ganso for 'goose.' Others have suggested it was
derived from the name of a French explorer called Canse,
Adopting Names of Native Origin 205
plus eau for 'water' - a mystifying hypothesis, since there
is no evidence such an explorer ever lived. Lescarbot was
the first to use the French transliteration - 'Campseau' -
to describe the harbour, the present Chedabucto Bay, and
the narrow strait separating Cape Breton Island from the
mainland. Samuel de Champlain referred to Tort de
Canseau' in his Voyages (1613) in reference to the har-
bour. In the 1632 edition of his Voyages, 'Canseau' is used
for the harbour and strait, 'Campseau' for the bay. Colo-
nizer Nicolas Denys used 'Campseaux' for all three fea-
tures in his 1672 account.
The use of 'Canceau' for present Cape Canso (the outer
point of Andrew Island, 5 kilometres southwest of the
town) first appeared on hydrographer Jean-Baptiste-
Louis Franquelin's 1686 map of Acadia. Later editions of
the map and one by Guillaume Delisle (1703) spelled the
cape's name 'Camseau.' Map maker Jacques-Nicolas
Bellin used 'Canseau' on his 1744 map of Acadia for the
harbour, cape, and strait, and this spelling prevailed
thereafter on French maps.
The earliest appearance of the name in an English doc-
ument is on a Herman Moll map of 1715, when he used
'Canseaux' for the strait. The change to today's spelling
came in 1749, when Nova Scotia surveyor general
Charles Morris substituted 'Canso' for the French ver-
sion, and this prevailed as the official form.
Strait of Canso, for the body of water between Cape
Breton Island and the mainland, was first used in 1776 by
chart maker Joseph F.W. DesBarres, and it ultimately
replaced 'Gut of Canso' on maps and marine charts by
about 1865.
Canso has much to offer inquisitive travellers, even
those who arrive in search of the Canso Causeway,
which is some 100 kilometres northwest of the town, by
road. The causeway joining the mainland to Cape Breton
206 Naming Canada
Island was built in 1955, and perhaps should have been
called the Strait of Canso Causeway, or Road to the Isles
Causeway, to avoid confusion with the distant town.
Canso's boosters are proud to show visitors the Whit-
man House Museum, the Seafreez fish-packing plant,
the graceful Star of the Sea Roman Catholic Church,
the Grassy Island visitor interpretation centre, and the
impressive seamen's memorial. Knowledgeable resi-
dents talk proudly about the first mass celebrated in
Nova Scotia (1611) and the first Anglican church built in
Canada (1720) - both in Canso. They recall the survival
instincts of the little town where, in the Dirty Thirties, Fr.
Jimmy Tompkins publicized the poverty of Maritime
fishermen: he later introduced the concept of credit
unions to the province. They also have no doubt that
Canso will continue to be a proud, 'can so' community.
Nanaimo: A City and a Sweet Dessert
No Canadian place name is more celebrated in Canadian
bakeries, kitchens, and social gatherings than the Van-
couver Island city of Nanaimo. Whether it be at a
monthly meeting of a Women's Institute in the Mari-
times an evening card party in Southern Ontario, in your
favourite cookbook, or a packaged square mix in the
local grocery store, the Nanaimo Bar is ubiquitous.
The name Nanaimo owes it origin to a Coast Salish
confederacy of five bands, the Koltsiowotl, the Ksalokul,
the Yesheken, the Anuenes, and the Tewetken, who win-
tered at their village of Stli'flep, in the area of Departure
Bay on the north side of the present city. The Nanaimos
described their joint community as Sneneymexw, meaning
'the whole/ 'big strong tribe,' or 'the great and mighty
people.' Their territory extended from Boat Harbour,
Adopting Names of Native Origin 207
17 kilometres southeast of the centre of the city, to
Horswell Bluff, 6 kilometres to the north, and extended
inland up the Nanaimo River, called by the Nanaimos
Quamquamqua, 'swift, swift water/
The first documentary evidence of the name Nanaimo
occurs in an 24 August 1852 letter from Vancouver Island
governor and Hudson's Bay Company factor James Dou-
glas to company clerk Joseph McKay 'to proceed, with
all possible diligence to Wintuhuysen Inlet, commonly
called Nanymo Bay, and formally take possession of the
coal beds lately discovered/ Douglas used the current
spelling in an 13 October 1852 letter to McKay, and the
following spring Commander James Prevost referred to
the 'Harbour of Nanaimo' in a despatch sent to the Brit-
ish Admiralty.
In 1791, Spanish sailing master Jose Maria Narvaez, a
member of Francisco Eliza's expedition, named the 15-
kilometre-long stretch of bays, coves, and passages from
Northumberland Channel on the southeast to Departure
Bay on the northwest Bocas de Winthuysen, for Spanish
rear admiral Francisco Xavier de Winthuysen. After
1853, all references to the Spanish admiral with Flemish
roots disappeared from the toponymy of the West Coast.
In 1851, a Nanaimo called Chewechkan learned that a
blacksmith at Fort Victoria was using coal imported from
England, and informed Joseph McKay that similar coal
was available near the shore of his community. When
Chewechkan returned in the spring of 1852 with good-
quality coal, he was rewarded with the title of Coal Tyee,
or 'coal chief/ which he proudly used until his death in
1884. He is recalled in the street name Coal Tyee Trail.
Governor Douglas visited the site in 1852, and, with
the help of the Nanaimos, mined 50 tons of coal. He
reported that 'the discovery has afforded me more satis-
faction than I can express/ Joseph McKay purchased
208 Naming Canada
almost 6,200 acres from the Nanaimos for the price of 668
Hudson's Bay blankets. Douglas and McKay found the
Nanaimos, who are reported to have had 943 men then,
quite peaceful and keen to be involved in the mining of
coal, but they deemed it necessary to build a bastion to
protect the site from the warlike Haida raiders from up
the coast.
The community around the mine site was named in
1854 Colviletown, for Andrew Col vile, governor of the
Hudson's Bay Company. The name was often misspelled
as Colvilletown and Colville; Town letters were ad-
dressed 'Colville Town, Nanaimo, V.I/ until 1860, after
which Colviletown disappeared.
The first group of twenty-one miners from the north
end of Vancouver Island and the California gold fields
arrived in Nanaimo in 1852. On 27 November 1854, after
sailing 140 days from London via Cape Horn, a group of
twenty-one Staffordshire miners, with their wives and
forty-two children, came ashore. In 1862, the Hudson's
Bay Company divested itself of its coal-mining interests
by selling out to the Vancouver Coal Mining and Land
Company, based in London. (It would be another
twenty-three years before Vancouver would be identified
with a mainland city.) That year, six tons of Nanaimo
coal was exhibited at the London World's Fair. In 1950,
mining operations ceased. During the 100-year-period,
total coal production had surpassed 50 million tons.
In 1863, to facilitate the mining operations, the first rail
line in Western Canada was built at Nanaimo. The name
of the city is reflected in the Esquimalt and Nanaimo
Railway, built by Robert Dunsmuir, with Sir John A.
Macdonald driving the last spike on 13 August 1886.
Dunsmuir's son James sold the railway to the Canadian
Pacific in 1913 for $3,000,000.
Nanaimo was the name of an 800-ton barque built in
Adopting Names of Native Origin 209
1882 by Nanaimo Sawmills, but it was soon sold to Hong
Kong interests. The ferry City of Nanaimo served the Van-
couver-to-Nanaimo run from 1891 to 1912. Canadian
Pacific operated the Princess of Nanaimo on the same run
for two years, 1951 and 1952. She was followed by BC Fer-
ries' Queen of Nanaimo, which is still in service between
Tsawwassen, on the mainland, and the Gulf Islands. In
1940, the corvette H.M.C.S. Nanaimo was launched from
Yarrow Shipyards in Victoria and served on Atlantic con-
voy duty throughout the Second World War.
A second community developed across the harbour on
Newcastle Island, named in 1853 because of the mining
of coal there by the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1874,
Nanaimo and the Newcastle townsite were joined to
form the city of Nanaimo, the third city incorporated on
the West Coast. It then had 1500 people. Between 1927
and 1954, the city was enlarged some ten times by annex-
ing the neighbouring communities of Northfield, Depar-
ture Bay, Wellington, and Chase River. At the beginning
of the twenty-first century, the 'hub city,' as the mid-
island city is called, has a population of some 75,000.
In the 1920s, there were forty Japanese Canadian her-
ring salteries in the Nanaimo area. Perhaps it was the sig-
nificant presence of Japanese fishermen before the
Second World War that has led more than one person to
speculate that Nanaimo was derived from the Japanese
words for 'seven potatoes.'
In 1985, Nanaimo's mayor Graeme Roberts advertised
a search for the 'Ultimate Nanaimo Bar.' Among the 100
different recipes submitted, local resident Joyce Hardcas-
tle's was the unanimous favourite among the judges, and
it is her recipe that city hall and the chamber of com-
merce hand out. Among her secrets were the use of
unsalted cultured butter and the substitution of almonds
for walnuts, as recommended in earlier recipes.
210 Naming Canada
In a chamber of commerce report on the history of the
bar, Nanaimo resident Phyliss Milligan is quoted as say-
ing a recipe for Chocolate Fridge Cake was copied about
1936 from a Vancouver Sun newspaper, and passed among
a group of ladies. The group formed the Harewood Ladies
Auxiliary in 1946. When they compiled a cookbook the
delicious Chocolate Fridge Cake was called the Nanaimo
Bar. Well-known cookbook writer Anne Lindsay spoke to
Mrs. Mulligan in 1984 about the recipe, but was told both
the clipping and the cookbook had vanished. Searches by
Vancouver Sun food editors failed to provide any record of
the Chocolate Fridge Cake. Ms. Lindsay was quoted in a
1984 article by Carol Ferguson in Canadian Living that the
many variations of the recipe in North America have their
source in a European pastry.
There are many contradictory stories about the true
origins of the pastry that ultimately earned the title Nan-
aimo Bar, with New Yorker, New York Dream Bar, New
York Slice, London Fog Bar, Edmonton Esk, and Domino
being among either its antecedents or its parallels. Suf-
fice it to say that it is a very popular dessert in the city of
Nanaimo. The city's official mascot is Nanaimo Barney,
shaped like a giant walking square.
There are two outlets on Nanaimo's Commercial Street
that specialize in the production of the bar. The Scotch
Bakery advertises itself as the 'Home of the Famous Nan-
aimo Bar/ The Nanaimo Bar and Cookie Company pro-
duces several varieties of the bar, including mocha,
cappuccino, and one with an extra-thick chocolate top
layer.
Many recipe books included a version of the Nanaimo
Bar in the 1950s. By 1960, Bird's Custard Powder, one of
the essential ingredients, had a recipe for the bar on its
cans. Western sugar companies printed recipes on their
bags after 1965.
Adopting Names of Native Origin 211
Joyce Hardcastle's Ultimate Nanaimo Bar
Bottom layer:
125 ml (1/2 cup) unsalted butter (European-style
cultured)
50 ml (1/4 cup) granulated sugar
75 ml (5 tbsp.) cocoa
425 ml (1 3/4 cups) graham wafer crumbs
1 egg, beaten
125 ml (1/2 cup) finely chopped almonds
250 ml (1 cup) unsweetened coconut
Melt the first three ingredients in the top of a double
boiler. Add egg and stir to cook and thicken, about one
minute. Remove from heat, and stir in crumbs, coconut,
and nuts. Press firmly into an ungreased 20 cm
2
 (8-inch-
square) pan.
Middle layer:
125 ml (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
40 ml (2 tbsp. plus 2 tsp.) cream
30 ml (2 tbsp.) vanilla custard powder
500 ml (2 cups) icing sugar
Cream together butter, cream, custard powder, and icing
sugar. Beat until light. Spread over bottom layer.
Top layer:
4 28-gram (1-ounce) squares semi-sweet chocolate
30 ml (2 tbsp) unsalted butter
Melt chocolate and butter over low heat. Cool. When
cool, but still liquid, pour over second layer, and chill
in the refrigerator. Lightly mark into 2.5-cm (1-inch)
squares before chocolate hardens completely.
212 Naming Canada
We Have 'Honoured' the Moose 662 Times!
Naming geographical features for wild animals was one
of the commonest ways of differentiating elements of the
landscape in the early exploration and settlement of
North America. One animal that attracted much atten-
tion was the moose, a large, somewhat grotesque mem-
ber of the deer family, similar to the European elk. The
Algonquian-speaking tribes called it moos, meaning
'browser/ describing the moose's habit of stripping the
tender bark and low branches of trees.
When the English explorers encountered the animals
in the early 1600s in New England, they initially
described them as 'moose-deer.' Eventually the short-
ened form 'moose' was used throughout the continent
for the rather graceless animal with ungainly legs and
drooping muzzle. The same animal acquired the identity
of orignal in French, a Basque word for what the French
call cerf('red deer') in both France and Canada.
As well as achieving prominence on coats of arms,
coinage, and bottled beverages, the moose has been
'honoured' in the names of 662 official names in Canada,
concentrated in a wide band across Northern Ontario
(166) and central Quebec (109), and in mainland Nova
Scoria (117).
The oldest 'moose' name in Canada may be Moose
River in Northern Ontario, known in Cree as Mons Sipi.
The area was once occupied by an Algonquian-speaking
tribe called Monsoni ('moose people'). Thomas Gorst
mentioned 'Moose Sebee' in his 1670-1 journal. On Moose
Factory Island, 20 kilometres from the river's mouth, the
Hudson's Bay Company established in 1673 its second
trading post, Moose Fort (the first was Fort Rupert). In
1730, the post was moved farther up river on the island,
and today is the home of approximately 1,000 Cree.
Adopting Names of Native Origin 213
Opposite Moose Factory Island on the west bank of
Moose River, where Revillon Freres once had a trading
post called Moose River Post, is Moosonee, a town of
1,250 people.
Moosonee, from the Cree name for Moose Factory,
became the terminus of the Temiskaming and Northern
Ontario Railway (now the Ontario Northland) in 1932. It
is the destination of the popular summer tourist excur-
sion, the Polar Bear Express. The Diocese of Moosonee
was established in 1872 by the Anglican Church at
Moose Factory. The diocesan centre is now based in
Schumacher, a community in the city of Timmins.
Moose Jaw, Sask., has often been called the most
extraordinarily crazy name for a town in the world.
Moose Jaw River, a tributary of the Qu'Appelle River,
was first recorded as Moose Jaw Creek by John Palliser
in 1857.
Suggestions that the name commemorates the repair
of a cartwheel with a moose's jaw by a titled Englishman
(who may have been Lord Dunsmore or the Earl of Mus-
grave or Lord Milton) are considered to be mythical. The
shape traced by the river as it flows, first, northwest,
then, within the city of Moose Jaw uncannily resembles
the outline of a moose skull. One of the earliest settlers to
arrive in the area of the city in 1882, James (later Senator)
Ross claimed that the formation of the hills as seen from
the river's mouth had the shape of the jaw of a moose. In
his People Places: The Dictionary of Saskatchewan Place
Names (1998), Bill Barry has concluded that 'the name ...
almost certainly comes from the Cree phrase moscdstani-
sipiy, referring to an area along the river where the winter
winds are less harsh.'
Moose Jaw was incorporated as a town in 1884, and as
a city in 1903. The Geographic Board approved the forms
Moosejaw Creek and Moosejaw for the town in 1901. In
214 Naming Canada
1931, the board corrected its record of the city's statutory
name to Moose Jaw. In 1967, the name Moose Jaw River
replaced the earlier decisions of Moosejaw Creek (1901)
and Moose Jaw Creek (1952).
The town of Moosomin, 220 kilometres southeast of
Regina on the Trans-Canada Highway, received its name
as a CPR station in 1882. It was given in honour of a prom-
inent Cree leader, whose name is also commemorated in
the name of Moosomin Indian Reserve north of North
Battleford, Sask. The name is also the Cree word for moo-
seberry, a low-bush berry of the Prairie provinces.
In the early 1800s, the site of Moosomin was the cross-
ing of a trail leading to Moose Mountain, a prominent ele-
vation in southeastern Saskatchewan. In 1947, a federal
electoral district was named Moose Mountain. In 1974, it
was joined to Qu'Appelle to become Qu'Appelle-Moose
Mountain, and, in 1988, it was renamed Souris-Moose
Mountain.
L'Orignal, an attractive community in the Township of
Champlain, has a population of 2,164. It is the county
seat of the United Counties of Prescott and Russell and is
located on the Ottawa River almost midway between
Ottawa and Montreal.
The name may be traced to the Seigniory of Pointe-a-
1'Orignal, granted to Francois Prevost in 1674. The point,
east of the village, possibly named by voyageurs, is now
called Grants Point. It is variously said to be the site
where a moose or deer skeleton was discovered, or
where the moose crossed the Ottawa River at this narrow
place above the storied Long Sault, made famous as the
last stand of Dollard des Ormeaux.
In many of the early land records, the name was also
spelled L'Orignac. Frequently the name of the village has
also been misspelled L'Original, even on postmarks.
Moose Creek is a small community 46 kilometres
Adopting Names of Native Origin 215
southwest of L'Orignal. The small creek, a tributary of
the South Nation River, is said to have a place that rarely
freezes where moose used to gather in the winter. The
current post office sign fuses the two words into
Moosecreek.
Moose River Gold Mines, about 65 kilometres north-
east of Dartmouth, N.S., were mined from the 1870s to
the 1920s. The place became famous in 1936, when three
Toronto men, exploring the possibility of reopening the
mines, became trapped by a cave-in. After eleven days,
while the ordeal was followed by millions through news-
paper accounts and the first continent-wide use of radio
broadcasts, two of the men were brought out alive.
Nearby is Mooseland, where a post office was opened in
1877. Its current population is about 80.
Nova Scotia had two post offices called Moose River,
one in Pictou County from 1874 to 1943, the other in
Cumberland County from 1882 to 1950. The population
of each is now smaller than 25. Near Digby is a small
stream called Moose River, identified as 'R de 1'Orignac'
on Lescarbot's 1609 map.
Some moose were transferred from the Maritimes to
the Island of Newfoundland in the 1870s and at the turn
of this century. Their occurrence likely accounts for the
seventeen geographical features with moose, mostly
between Corner Brook and Grand Falls-Windsor.
The moose - an imposing beast of the Canadian woods
and wilderness - is prominently reflected in the names of
geographical features, from Moose Ear Pond in New-
foundland to Moose Bath Pond in B.C. and Moosehide
Hills in the Yukon. The names - 662 of them - reveal the
distinctive character of Canada's names.
Examining the Names of
Particular Places
Cupids, Nfld.: Britain's First Canadian Colony
During a May 1991 visit to Newfoundland, I had the
pleasure of touring the old town of Cupids. It has the dis-
tinction of being the first year-round British colony in
what is now Canadian territory, having been founded by
John Guy as the Seaforest Plantation in August 1610.
Guy's achievement is little known outside Newfound-
land, and even within the province other events - the
1,000-year-old Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Mead-
ows; Marconi's 1901 transatlantic radio broadcast at Sig-
nal Hill in St. John's - have received greater attention.
Guy was a city councillor in Bristol and a master of the
Bristol Society of Merchant Adventurers. In 1608, the
same year Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec City
in the name of France, Guy made a reconaissance of Con-
ception Bay. On his return to England, he persuaded
forty-eight investors to join him in a company to estab-
lish a plantation on the west side of the bay. In May 1610,
the Privy Council endorsed his proposal, with the condi-
tion that his colony not interfere with the established
fishery.
In early August, a ship carrying Guy and thirty-nine
artisans - carpenters, stonemasons, shipwrights - sailed
Examining the Names of Particular Places 217
into the 'harbour here called Cuperres coue/ on a short
arm of Bay de Grave, 35 kilometres west of St. John's.
According to local history, the site was proposed by a
man named Daw, whose ancestors reportedly had a fish-
ing operation as early as 1522 at Ship Cove, on the north
side of Bay de Grave.
Cupers Cove, as Guy later wrote it, likely owes its
name to the practice of fish packers sending coopers to
the well-treed slopes to cut wood for staves to make bar-
rels for pickling fish. Cuperts coue, Cubitts Cove, and
Coopers Cove are early variations of Cupids Cove,
which came into use on maps and charts in the last quar-
ter of the seventeenth century, after having been used in
1630 by the first governor of Nova Scotia, Sir William
Alexander.
Selecting a site beside a small brook near the head of
the cove, Guy set his artisans to work building a house,
workshop, storehouse, forge, and barn, all enclosed by a
stockade measuring 27 metres by 37 metres and pro-
tected by three cannons. They also built a wharf and a
store on the lagoon at the head of the cove, as well as six
fishing boats and a 12-ton shallop.
In October, Guy sent the company a glowing report on
the abundance of fish and the industrious settlers. A
treatise on overseas ventures, published in London three
months later, noted that Guy's 'plantacon is very hon-
est peacefull and hopefull and very lykelye to be
profytable.'
Guy returned to England in the fall of 1611 with pros-
pects of opening new plantations at Renews, south of St.
John's, and on Trinity Bay. He returned to his colony in
the spring of 1612, accompanied by sixteen women, pre-
sumably wives of the artisans, and was joined later by
six apprentices. By year's end there were sixty-two colo-
nists in the plantation.
Following two years of good fortune and mild winters,
218 Naming Canada
the colony was plagued by problems in 1612. Guy's
expansion plans had to be curtailed because of danger
posed by pirates based at nearby Harbour Grace. Con-
flicts also arose between the colonists and fishermen
from Devon and Cornwall, whose supporters in England
denounced Guy's colony in the House of Commons. The
severe winter of 1612-13 caused considerable illness,
eight deaths, and the loss of most of the livestock, and
investors soon became disillusioned with the colony's
meagre returns.
One bright note was struck on 27 March 1613, when a
weather log incidentally made note of the first-recorded
white child born in Newfoundland. The father was
Nicholas Guie, whose relationship to John Guy is
unknown.
Two days after the child's birth, John Guy departed for
London, never to return. He was elected mayor of Bristol
in 1618 and represented the city for two terms in the
House of Commons before his death in 1629. The colony
was governed from 1615 to 1621 by Capt. John Mason,
who during that period made the first English chart
based on his hydrographic survey of eastern Newfound-
land.
It was long assumed by historians that the colony at
Cupids Cove was abandoned sometime after 1621, but
archaeological evidence has revealed continuous occu-
pancy, with a sharp population decline after 1750. The
population of Cupids rose to 840 in 1836, and peaked at
1,424 in 1884. The current population is 868.
In 1910, on the tercentenary of Cupids's founding, a
monument near the site of the original stockade was
erected by the Newfoundland Historical Society. The
City of Bristol donated a plaque for the monument, and
the Old Colony Association (Newfoundland expatriates
in Toronto) raised a 7- by 11-metre Union Jack - then
Examining the Names of Particular Places 219
believed to be the second-largest in the Empire - on a
41-metre pole half a kilometre east of the monument.
Seventy-five years later, a new and larger Union Jack was
donated by H.B. Dawe, owner of the local fish-packing
plant; it is flown on holidays and other special occasions.
Seeing the Union Jack fly in the stiff offshore breeze in
1991,1 imagined the same scene in the days of the Sea-
forest Plantation, and marvelled at the fortitude of the
colonists.
Since the early 1970s, the Cupids Historical Society
and the municipality have urged the federal government
to build a modest museum or interpretation centre in
Cupids, without success. The 400th anniversary of
Cupids's founding is in 2010.
Acadia: A Land without Boundaries
To some, Acadia is a remote corner of New Brunswick, to
others, a historic area of Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley.
Many believe it includes the three Maritime provinces
and even extends into Quebec. Although it is not shown
on modern maps, Acadia occupies a special place in the
hearts and minds of more than a quarter of a million peo-
ple who proudly proclaim their Acadian heritage with a
flag, an anthem, and a national day.
There is confusion about Acadia's origin and meaning,
and few people agree on the exact area it encompasses.
Yet it is a name of extensive geographical, historical, and
cultural significance.
The name of Acadia can be traced to the discoveries of
Giovanni de Verrazzano, who explored the coast of North
America in 1524. He was struck by the beauty of Chesa-
peake Bay, calling it Archadia, a variation of Arcadia, the
pastoral paradise of the Greek and Roman classics.
220 Naming Canada
If Verrazzano produced a map of his voyage, none has
survived. However, the places he named during his trav-
els are shown on a 1527 map by Vesconte de Maggiolo,
although Arcadia does not appear on it. The variation,
Larcadia, first appeared on a 1548 map by Giacomo
Gastaldi. He located it near what we now call Cape Cod.
In the 1560s, another Italian map shifted Larcadia to the
northeast, where it supplanted Tierra de los Bretons. In
1575, French historian Andre Thevet changed the name
to Arcadie.
In 1599, King Henry IV of France appointed Pierre
Chauvin de Tonnetuit lieutenant-general of Canada, the
coasts of 'Lacadie/ and other areas of New France for ten
years. This commission was transferred to Pierre du Gua
de Monts four years later. De Monts used Lacadie in his
petition to the king to undertake the exploration and col-
onization of New France.
A 1601 map by French cartographer Guillaume Levas-
seur used the name Coste de Cadie for what is now
Maine. Two years later, Samuel de Champlain wrote a
report entitled Des Sauvages in which he used Arcadie for
the area we now call the Maritimes. In the early years of
the seventeenth century, the form 1'Acadie became com-
mon in documents and on maps referring to Port-Royal
and other settlements around the Bay of Fundy.
From the late 1620s to 1763, Acadia was an undefined
territory east of New England and southeast of New
France. The inhabitants of French extraction, cut off from
other French colonies and with little immigration from
their homeland, developed a distinctive Acadian culture.
After their forced expulsion to the Thirteen Colonies and
Europe in 1755, and the subsequent return of many to
the region, their Acadian heritage was reaffirmed.
After 1763, the name Acadia was superseded by Nova
Scotia, which applied to New Brunswick and peninsular
Examining the Names of Particular Places 221
Nova Scotia as we know them today. Later, Cape Breton
Island, Prince Edward Island, the southern Gaspe coast,
and even lies de la Madeleine were considered parts of
Acadia.
Recent writers, such as Naomi Griffiths and Jean-
Claude Dupont, often acknowledge the European evi-
dence of Acadia's origins, but then proceed to suggest
the name is derived from a native name for their lands,
or from the Mi'kmaq expression for 'plenty/ 'fertile/ or
'camping place/
The first reference to a possible Mi'kmaq origin may
have been made by Thomas Chandler Haliburton, a
Nova Scotia writer, judge, and politician, in his A General
Description of Nova Scotia, published in 1823. In 1849,
Nova Scotia scientist Abraham Gesner stated in The
Industrial Resources of Nova Scotia that 'the terms Cadie
and 1'Acadie have evidently been derived from the
Mi'kmaq akade - a place.'
The first protest against the Aboriginal origin for Aca-
dia was lodged in 1896 by the renowned New Brunswick
naturalist William E Ganong, in the Transactions of the
Royal Society of Canada. But twenty years later, he was
disappointed to learn that few scholars agreed with him.
After 1917, most historians and writers acknowledged
the European source as being correct, although historical
geographer Andrew Clark wrote in 1968: 'Perhaps the
most sensible conclusion is that the cartographic ances-
try of Arcadie for various parts of the coast of eastern
and northeastern North America prepared the way for
the acceptance of "Cadie", "La Cadie", "L'Acadie" and
so "Acadie" from its Indian source/ I believe the con-
verse is true: place names ending with the Mi'kmaq
expression a-kaa'-di-k, meaning 'occurrence place/ were
spelled with the suffix -acadie by early explorers and
map makers, reflecting the region's name of European
222 Naming Canada
origin. A few examples of such renditions are Chebenac-
adie (for Shubenacadie River, N.S.) and Tracadie (for Tra-
cadie Bay, P.E.I.), shown on a French map drawn in 1744.
Acadians have contributed substantially to the Cajun
culture of Louisiana, where there is a parish called Aca-
dia. Acadia National Park is in the state of Maine, east of
the mouth of the Penobscot River. As well, Acadia and
Acadie have survived in numerous place names, includ-
ing Acadieville, N.B., L'Acadie, west of Saint-Jean-sur-
Richelieu, Que., and New Acadia, P.E.I. Acadia Univer-
sity in Wolfville, N.S., received its charter as Acadia
College in 1841. From 1924 to 1966, Acadia was a federal
electoral riding in central Alberta; it probably received its
name from the little community of Acadia Valley,
150 kilometres northeast of Medicine Hat, where Nova
Scotians had settled in 1910. In 1990, the federal riding of
Gloucester, N.B., was changed to Acadie-Bathurst to
reflect its culture. The riding embraces the Acadian Pen-
insula, where more than 60,000 Acadians live.
Some contemporary writers have suggested that New
Brunswick, where the vast majority of Acadians live
today, is the centre of modern Acadia, and have looked
to Moncton and its university as its focal point. But the
soul of Acadia resides in many small towns and villages,
such as Caraquet and Cap-Pele in New Brunswick; Ur-
bainville in Prince Edward Island; and Pubnico,
Comeauville, and Cheticamp in Nova Scotia.
Many may regret that Acadia is not a country, with
borders and legal institutions. But as the successor of the
fabled beautiful land of the classics, perhaps it is best
that modern Acadia resides in the hearts and souls of a
people with a proud social and cultural heritage based
on nearly four centuries of settlement in Eastern Canada.
No matter where Acadians dwell, their rich literature,
language, and music will tell them they are in Acadia.
Examining the Names of Particular Places 223
Montreal: A People's City beneath a King's Mountain
When Jacques Carrier ascended 'the great river of Hoch-
elaga and the route to Canada' in 1535, he arrived at the
rapids below the site of the present city of Montreal on 2
October and was greeted by some 1,000 Iroquois, about
one-quarter of the estimated population of the region.
The next day, with proper decorum, he entered Hochel-
aga, a palisaded village of some fifty buildings. He then
climbed the 223-metre, tree-clad mountain rising behind
the village and named it either directly in honour of the
king, Francois I, or indirectly as a feature worthy of the
king.
Most scholars believe the name Montreal is a variation
of Mont Royal, but few attempt to explain how and
when the variation evolved. Some note that one of Carr-
ier's companions on the 1535 voyage was the son of the
Seigneur of Montreal in Languedoc, France, and suggest
Cartier chose the name in honour of his family. Others
connect the name with Cardinal de Medicis, Bishop of
Montreale in Sicily. Still others look to a number of places
with similar names in France and Spain, noting that they
all have a location overlooking the countryside and con-
cluding that Cartier gave the name as a generic term for a
place with a distinctive mountain.
Jean Poirier, formerly with the Commission de topony-
mie du Quebec, has thoroughly investigated Mont
Royal's and Montreal's linguistic and toponymic roots,
and has concluded that Montreal is derived from Cart-
ier's name for the mountain.
The earliest reference to Montreal is found in a 1575
atlas by Francois de Belleforest, where the text, in a clear
reference to the Iroquois village of Hochelaga, notes the
Ville les Chrestiens appelerent Montreal.'
The evolution of Montreal from Mont Royal has two
224 Naming Canada
explanations. First, in sixteenth-century France, the
words royal and real had the same meaning. For example,
Cartier named a Newfoundland headland C. Royal in
1534; on a 1546 French map by Pierre Desceliers, it
appears as C. Real.
Second, atlas maker Belieforest relied on a 1565 Italian
translation of Cartier's writings. In it a plan of Hochelaga
identifies the mountain as Monte Real. The reason for the
use of real in place of the Italian reale is unknown, but
may have been inspired by a Spanish or Portuguese map
or document. As Poirier contends, it is easy to conclude
that Belleforest was only writing another form of Mont
Royal.
In 1612, Samuel de Champlain referred to the moun-
tain as montreal. Twenty years later, he wrote of the Isle
de Mont-real. In 1637, the Jesuit Relations referred to 'la
grande Isle nommee de Mont-Real/
In May 1642, Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve and
a party of thirty-nine men, two priests, and nurse Jeanne
Mance (founder of Montreal's first hospital) arrived at
Hochelaga to establish the missionary colony of Ville-
Marie and convert the Aboriginal people to Christianity.
A year earlier, New France's Governor Montmagny had
warned him of the danger of attack by Iroquois, but Mai-
sonneuve would not be turned back, insisting that he
had been instructed by the Societe de Notre-Dame de
Montreal in France to start a settlement there, and he
would proceed even if all the trees on the island were to
change into Iroquois!
Maisonneuve wrote of the colony of 'Ville marie en
1'isle de Montreal en la nouvelle-France' in 1642, but
Ville-Marie was superseded by Montreal in the early
1700s. As early as 1684, military officer and author Baron
Lahontan wrote that 'this city is called Ville-Marie or
Montreal.' In 1703, he signed a letter simply 'A Mon-
Examining the Names of Particular Places 225
treal/ In 1709, Jesuit Father Camille de Rochemonteix
wrote that 'this city is situated on an island and has two
names, which are Montreal and Ville-marie, the one by
popular usage, the other by the priests of the seminary
located there. The first name, Mont-royal, describes a
large mountain in the central part of the island; by cor-
ruption, the mountain, the island and the city were
called Montreal.'
Montreal was incorporated as a city by royal procla-
mation on 7 May 1792. Two hundred years later, the
Montreal Urban Community has a population over 1.75
million. The city of Montreal, one of twenty-nine divi-
sions of the urban community, has a population of
1,016,375. Montreal-Nord, Montreal-Quest, and Mon-
treal-Est have populations of 81,580, 5,250, and 3,525,
respectively. The Town of Mount Royal, on the north side
of the mountain, has a population of 18,500 in an area of
less than 8 square kilometres.
'My Canada includes Quebec' is a popular appeal
from the four corners of Canada to the people of Quebec
to continue contributing their culture and passion for life
to this great land. Because Montreal has endured for 350
years as Canada's spiritual centre, my Canada must con-
tinue to embrace Montreal.
Meech Lake - of Accord Fame - and Other
Lakes Nearby
Nestled in the forested hills of Gatineau Park, less than a
half-hour's drive northwest of the Parliament Buildings,
is a chain of three lakes. Two have achieved national
prominence: Meech Lake because it is beside the Thomas
L. Willson House where the 30 April 1987 constitutional
accord was signed; Harrington Lake because the house
226 Naming Canada
at its southern end became the prime minister's country
retreat in 1959.
Meech Lake gets its name from Asa Meech (1775-
1849), a Congregational minister in New England from
1800 to 1821 before moving his family to Hull Township
in Quebec. Three years after settling at the lake, he was
granted 200 acres (80 hectares) and began clearing a
farm. As well, Meech continued to minister in the area of
Aylmer, Hull, and Chelsea, and gained a reputation for
intellectual ability and spiritual influence. His original
house, extensively remodelled over the years, has been
preserved by the National Capital Commission (NCC).
On an 1870 plan made by Eugene Tache, the lake is
called 'L. Charite/ and is said to have been named either
for a French settler, Francois Lacharite, or for an Irishman
whose name may have been Lacharity. Asa Meech's
name was also attached to the plan, but for some reason
it was spelled Meach, and this misspelling was con-
firmed by the Geographic Board of Canada in 1931.
In 1951, Marion Meech, a descendant of Asa, and some
others asked the Canadian Board on Geographical
Names to respect the correct spelling of Meech. The
board, basing its decision on the long-established use of
'Meach' on maps, decided to maintain this version.
In 1982, the NCC sent the Commission de toponymie
du Quebec a copy of Asa Meech's will and other docu-
ments noting the spelling of Meech's name. The provin-
cial commission was persuaded, and corrected the name
to Lac Meech. Although it was thought that it would take
some time to convince the public to make the switch, the
change was almost immediately accepted by map mak-
ers and by the media. And, of course, publicity about the
Meech Lake Accord has thoroughly imprinted the name
(and correct spelling) in the minds of people all across
Canada.
Examining the Names of Particular Places 227
Harrington Lake, which is immediately northwest of
Meech Lake, was a bird sanctuary and then the private
estate of Col. Cameron M. Edwards prior to its acquisi-
tion by the Federal District Commission (predecessor of
the NCC) in 1951. The name would appear to be a modi-
fied form of the name of John Hetherington, a son-in-law
of Asa Meech. Hetherington, who was raised nearby, is
thought to have built a house near the outlet (southeast
end) of the lake at some time before 1850, although he is
not mentioned in the 1861 census for the area. His
brother, Joseph, lived nearby at the head (northwest end)
of Meech Lake.
Eardley Township, in which the lake is located, was
surveyed in 1850, and 'Harrington's Lake' is shown on
the plan. The first grant in the township was given in
1860 at the head of the lake to James and David
MacLaren, who sold the property to Louis Mousseau
seven years later.
Although official plans and maps up to 1951 showed
the name Harrington Lake, and this was used by local
people, visitors, and residents of Ottawa and Hull were
more familiar with Mousseau Lake or Lac Mousseau.
Even Colonel Edwards called it Lac Mousseau. Letters to
the Ottawa Journal and to the federal names board
resulted in a review of the name of the lake. Arguing that
the name of the first settler had priority, and long-estab-
lished usage on maps should take precedence, the board
decided to retain the name Harrington Lake.
In 1959, when the Prime Minister's Residence Act was
passed, the form Harrington Lake (Lac Mousseau) was
used in the English text, and the reverse in the French.
This prompted the names authority in Quebec to adopt
Lac Mousseau (Lac Harrington) in 1962. This double
form was subsequently shown on topographical and
NCC maps.
228 Naming Canada
Fearing that Harrington would disappear from maps,
the Historical Society of the Gatineau in 1969 urged the
adoption of Harrington Creek for the drainage of Lac
Philippe into Lac Mousseau, and from there into Meech
Lake. But the Commission de toponymie du Quebec
approved Ruisseau Mousseau, stating that the name Lac
Mousseau (Harrington) would sufficiently honour the
memory of the first settler. The society then asked for the
approval of Harrington Ridge for the height of land west
of the lake, but no action was taken on this proposal.
In 1987, the Commission de toponymie du Quebec
published a new gazetteer and omitted all mention of the
name Harrington, even as a cross-reference to Lac Mous-
seau. Questioned about this, the commission stated that
it regarded bracketed forms as transitory, and such forms
were eliminated in the 1987 gazetteer. Thus, Harrington
Lake no longer has official status for the lake, and
although Lac Mousseau will likely attain wide use, it is
not expected that the old name will be forgotten because
of its association with the prime minister's country
retreat.
The third lake, Lac Philippe, is one of the most popular
in the national capital area for swimming, canoeing, and
camping. It is on the 1850 plan of Eardley Township as
Philip's Lake, and the form Philips Lake occurs on later
maps. However, the Geographic Board of Canada
endorsed the form Lac Philippe in 1931, and this is uni-
versally used by both English and French speakers. The
lake may be named for either John Philippe, who had a
farm nearby according to the 1861 census, or another
farmer named James Philippe, who lived a few kilome-
tres to the north.
While Lac Philippe and Meech Lake are open to the
public, Harrington Lake/Lac Mousseau is the prime
minister's private domain.
Examining the Names of Particular Places 229
Ottawa: A Capital Name from a Fur-Trading People
In late January 1858, the 10,000 residents of the city of
Ottawa received heart-warming news: on the last day of
1857, Queen Victoria had signed the despatch making
Ottawa the capital of the United Province of Canada.
Choosing Ottawa over five other applicants - Quebec
City, Montreal, Toronto, Kingston, and Hamilton - was
greeted with much dissent by several politicians, but in
the fall of 1865, the government was moved to Ottawa,
the following year the Parliament Buildings were offi-
cially opened on the prominent hill overlooking the
Ottawa River, and in 1867 the city was affirmed as the
new capital of the Dominion of Canada.
As early as 1835 the rising lumber village of By town
had been proposed as a potential capital for the projected
union of Upper and Lower Canada. Kingston was desig-
nated the capital in 1841, but after the death of Governor
General Sir Charles Bagot two years later, and his
replacement by Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, 1st Baron
Metcalfe, the capital was moved to Montreal, and after
1849 rotated between Toronto and Quebec City for six-
teen years. To select a permanent site for the capital,
Governor General Sir Edmund Walker Head proposed in
1856 that the contending cities submit statements to the
queen on the appropriateness of their place being cho-
sen. Privately Head had decided that there was 'a choice
of evils, and the least evil, I think will be ... in placing the
seat of Government at Ottawa/ He himself spent much
of 1857 in London persuading Colonial Secretary Henry
Labouchere to obtain the queen's endorsement of his
choice.
From 1826 to 1832, By town was the headquarters for
the Rideau Canal project, which was constructed under
the direction of Col. John By. It was legally incorporated
230 Naming Canada
as a town in 1850. During its first twenty-five years
Bytown had acquired a reputation of being a rude, bois-
terious, vulgar rough-and-tumble lumbering and hard-
drinking community. The town council in 1853 decided
that it could be a credible candidate for the province's
capital only if it discarded its bland and unpretentious
name, and chose a more sophisticated title.
It just so happened that 1854 was an important anni-
versary: 200 years earlier, a crew of about 120 Aborigi-
nals brought a small flotilla of furs from the west side of
Lake Michigan to trade with the French at Montreal.
They were subsequently identified as the Ottawas by the
British, and les Outaouais by the French. To celebrate
the anniversary, the 1853 Bytown council approved the
renaming of the town as Ottawa. On the first day of Jan-
uary 1855, the city of Ottawa came into being.
The name's spelling followed an English rendering of
the river's name, given to it in the late 1600s by French
missionaries, explorers, and map makers. In 1613, Sam-
uel de Champlain had referred to the river as Riviere du
Nord and Riviere des Algommequins, after the Aboriginals
he found during his voyage up the river to the present
area of Pembroke. Recollet Brother Gabriel Sagard, who
travelled in the valley in 1623—4, called it Grande Riviere, a
translation of the Algonquin Kitchisippi. Both Grande Riv-
iere and Grand River continued in common use well into
the first half of the twentieth century. In 1680 French map
maker Abbe Claude Bernou identified the river with the
Ottawa nation by calling it Riviere des Outaouais ou des
Hurons ou des prairies. Bernou's spelling followed that
used by Intendant Jean Talon ten years earlier. The
English form has its roots in Governor Marquis de
Denonville's rendering of Otawas for the nation in 1687.
In the mid-1700s, map maker John Mitchell portrayed
Riv. of the Outaouais or Utawas on a map of North Amer-
Examining the Names of Particular Places 231
ica. It was only in the early 1800s that the form Ottawa
River became fixed in Canadian surveys and on maps.
The Ottawa nation was encountered in 1615 at the
mouth of the French River by Champlain, who referred
to them as Cheueux Releues (an archaic form of cheveux
releves), meaning 'standing hair/ in reference to the
practice of tying their hair in a knot on top of their head.
On meeting the Huron nation in 1623 in the area of
present-day Simcoe County, Brother Sagard learned that
these Iroquoian-speaking people called that Algonquian
tribe of Ottawas living at the mouth of the French River,
along the north shore of Lake Huron and on Manitoulin
Island, Andatahoiiats. In the 1640s and '50s the Jesuit mis-
sionaries referred them as Outaouan, Ondataouaouat, and
other variants, including Outaouac.
The lives of the Huron and Ondataouaouat nations were
dramatically transformed in 1649, when the Iroquois
drove them from their territories. The Ondataouaouat
found refuge in the area of Green Bay, on the west side of
Lake Michigan. In 1653, after the threat of the Iroquois
had abated, they brought a few pelts to Trois-Rivieres to
find out whether the French would be interested in more
furs. Being assured the pelts were some of the finest ever
seen, the Ondataouaouat returned the following year with
a larger flotilla of furs. They continued the practice for
several years thereafter, demanding that all trade with
the French be controlled by them. Their name even
became the general term for any Aboriginals carrying
trade goods on the river.
The word adawe or atawa means 'to trade' or 'to buy
and sell' in several Algonquian languages, including
Algonquin, Ojibwa, and Cree. Several authorities have
therefore concluded that the name Ondataouaouat, and
subsequently Outaouais and Ottawa, were all derived
from a phrase meaning 'to trade/ Other researchers have
232 Naming Canada
claimed Ondataouaouat may have something to do with
either pendulous ears, or ears cut short, because of the
similarity of the word for ear, otawagama, but such a con-
clusion is only speculative. Missionary Frederic Baraga
suggested in 1878 that the name appeared to come from
watawawininiwok, 'the men of the bull rushes/ but he
probably just drew a parallel between two similar words.
The tribe now calls itself Odawa.
The name of the capital city of Canada, therefore, has
its roots in the name of an Algonquian tribe, identified in
the early 1600s as Ondataouaouat, whose trading of furs
after 1654 with the French resulted in the names Riviere
des Outaouais and Ottawa River.
In December 1999, Ontario's Parliament created one of
Canada's largest cities in area (2,696 sq. km.) by amal-
gamating the cities of Ottawa, Nepean, Gloucester,
Kanata, Cumberland, and Vanier, the village of Rock-
cliffe Park, and the municipal townships of Osgoode,
Rideau, Goulbourn, and West Carleton, creating the new
city of Ottawa, with a population of over 742,000. The
law establishing the new city came into effect on 1 Janu-
ary 2001.
A group of islands in Hudson Bay are known as the
Ottawa Islands, with three islands bearing the names of
prominent lumber barons in the national capital: Bron-
son, Booth, and Gilmour. A tributary of the North Branch
Renous River in New Brunswick was named Little
Ottawa Branch, possibly by Ottawa Valley lumberman
Daniel McLachlin.
After the middle of the 1600s, a branch of the Odawa
remained in Michigan, with some of their members
migrating south and west to Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kan-
sas, and Oklahoma. There are four counties called
Ottawa in the United States, one each in Kansas, Michi-
gan, Ohio, and Illinois. Three cities in the United States
Examining the Names of Particular Places 233
are known as Ottawa, one each in Illinois, Kansas, and
Ohio, where they are all county administrative centres.
Toronto Has a Great Fish Tale to Tell
Toronto was first mentioned at its present site in the Jour-
nals (1765) of Maj. Robert Rogers, the noted commander
of army rangers in the 1700s, as 'a proper place for a fac-
tory/ In 1760, Rogers had seen the remains of Fort Tor-
onto, destroyed by the retreating French, as the British
captured their North American possessions. He also
noted that a branch of 'river Toronto' provided easy com-
munication with Lake Huron (i.e., the Georgian Bay part
of the lake).
The French had built three posts between 1686 and
1740, with the third being located at the present site of
the Canadian National Exhibition. It was named for
Antoine-Louis Rouille, the Minister of Marine and Colo-
nies, and continued until 1759. The second fort, built
about 1720, at the mouth of Riviere Tar onto (now Humber
River), was called Fort Toronto, which was also the in-
formal name given to Fort Rouille. It was abandoned
in 1730. Several eighteenth-century French and British
maps identified it as Fort Toronto. The fort's name is
spelled Toronto in all surviving records.
The river itself took its name from the voyageur route
from Lake Simcoe to Lake Ontario, referred to as early as
1686 by New France's Governor General Marquis de
Denonville as Le passage de Tar onto. The route in turn
received its name from a French name for Lake Simcoe,
Lac de Toronto, which first occurs on a map dated to about
1680 by the National Archives, and attributed to French-
court official Abbe Claude Bernou.
Finally, the lake received its name from the Mohawk
234 Naming Canada
tkaronto, from the practice of the Huron and other
Aboriginals of driving stakes into the water to create fish
weirs in The Narrows, where Lake Simcoe empties into
Lake Couchiching. The catching of fish there by means of
weirs was such a significant activity among the Aborigi-
nals that the Severn River, which drains Lake Couchich-
ing into Georgian Bay, was also identified on maps as
R Taronto.
Radiocarbon dating in the 1970s of surviving stakes
revealed the weirs had been in continuous use for over
4,000 years. In 1615, Samuel de Champlain described the
weirs as blocking the channels, with a few openings to
collect fish in nets. In 1982, The Narrows was declared a
national historic site. Because the stakes have been con-
siderably threatened in recent years by power boating,
anchoring, fishing, dredging, and bridge contruction, the
Canadian Parks Service is considering The Narrows for
designation as a World Heritage Site.
Huron-language expert John Steckley and several
Mohawk speakers have interpreted tkaronto as 'where
there are trees standing in the water/ which figuratively
describes the stakes that formed the weirs in The Nar-
rows.
Lake Simcoe is labelled Le lac Ouentara on a map titled
Novvelle France, dated to 1641 by historical geographer
Conrad Heidenreich. Variations of this Huron name
occur on several maps during the following fifty years,
and emerge again on maps during the period 1746-85 as
Oentaronk and Oentaronck. Some writers have assumed
this name provides the roots for Toronto, but Steckley
states the linguistic elements of Oentaronk could not
evolve as Toronto, although he notes it has an identical
meaning to the Mohawk name.
Many French maps from the 1690s to the 1760s iden-
tify Lake Simcoe as Lac Taronto. On Vincenzo Coronelli's
Examining the Names of Particular Places 235
1688 map of the Great Lakes area the name L Taronto
appears above the words Les Piquets, 'the stakes/ The
earliest spelling of Toronto for the lake is on a 1695 map
by Coronelli. The use of the spelling Toronto on British
maps, such as Herman Moll's of 1720 and John Mitchell's
of 1755, may have been due to Baron de Lahontan,
whose popular writings in 1703 and later about his trav-
els around the Great Lakes were widely read. In the
1700s, the French name for the lake became Lac aux
Claies, which translates as 'fish-weir lake.'
In his Toronto: Past and Present (1884), historian Hen-
ry Scadding interpreted Recollet missionary Gabriel
Sagard's 1632 definition of the Huron toronton - il y en a
beaucoup, 'there is much' - as suggesting a gathering of
tribes, or 'place of meeting.' Many references repeat this
definition, including The Macmillan Book of Canadian Place
Names (1978) by William Hamilton; Nick and Helma
Mika's Places in Ontario, vol. Ill (1983); my own notes
under 'Place-names' in The Canadian Encyclopedia (1985
and 1988); and historian J.M.S. Careless's comments
under Toronto' in the same reference. Professor Careless
was on the right track when he suggested a preference
for 'trees in the water' in his Toronto to 1918 (1984).
In his earlier Toronto of Old (1878), Scadding had dis-
missed an origin from Sagard's toronton with the sense of
'plenty.' However, some writers and historians continue
to repeat it. Historian William Kilbourn, perhaps influ-
enced by Eric Hounsom's comments in his Toronto in
1910 (1970), promoted the idea in his Toronto Remembered
(1984), noting it was an appropriate concept for the
Huron's land of plenty. 'So when anyone asks what Tor-
onto means' Kilbourn wrote, 'I would suggest that the
best reply is "abundance."'
In 1787, Governor General Lord Dorchester, finding
the name Toronto in use at its present site, arranged what
236 Naming Canada
was called the Toronto Purchase from the Mississauga,
embracing more than 1,000 square kilometres in the area
of the city of Toronto and York Region. The following
year surveyor Alexander Aitkin made a plan of the Tor-
onto townsite, and Captain Gother Mann drew the Plan
ofTorento Harbour.
In 1792, Lieu tenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe
located the capital of Upper Canada at Niagara, which
he called Newark. Judging the capital susceptible to
attack from the United States, Simcoe proposed locating
it at the Forks of the Thames, the site of present-day Lon-
don. Lord Dorchester vetoed that location, but accepted
Simcoe's selection of Toronto.
Disliking Aboriginal names, Simcoe introduced sev-
eral English names in Upper Canada, including the
renaming of Lac aux Claies for his father, Captain John
Simcoe, who had served with Wolfe in the capture of
Quebec. On learning of a victory by the Duke of York in
Flanders, Simcoe decided on 26 August 1793 that an
English stamp should be impressed upon the new capi-
tal, and changed its name to honour the duke, George
Ill's second son, Frederick Augustus (1762-1827).
British traveller Isaac Weld, who visited York in 1796,
lamented the loss of sonorous Aboriginal names in his
Travels (1799), writing that 'Newark, Kingston, York are
poor substitutes for the original names of the respective
places Niagara, Cataraqui, Toronto.' As early as 1804,
after Simcoe's return to his beloved England, a petition
was submitted to the legislature to reinstate Toronto.
Because York could be confused with New York and
other Yorks, and because Muddy York was a demeaning
reference to the province's capital, the older name was
restored on 6 March 1834.
Toronto has been the name of several other locations
along the north shore of Lake Ontario. In late 1805, Alex-
Examining the Names of Particular Places 237
ander Grant, the administrator of Upper Canada - he
served between lieutenant-governors Peter Hunter and
Francis Gore - named Toronto Township at the mouth of
the Credit River, 12 kilometres west of the Humber. In
1817, a post office at the mouth of the Ganaraska River,
95 kilometres east of Ontario's capital, was called Tor-
onto. Three years later, it was changed to Port Hope,
with Toronto being given then to a new office where
Dundas Street crosses the Credit River in present-day
Peel Region. Although a town called Toronto was laid
out there in 1830, it was subsequently called Springfield,
and, by 1900, renamed Erindale. In 1828, the Toronto
post office was moved 5 kilometres northeast to Cooks-
ville. When York was changed to Toronto in 1834, its post
office was called Toronto City until 1837. After Cooks-
ville was substituted for the other Toronto, 'City' was
dropped from the capital's name.
Toronto Township was a municipality until 1967 when
it became the town of Mississauga. Seven years later it
was upgraded to a city. Toronto Gore Township, to the
northeast of Toronto Township, was formed in 1819. In
1974, it was amalgamated with the city of Brampton. Just
west of the mouth of the Humber, a post office called
New Toronto was opened in 1892. It became an incorpo-
rated town in 1913. When Metropolitan Toronto was
reorganized in 1967, New Toronto was amalgamated
with the city of Etobicoke. Since 1998 it has been a neigh-
bourhood in the city of Toronto.
The historical, cartographic, and linguistic evidence
appears reasonably conclusive that the name Toronto is
derived from the Mohawk description of the fish weirs
125 kilometres north of the city, with the name migrating
by way of Lac de Taronto, Passage de Taronto, Riviere Tar-
onto, and finally Fort Toronto. All other theories - 'place of
meeting,' 'plenty,' 'harbour,' 'lake opening,' an Italian
238 Naming Canada
engineer called Tarento, trees on the Toronto Islands -
lack crediblity.
On 1 January 1998, Metropolitan Toronto became the
single city of Toronto. The cities of Etobicoke, North
York, Scarborough, and York, and the borough of East
York, were amalgamated with it, giving the new city an
area of 638 square kilometres, and a population of
2,385,421.
Flin Flon: A Strange 'Professor' on
Even Stranger Ventures
If names can be said to express a character of their own,
surely the name Flin Flon evokes a feeling of adventure
and vitality. The very sound of the name conjures up
images of rugged rocks and wild waters.
On a winter's day in January 1975, so the story goes,
Tom Creighton, a prospector and woodsman, went hunt-
ing for moose along the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border
near the 55th parallel. He fell through the ice of a lake
and on reaching shore he and his companions started a
fire to help him dry out. The fire's heat melted a hole and
through it they glimpsed a glint of gold. They proceeded
to stake out claims.
This tale may be more fanciful than real. The truth may
be that Creighton and his party were led to the deposit by
David Collins, a Metis trapper and amateur prospector.
In the summer of 1915, Creighton and his associates -
Dan Milligan, Dan and Jack Mosher, and Leon and Isa-
dor Dion - went back to work on their claim. When Jack
Mosher brought some gold out of a hole, Creighton
exclaimed: That must be the hole where old Flin Flon
came up and shook his whiskers, so what do you say we
call the discovery Flin Flon?'
Examining the Names of Particular Places 239
And who was Flin Flon? He was the hero of an adven-
ture novel, The Sunless City, a dog-eared copy of which
had been found the previous year by Creighton on a por-
tage between the Churchill River and Lac la Ronge in Sas-
katchewan. The book had been read and reread, although
the last pages were missing, leaving a mystery for our
northern travellers as to the fate of the novel's hero.
The principal character in the tale was blessed with the
unlikely moniker, Professor Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin,
or Flin Flon for short. His strange adventure to the bot-
tom of a lake in the Rocky Mountains in a submarine was
written by Joyce Emerson Preston Muddock, a male
writer of adventure stories, and published by F.V. White
of London in 1905. The paperbound edition, which
Creighton likely had, was printed in 1911.
The professor, a member of a so-called Society for the
Exploration of Unexplored Regions, discovered a strange
city abounding in gold. On learning that the city was
ruled by strong women with men as their servants, he
escaped back to the surface through an inactive volcano.
In 1932, Jack Carr, head of research for Hudson Bay
Mining & Smelting, tried to secure a copy of the novel.
After writing some 850 letters, he finally obtained a copy
from a London bookdealer for a few shillings. In 1942,
George Cole, Manitoba's director of mines, reported that
only three copies were known to exist: Carr's copy (in
the National Archives of Canada since the 1960s),
another with a second official of the mining company,
and a third in the British Museum.
Flin Flon, Man., a city of nearly 7,500 people, is located
just east of the Saskatchewan-Manitoba boundary. A
small part of the city, with a population of 330, is in
Saskatchewan, where the boundary makes a 2.5-kilometre
adjustment to the west. Nearby, to the southwest, is
Creighton, Sask., a town of about 1,700 people, founded in
240 Naming Canada
1948 and named for Tom Creighton, who died in 1949
aged 75.
In 1962, on the fiftieth anniversary of the extension of
Manitoba to the 60th parallel of latitude (the boundary
between the western provinces and the territories), a
prominent statue of the adventurous Flintabbatey Fiona-
tin, designed by cartoonist Al Capp in his noted Dog-
patch style, was unveiled at the entrance to the city of
Flin Flon.
Lake Laberge (Rhymes with Marge) and
Other Yukon Names
The harshness of an unforgiving northland combined
with frontier hardship and adventure are reflected in the
many ballads and poems of Robert Service. Many young
Canadians are nurtured on the verses Service wrote dur-
ing the early years of the twentieth century, and acquire a
yearning to discover more about the people who were
lured by the spell of the Yukon, as revealed in these lines:
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was the night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
In the 1860s, the Western Union Telegraph Co.
engaged American naturalist William H. Dall to explore
a route for a line in the Yukon River valley. The first large
expansion of the river below Whitehorse Rapids he
named for fellow explorer 'Michael Lebarge/ Neither is
believed to have seen the lake, but heard of it from local
Aboriginal people. The United States Geographic Board
adopted the name Lake Lebarge, as well as other names
Examining the Names of Particular Places 241
in the Yukon given by Dall and Lt. Frederick Schwatka,
and this, incidentally, was what prompted Canada to set
up its own names board in 1898.
The Canadian authorities consulted church officials in
'Lebarge's' home town of Chateauguay, Que., and
received a reply from the explorer himself pointing out
that his correct name was Michel Laberge. The lake's
name has been officially spelled 'Laberge' since 1898, but
its pronunciation still rhymes with 'marge/
Service's poems broadcast the name Yukon to the
world. As a name, it is simply the Gwitch'in word for
'the greatest river/ The river was named Youcon in 1846
by the Hudson's Bay Co. trader John Bell. He reached it
in present-day Alaska, where he encountered some
Gwitch'in, after travelling from Fort McPherson on the
Mackenzie River. The Gwitch'in, who also lived on
the lower Mackenzie River, did not occupy lands in the
Yukon River's watershed within the Yukon.
In the area of Lake Laberge the river was known in the
1800s as Lewes River, named by Robert Campbell in 1843
for John Lee Lewes, then the Hudson's Bay Company
chief factor at Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie River. In
1883, Lt. Schwatka substituted Yukon for Lewes. It was
not until 1949, however, that the Canadian names
authority dropped the name Lewes which, until then,
was the official name for that portion of the Yukon River
upstream from its juncture with the Pelly River.
The name Yukon was assigned to a district of the North-
west Territories in 1895; the district became a separate ter-
ritory in 1898, with its seat of government at Dawson City.
The capital was moved to Whitehorse in 1951.
In several of his poems Service included the name
Klondike, a name synonymous with gold fever. His bal-
lad 'The Trail of Ninety-Eight' mentions several other
Yukon names. It ends with the lines:
242 Naming Canada
There were the tents of Dawson, there the scar of the
slide;
Swiftly we poled o'er the shallows, swiftly leapt o'er the
side.
Fires fringed the mouth of Bonanza; sunset gilded the
dome;
The test of the trail was over - thank God, thank God, we
were Home!
The early miners had difficulty pronouncing Thron-
duik/ the Han name for the tributary river that joins the
Yukon at Dawson City, and took to calling it Klondike.
The Aboriginal word is said to describe the practice of
the Gwitch'in of driving stakes into the riverbed to trap
migrating salmon.
Rabbit Creek was renamed Bonanza Creek in 1896
after the discovery of gold there by George Carmack,
Skookum Jim Mason, and Tagish Charlie.
After the gold rush the prominent hill overlooking
Dawson City became known as Midnight Dome. Many
people of Dawson City climb the hill on 21 June to
watch, on or about midnight, as the sun barely sets
before rising again.
In 1968, Robert Service's name was given to two fea-
tures northeast of Dawson City. Mount Robert Service
and Robert Service Creek will leave Service's name
indelibly imprinted on the Canadian landscape.
Observing Selected Names in
Particular Regions
Captain Vancouver's Legacy
In June 1792, British navigator Capt. George Vancouver
sailed into Burrard Inlet and observed the forested set-
ting where Canada's third-largest city stands today. Van-
couver was almost fifteen months into one of the longest
hydrographic surveys ever undertaken - four years,
eight months, and twenty-nine days. His instructions
were to survey the northwest coast of North America -
from Mexico's Baja California to Alaska's Cook Inlet - to
determine if a passage joined the Atlantic to the Pacific.
But there was another purpose to his voyage: to ensure
British control over part of the northwest coast.
Spain had tried to control the entire area from Califor-
nia to Alaska during the 1780s, while British traders were
building a lucrative fur trade with Asia. In 1789, the
Spanish seized two British merchant ships in Nootka
Sound, claiming they were trespassing, and Britain pre-
pared for a war. Realizing it could not mount a success-
ful campaign, Spain agreed to the Nootka Convention in
October 1790, forcing it to abandon its right to sole occu-
pation of the area and to return the merchant ships to
Britain.
244 Naming Canada
Vancouver, then commander of the sloop Discovery, set
sail from England on 1 April 1791, accompanied by the
armed tender Chatham. Thirteen months later he sailed
into what he called the 'supposed Strait of Juan de Fuca/
casting doubt on the truth of de Fuca's 1592 discovery
there of a great passage into a broad sea with many
islands. He spent May exploring Puget Sound, naming it
and nearby Mount Baker, in Washington state, for two of
his officers. Then he went ashore on King George Ill's
birthday and named The Gulph of Georgia' - changed
by Capt. George Richards in 1809 to the Strait of Georgia
- in his honour. This incomprehensible change did not
affect the name Gulf Islands, where many independent
and creative people have chosen to live over the years.
But when Vancouver met Spanish explorers Dionisio
Alcala Galiano and Cayetano Valdes in late June, he was
dismayed to learn that another Spaniard had already
named the gulf Gran Canal de Nuestra Senora del Rosa-
rio la Marinera. Although Vancouver favoured recogniz-
ing names given by previous explorers, in this case he
shifted the Spanish name to a narrow strait nearby so
Britain could lay claim to the gulf. In 1859, Capt. Rich-
ards named the small strait after Capt. Alexandro
Malaspina, commander of the Spanish settlement on
Nootka Sound in 1791, and leader of Spanish exploration
in the North Pacific.
Vancouver, Galiano, and Valdes agreed to work
together in surveying the waters northwest of the gulf,
with Vancouver and his crew concentrating on the the
long, sinuous fiords penetrating the Coast Mountains.
They spent the summer of 1732 charting the heads of
Jervis, Bute, Knight, and Rivers inlets and the many intri-
cate channels and narrows between Vancouver Island
and the mainland. James Johnstone, the Chatham's mas-
ter, discovered that the strait Vancouver had named for
Observing Selected Names in Particular Regions 245
him led to the Pacific. And northwest of Johnstone Strait,
Lieut. William Broughton, commander of the Chatham,
charted the waters around a group of islands which Van-
couver called Broughton Archipelago.
In late August 1792, after exploring as far north as
Burke Channel near Bella Coola, Vancouver sailed south
to Nootka Sound to negotiate the land transfer from the
Spanish to the British. But despite a cordial greeting by
the Spanish commander Juan Francisco de la Bodega y
Quadra, the two could not agree on the terms of transfer,
and referred the matter back to their respective govern-
ments. Regardless, the two became friends, and Bodega
(addressed incorrectly as Quadra by Vancouver) recom-
mended that a prominent feature be jointly named after
them. Having discovered that Nootka was on a huge
island, Vancouver called it Quadra and Vancouver's
Island, but the name Quadra soon fell into disuse. In
1903, the Geographic Board assigned the name Quadra
to another island between Vancouver Island and the
mainland.
After wintering in the Hawaiian Islands, Vancouver
returned to the northwest coast in May 1793 to survey
the many canals, channels, inlets, and sounds from
Burke Channel to Revillagigedo Island near the southern
tip of the Alaskan Panhandle.
While most of the names Vancouver gave in 1792 and
1793 honoured his officers and prominent men in the
British Admiralty and navy, he also chose the surnames
of noted political leaders for several features: Pitt,
Hawkesbury, and Dundas islands; Grenville Channel;
Portland Canal.
After another winter in the Hawaiian Islands, Vancou-
ver resumed his survey in the spring of 1794, exploring
the coastline from Alaska's Cook Inlet south to Point
Conclusion, on Baranof Island in the Alaskan Panhandle.
246 Naming Canada
On completing his survey, and convinced there was no
passage between the Pacific and the Atlantic or an inland
sea, Vancouver mapped the west coast of the Queen
Charlotte Islands before returning to Nootka Sound.
With no further instructions from Britain regarding
negotiations with the Spanish, Vancouver sailed home.
By the 1860s, some seventy years after Vancouver
explored Burrard Inlet, two towns - Gastown and Hast-
ings - had been founded on its south shore. Then, in
1870, residents of Gastown renamed it Granville in
honour of the British colonial secretary. The city that
evolved might have remained Granville if it had not
been chosen as the terminus for Canadian Pacific's trans-
continental line in 1881, and if CP's general manager had
not been William Van Home. Van Home, like Vancouver,
was of Dutch ancestry, which led him to declare in 1885:
This is destined to be a great city, perhaps the greatest in
Canada. We must see that it has a name that will desig-
nate its place on the map of Canada. Vancouver it shall
be, if I have the ultimate decision/ On 6 April 1886, Van-
couver was formally incorporated as a city.
Several features along the west coast also honour the
eighteenth-century navigator. In 1860, Capt. George
Richards named Vancouver Bay in Jervis Inlet, where
Vancouver stayed overnight on 17 June 1792. Vancouver
River flows into the bay from the east. There is another
Vancouver Bay at the entrance of Bute Inlet. And Van-
couver Rock in Milbanke Sound, which Vancouver
described in his journal as a Very dangerous sunken
rock/ was named in 1866 by British hydrographic sur-
veyor Capt. Daniel Pender. Mount Vancouver, a peak of
4,828 metres near the Alaska-Yukon border, was named
in 1874 by William H. Dall, scientific director of the West-
ern Union Telegraph expedition.
Vancouver's meticulous survey helped maintain Brit-
Observing Selected Names in Particular Regions 247
ain's claim to part of the coast and ensure the eventual
expansion of Canada to the Pacific. Along the way he
also enriched Canada's toponymy: the names he gave
and the many Spanish names he preserved on his charts
were widely disseminated on Arrowsmith maps and
British Admiralty charts. The only criticism of his nam-
ing practices is the almost total disregard of Aboriginal
names, although he and his officers frequently had
friendly encounters with the Indigenous people.
Mackenzie Expeditions Left a Trail of Names
During the summer of 1789, a young Scottish fur trader
and explorer reached the shores of the Arctic Ocean after
an epic journey down Canada's longest river. Four years
later he led a party of ten men on an arduous journey
over the Rockies and the Coast Mountains to the Pacific.
These exploits at the end of the eighteenth century
should be well known and the fur trader extolled as one
of the greatest explorers of all time. But most Canadians
know very little about the adventures of Sir Alexander
Mackenzie.
Mackenzie was born in 1764 in Stornoway on the Isle
of Lewis in Scotland. Ten years later his widowed father,
Kenneth, emigrated with his young family to New York,
where his brother, Murdoch, had a successful business.
The father remained loyal to the Crown during the Revo-
lutionary War, becoming an officer in the King's Royal
Regiment. During his absence, Alexander was cared for
by two of his father's sisters in Johnstown, N.Y. In 1778,
they sent him to school in Montreal.
The next year, Mackenzie, then fifteen, was hired by
John Gregory, a Montreal fur trader. Five years later he
became a partner in the fur-trading firm of Gregory,
248 Naming Canada
McLeod & Company, which later was absorbed by the
North West Company.
In 1787, the North West Company sent Mackenzie to
assist Peter Pond, who was in charge of one of the com-
pany's posts on the Athabasca River. Pond, an enigmatic
and irascible figure from New England, had arrived in
the western interior in 1775 and explored the country
around Lake Athabasca (then called Lake of the Hills)
and Great Slave Lake. Pond had been told by the
Chipewyan that the lakes drained north to the 'Ice Sea.'
However, when he learned that Capt. James Cook's dis-
coveries on the West Coast suggested a large river drain-
ing from the interior, he compiled maps implying a link
between Great Slave Lake and 'Cook's River.' Were there
such a connection, it might have been a practical fur-
trading route to the Pacific.
In 1788, Mackenzie succeeded Pond at the Athabasca
post, and his cousin Roderick Mackenzie spent the year
moving the headquarters to Fort Chipewyan on the
south shore of Lake Athabasca, east of the mouth of the
Athabasca River. (Fort Chipewyan was subsequently
moved again in 1804 to its present site on the lake's
northern shore.) There he planned a mission to deter-
mine if Lake Athabasca and Great Slave Lake did drain
ultimately into the Pacific.
On 3 June 1789, he set out by canoe, accompanied by
four French-Canadian voyageurs, a young German
named John Steinbruck, a Chipewyan called English
Chief, and a company of wives and retainers. In just
forty days, Mackenzie's party reached the Arctic Ocean.
From Great Slave Lake to the river's mouth they aver-
aged 120 kilometres a day, one day canoeing an incredi-
ble 180 kilometres. Such distances were possible because
the river flowed swiftly and had few treacherous sec-
tions. Moreover, the company was accustomed to canoe-
Observing Selected Names in Particular Regions 249
ing twenty hours a day, sometimes starting as early as
2:30 a.m. Mackenzie was back at Fort Chipewyan on
12 September after an expedition covering nearly 4,800
kilometres.
Although Mackenzie used the name Grand River - per-
haps from the Slavey Deh Cho - he derisively referred to it
as 'River Disappointment' because it led only to the
'Hyperborean Sea/ When Aaron Arrowsmith made the
map for Mackenzie's book Voyages from Montreal (1801),
the name 'Mac Kenzies River' was shown twice, and
Mackenzie, in his own observations on the geography of
North America, referred to it as 'Mackenzie's River/ In
writing to President Thomas Jefferson in 1807, Joel Barlow
noted that the world had 'justly given the name Macken-
zie to the great river of the north for the obvious reason,
the merit of discovery/ However, when explorer John
Franklin canoed the river in 1825 he found the name Great
River in general use and urged the universal adoption of
Mackenzie River in honour of its eminent discoverer.
During his first voyage of discovery in the Arctic in
1821, Franklin named a small point near the mouth of the
Coppermine River for Alexander Mackenzie. Franklin
had called it Cape Mackenzie, but in 1965, because the
feature was judged by the Canadian Permanent Commit-
tee on Geographical Names to be too small to merit the
word cape, it was altered to Mackenzie Point.
Mackenzie is used in five other names in the North-
west Territories. Mackenzie Bay at the mouth of the river
was named officially in 1910, although it appeared on
earlier maps. The river flows into the bay through a com-
plex of braided channels of the Mackenzie Delta. This
name was used by geologist Hugh Bostock in 1947 and
officially approved the following year.
The District of Mackenzie was one of the three statu-
tory divisions of the Northwest Territories, established
250 Naming Canada
along with the districts of Keewatin and Franklin in 1895.
The districts no longer serve any administrative function
but have been maintained on official maps because they
remain in the official description of the Northwest Terri-
tories.
While Mackenzie remained curious about the land
beyond the mountains to the west of the Mackenzie
River, he wrote about them simply as 'the Mountains/
John Franklin in the 1820s and Kaye Lamb, who edited
The Journals and Letters of Sir Alexander Mackenzie (1970),
referred to them as the Rocky Mountains, but the Rockies
are not now considered as extending into the Northwest
Territories. The system of mountains and ranges from
the Liard River in the south to the Ramparts River in the
north, and west to the Yukon border, is called the Mack-
enzie Mountains. They were named officially in 1939 for
Alexander Mackenzie - not the explorer but the prime
minister of Canada from 1873 to 1878, who, by coinci-
dence, was born in Dunkeld, Scotland, in 1822, the place
where the explorer had died suddenly two years earlier
while on his way from Edinburgh to his estate at Avoch
in Ross-shire.
The Mackenzie Highway was built as an all-weather
road in the 1940s from Grimshaw, Alta., to Hay River,
N. W.T. Later it was extended to Fort Simpson and Wrigley.
After his journey to the Arctic, Mackenzie, determined
to become proficient with surveying instruments, went
to London in 1791 to learn more about both navigation
and surveying. He returned to Fort Chipewyan in 1792
and that same year travelled to Fort Fork on the Peace
River, near the present town of Peace River, to make
plans to find a practical route to the Pacific.
On 9 May 1793, now twenty-nine, he set out from Fort
Fork accompanied by Alexander McKay, six voyageurs,
and two Aboriginal hunters and interpreters. By 1 June he
Observing Selected Names in Particular Regions 251
had reached a section of the Parsnip River in present Brit-
ish Columbia. The District Municipality of Mackenzie
was created at that site in 1966 as the logging and mining
centre for that part of the Rocky Mountain Trench. The
preplanned town now has a population of 5,800.
The most arduous part of Mackenzie's trip was the
portage through rough terrain from the head of the Pars-
nip River to James Creek, Herrick Creek, and then
McGregor River, a tributary of the Fraser. (He assumed
the Fraser was the Columbia River; Simon Fraser proved
otherwise fifteen years later.) Perhaps at the summit -
the lakes here are appropriately called Arctic Lake and
Pacific Lake - Mackenzie may have been able to see sev-
eral snow-covered peaks of the Rockies some 100 kilo-
metres to the southeast. In 1916, one of them was named
Mount Sir Alexander in his honour. The 3,277-metre
mountain is 75 kilometres north of McBride.
By 22 June, Mackenzie had followed the Fraser to a
point halfway between the present cities of Quesnel and
Williams Lake. Twenty-eight years later the North West
Company established Fort Alexandria at this site, nam-
ing it for the explorer. The present community of Alexan-
dria has a population of 82.
On the advice of Aboriginals, Mackenzie decided
against proceeding farther south on the turbulent Fraser.
Instead, he turned back to a river he called the West Road
- today it is officially called West Road (Blackwater)
River - and worked his way west along an Aboriginal
track towards the Pacific. By 17 July, he reached the high-
est point of his travels. Mackenzie Pass, 1,830 metres, is
the summit between the valleys of the Dean River to the
north and Bella Coola River to the south. Mackenzie Val-
ley is north of the pass in the valley of Kohasganko
Creek, and Mount Mackenzie is to the west. These three
names were given by the Department of National
252 Naming Canada
Defence while surveying the area in 1953. When Mack-
enzie had trekked over the pass he saw a 'stupendous
mountain' to the south; the official name now is Stupen-
dous Mountain.
Mackenzie reached Bella Coola on 19 July 1793, and
continued canoeing to the west until he came to a rock in
Dean Channel where he took astronomical observations
to determine his latitude and longitude. On the rock he
inscribed: 'Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land,
the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred
and ninety-three.' In 1926, the British Columbia govern-
ment named the site of the rock Sir Alexander Mackenzie
Provincial Park. Mackenzie then returned to Fort Chip-
ewyan, taking only thirty-three days to cover the circui-
tous 2,000-kilometre route via the Fraser, the Parsnip,
and the Peace. Remarkably, on his two journeys to the
Arctic and the Pacific, no one accompanying him died or
suffered serious injury.
After his two prodigious exploratory trips, Mackenzie
spent much of the next fifteen years in Montreal, where
he remained active in the fur trade. In 1801, on one of his
many trips to London, his Voyages from Montreal was
published. The book created immense interest in Britain
and the United States, and was translated into French,
German, and Russian. In 1802, at age 38, he was
knighted. After 1808, he remained in Britain, where he
married a distant cousin and had three children.
With eleven features named for Sir Alexander Mack-
enzie in the Northwest Territories and British Columbia,
including Canada's longest river, it may well be argued
that Mackenzie has been adequately honoured. But other
than in the names of schools in Edmonton and Inuvik,
the explorer does not appear to have been remembered
in the names of the nation's institutions. In July 1989,200
years after Mackenzie reached the Arctic, a plaque was
Observing Selected Names in Particular Regions 253
unveiled at his Scottish gravesite. Four years later, the
words he inscribed near Bella Coola were carved on a
granite slab at his grave.
'88 Olympics: Calgary, Kananaskis, and Mount Allan
Holding the 1988 Winter Olympics in Canada vaulted
Calgary onto the global scene so that, like Innsbruck or
Grenoble, Lillehammer or Nagano, its name is easily
mentioned around the world without reference to region
or country.
Calgary was named in 1876 on the suggestion of Col.
James F. Macleod, who was assistant commissioner of
the North West Mounted Police when a post had been
established the previous year where the Elbow River
joins the Bow. He chose the name to honour a small place
with family associations and happy memories on the
Island of Mull in Scotland. As adduced by the noted his-
torian George KG. Stanley, the name in Scotland most
likely means 'bay farm' in Scots Gaelic. Other suggested
origins, such as 'clear running water' (the meaning
advanced by Macleod) or 'cold enclosure' (a meaning
promoted by writers Eric J. and Patricia M. Holmgren),
would appear to have no etymological basis.
Bow River, the principal tributary of the South
Saskatchewan River, rises in the Rocky Mountains north-
west of Banff. It derives its name from the Aboriginal
practice of gathering saplings in the valley to make
bows. An Arrowsmith map of 1802 shows Bow Hills,
and another Arrowsmith map of 1822 refers to 'Bow or
Askow River.' The French word for 'bow' is reflected in
the name Lac des Arcs, some 90 kilometres upriver from
Calgary at Exshaw. It was named in 1858 by Eugene
Bourgeau, the botanist on the Palliser Expedition.
254 Naming Canada
Kananaskis River, a major tributary of the Bow, rises
about 60 kilometres south of Exshaw in some of the most
awe-inspiring mountain landscape in North America.
John Palliser named the river in 1858 for a Cree who,
according to legend, miraculously recovered from the
blow of an axe. In this area, widely known as Kananaskis
Country, and 12 kilometres south of Exshaw, is Mount
Allan, chosen in 1984 for the '88 Olympic alpine ski
events. This 2,800-metre peak was named in 1948 for
John Andrew Allan (1884-1955), who had headed the
department of geology at the University of Alberta from
1912 to 1949, and had undertaken extensive geological
studies in the Rocky Mountains. A 1987 study under-
taken for the Stoney Chiniki Band Council revealed the
names Chase Tida Baha ('burnt timber hill') and Wataga
ipa ('grizzly hill point') for it. In 1985, the Alberta gov-
ernment chose the name Nakiska for the ski resort at
Mount Allan. This name, derived from a Cree word
meaning 'to meet/ refers to athletes from all over the
world who came together in February 1988.
Immediately to the west of Mount Allan is Mount
Lougheed, which may be the peak named Windy Moun-
tain in 1858 by Bourgeau. In 1886, George M. Dawson
recorded the name Wind Mountain for it, and this was
made official in 1911 by the Geographic Board of Can-
ada. In 1928, the board renamed the mountain for the late
senator Sir James Lougheed (1854-1925), the grandfather
of Peter Lougheed. In 1982, the Alberta Historic Sites
Board confirmed the name Windtower for the northwest-
erly peak of the Mount Lougheed massif, and in 1985
restored the name Wind Mountain to its southeasterly
peak. Kananaskis Provincial Park, at the head of the
Kananaskis River, was renamed Peter Lougheed Provin-
cial Park in 1986 by the provincial government.
Southwest of Mount Lougheed is Mount Sparrow-
Observing Selected Names in Particular Regions 255
hawk - the original choice for the Olympic downhill ski
events - which was named in 1922 for a destroyer that
had served in the Battle of Jutland during the First World
War. To the south of it are several other named moun-
tains that recall officers, cruisers, warships, and destroy-
ers of the same battle: Glasgow, Chester, Engadine,
Galatea, Indefatigable, Invincible, Warrior, Black Prince,
Shark, Warspite. And in the same area adjacent to the
British Columbia boundary are many other peaks that
honour noted foreign leaders of the First World War: Jof-
fre, Foch, Jellicoe, Putnik, Smuts, Leman, Hood, Brock;
three senior British officers: Haig, Beatty, Evan-Thomas;
and Canadian generals: Burstall, Currie, Mercer, Turner.
Northeast of Mount Allan is Mount Lorette, named after
a First World War battle at Lorette Ridge in France.
Straight south of Mount Allan is Mount Bogart, named
for Donaldson Bogart Dowling (1858-1925), who
explored this area in 1904 for the Geological Survey of
Canada. Dowling named Mount Kidd, the next moun-
tain to the southeast, for John Alfred Kidd, then a trad-
ing-post manager at Morley, the centre of the Stoney First
Nation Reserve west of Calgary.
Across the Kananaskis River valley from Mount Allan
is Fisher Range, named by Palliser in 1858 for George
Fisher, a British astronomer and a family friend. A prom-
inent elevation of the range, Mount McDougall, was
named by George Dawson in 1884 for Rev. George
McDougall (1821-1876), a Methodist missionary among
the Stoney, and for his sons, David and Rev. John
McDougall.
To the north of Mount Allan, and overlooking Exshaw,
is Mount McGillivray, which was named in 1957 for
Duncan McGillivray (ca 1764-1825), a partner of the
North West Company, who travelled through the area in
1801. Just east of Mount McGillivray, a peak with a dis-
256 Naming Canada
tinctive heart-shaped summit reveals the name given
to it in 1957: Heart Mountain. Just west of Mount
McGillivray is Pigeon Mountain, named by Bourgeau in
1858, and beyond it is one of the most photographed
mountains in the Rockies: The Three Sisters, named by
Dawson in 1886 for its three similar peaks. Finally, next
in succession are Ha Ling Peak (until 1998, officially
known as Chinamans Peak), named for a Chinese miner
who had climbed it in 1896; and Mount Rundle, named
by James Hector in 1859 for Rev. Robert Terrill Rundle, a
Methodist missionary to the Cree in the 1840s.
Exshaw was named by Sir Sandford Fleming after a
son-in-law, William Exshaw. Five kilometres upriver is
Dead Man's Flats, which recalls the killing in 1904 of
John Marrett by his brother, Francois. Canmore is a rail-
way name given in the 1880s by Canadian Pacific, possi-
bly for the Scottish King Malcolm III (d. 1093), known as
Canmore.
The Thousand Islands: There Are Really 1,149
One of the most idyllic regions of North America
embraces the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence River.
The early French explorers, on ascending the river to
Fort Frontenac (now Kingston), were impressed with the
great number of islands, and concluded they must num-
ber at least a thousand. The French historian Charlevoix
noted in 1721 that 'we passed through the midst of a
kind of archipelago which they called Mille Isles. I
believe there are about 500.' A 1727 map by de Lery
called them 'Les Mil Isles/
Many of the travel brochures claim there are at least
1,800 islands. In the early 1800s, the British and Ameri-
can boundary surveyors determined that there were
Observing Selected Names in Particular Regions 257
1,692, deciding that any rock with at least one tree could
be called an island.
In 1966, an official count by the Canadian Permanent
Committee's names secretariat revealed 1,015 islands
compiled on large-scale topographical maps from
Amherst Island west of Kingston to McNair Island at
Brockville, a distance of 80 kilometres.
A methodical check in 1985 of the large-scale naviga-
tion charts puts the number at 1,149 islands and islets.
The number on the Canadian side is 665, with 241 offi-
cially named; on the American, 484, with 126 named.
Numerous rocks barely awash or rocks abutting larger
islands probably account for the previously inflated
numbers.
A Mississauga legend states that the islands resulted
from an accident when a blanket holding Manatoana, or
'Garden of the Great Spirit,' was dropped by its carriers,
breaking the garden into a thousand pieces.
Very few of the Thousand Islands had individual
names prior to the War of 1812. The largest, Wolfe Island,
known to the Iroquois as Ganounkousenot, and to the
French as Grande Isle and Isle Buade, recalls the British
general who led the capture of Quebec in 1759. Other
prominent British military leaders from that period
honoured in the names of large islands include Gen. Wil-
liam Howe and Gen. Jeffery Amherst.
After the War of 1812, Capt. William Fitzwilliam Owen
surveyed the St. Lawrence between Lake Ontario and
Cornwall, and published a series of five Admiralty
charts in 1828. In naming the islands he drew on many
elements relating to British military engagements on the
Great Lakes and in Upper Canada, as well as noted Brit-
ish military leaders.
Among gunboats on the Great Lakes during the war,
with their names applied in the Lake Fleet Islands, are
258 Naming Canada
Axeman, Aspasia, Belabourer, Bloodletter, Camelot,
Deathdealer, Dumfounder, and Endymion.
The Navy Islands include the names of officers who
distinguished themselves in engagements during the
war. Among them are Downie Island (Cmdr. George
Downie, killed on Lake Champlain in 1814); Hickey
Island (Frederick Hickey, commander of the Prince
Regent on Lake Ontario); Mulcaster Island (Capt. William
Howe Mulcaster, who was severely wounded at Os-
wego, N.Y.); Spilsbury Island (Capt. Francis Spilsbury,
who was involved in several engagements on Lake
Ontario); and Owen Island (probably not for Capt. W.F.,
but for his brother, Sir Edward Owen, who commanded
forces on both Lake Champlain and the Great Lakes).
Some of the Admiralty Islands off Gananoque were
given names by Owen for prominent figures in the Brit-
ish Admiralty. Among them were islands for the Rt. Hon.
Charles Philip Yorke, First Lord of the Admiralty in 1811,
and Viscount Melville, the First Lord from 1812 to 1827.
Possibly because these islands had local names prior to
Owen's survey, his names were not accepted locally;
Yorke is Bostwick Island; Melville is Hay Island.
A number of other names assigned by the Owen sur-
vey have recently been changed to conform to preferred
usage in the area. Among them are Squaw Island (for-
merly Brock), Leek Island (Thwartway), Tremont Park
Island (Tidds), and Sugar Island (St. Lawrence).
The well-known Grenadier Island honours the distin-
guished British Grenadier Regiment. Known to the Mis-
sissauga and the early travellers as Toniata, the name
Grenadier occurs on a map relating to the Treaty of
Ghent, 1814. Captain Owen called it Bathurst Island,
probably for the third Earl Bathurst (1762-1834). Grena-
dier was given precedence in 1909.
Hill Island, crossed by the Thousand Islands (Ivy Lea)
Observing Selected Names in Particular Regions 259
Bridge to New York state, honours Gen. Rowland Hill.
An 1874 survey by Charles Unwin identified it as Leroux
Island, but the name assigned by Owen was confirmed
in 1909.
Upriver from Brockville is the Brock Group, where
several islands commemorate officers who served with
Sir Isaac Brock in the War of 1812. Among them are
Myers Island (Lt.-Col. Christopher Myers, commander at
Kingston in 1813), Sheaffe Island (Gen. Sir Roger Sheaffe,
who succeeded Brock at Kingston), De Watteville Island
(Maj.-Gen. Abraham de Watteville), De Rottenburg
Island (Maj.-Gen. Francis, Baron de Rottenburg), Cock-
burn Island (Admiral Sir George Cockburn), Conran
Island (Maj.-Gen. Henry Conran), and Stovin Island
(Maj.-Gen. Richard Stovin, commander at Montreal,
1812-14).
Many of the islands on the American side reflect a Brit-
ish connection, having also been named by Owen. One
of the largest is Wellesley Island, which commemorates
Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington. Others include
Carleton Island (Sir Guy Carleton) and Picton Island (Sir
Thomas Picton).
One of the most frequently visited American islands is
Heart Island (formerly Hart), where George Boldt, owner
of the Waldorf Astoria in New York, began but never
completed a castle, and where his chef, who became the
renowned Oscar of the Waldorf, concocted the famous
Thousand Island Dressing.
In 1904, St. Lawrence Islands National Park was estab-
lished to preserve some of the sensitive ecology of these
fragments of the Canadian Shield. The park now
includes part of the mainland at Mallorytown Landing,
plus all or part of twenty-one islands and eighty-three
rocky islets. Among the Thousand Islands, the complex
network of channels includes the intricate Lovers Lane,
260 Naming Canada
the narrow Needle's Eye, the sharp-angled Fiddlers
Elbow, the curiously named International Rift, and the
carefree Wanderers Channel.
Some of the most pleasant-sounding names of Canada
are scattered among the Thousand Islands. Included are
Kitsymenie, Kalaria, Apohaqui, Minota, Arabella, Beau-
rivage, and Manomin.
Now, as for the Thirty Thousand Islands in Georgian
Bay ... another essay or two perhaps.
Relocating the Lost Villages
The construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s
was one of the most ambitious engineering projects ever
undertaken in North America. The dams, canals, and
powerhouse in the International Rapids section between
Montreal and Lake Ontario had a profound impact on
the region's physical and human geography. Some 8,000
hectares (20,000 acres) of farmland and all or part of nine
villages on the Ontario side of the St. Lawrence River
between Cornwall and Iroquois were inundated when
Lake St. Lawrence was created. Two new towns, Long
Sault and Ingleside, were established, partly of new
homes and partly of houses moved from the flooded vil-
lages. Morrisburg's business district was moved and all
of Iroquois was relocated.
Some of Ontario's oldest and most historic settlements
- founded by United Empire Loyalists in the 1780s -
were submerged under the waters of the man-made lake.
Their names - Mille Roches, Moulinette, Dickinsons
Landing, Wales, Woodlands, Farrans Point, and Aults-
ville - are remembered in the names of streets, roads, and
islands, and in the Mille Roches, Moulinette, and Aults-
ville halls of Cornwall's St. Lawrence College.
Observing Selected Names in Particular Regions 261
Mille Roches ('thousand rocks'), 8 kilometres west of
Cornwall, was adjacent to a rough and rocky section of
the river's Long Sault Rapids. From the 1780s to the
1830s, it was a landing place for a brisk business in trans-
ferring freight and passengers. Its importance declined
when the Cornwall Canal was built in 1836, but it
remained a small service centre until the 1950s.
Moulinette, 3 kilometres farther west, was named for
the small grist mill built by pioneer settler Adam Dixon,
who also built a distillery, a foundry, an Anglican church,
and a handsome residence.
Five kilometres southwest of Moulinette was the little
community of Dickinsons Landing, where Barnabas
Dickinson established a stagecoach line between King-
ston and Montreal. When the Grand Trunk Railway was
built from Montreal to Toronto in the 1850s, the stop
north of the village was called Dickinson's Landing Sta-
tion. In 1860, the Prince of Wales travelled by train to the
station and returned to Montreal by the St. Lawrence
River. In honour of his visit, the station was renamed
Wales. It eventually grew into a small urban settlement.
Woodlands, a little community 4 kilometres west of
Dickinsons Landing, was named because it was a fire-
wood supply point for steamers on the St. Lawrence.
Three kilometres farther west was the little urban centre
of Farrans Point, where a Farrand family had lived in the
early years of settlement. The last of the submerged
group was Aultsville, named in 1854 for Samuel Ault,
who served as an ML A and an MP from 1861 to 1872.
In 1954, the Ontario-St. Lawrence Development Com-
mission was set up to transfer 6,500 displaced residents
to the new townsites. The commission decided to build a
new urban centre at the west side of Cornwall Township
to receive people from Mille Roches and Moulinette, and
another planned community 8 kilometres to the west in
262 Naming Canada
Osnabruck Township for the residents of that township
whose properties were to be inundated.
The Osnabruck Township council endorsed the name
Sunnyvale for its new urban complex in July 1955, but
two months later changed it to Avondale. Believing this
might be confused with nearby Avonmore, and because
there was another Avondale to the east in Charlotten-
burgh Township, several residents urged the adoption of
another name, with Osnabruck, Wales, and Kanata being
suggested as alternatives. A vote was held and Wales
emerged as the preferred choice, but new opposition soon
arose because only one of the former places was being
commemorated in the new name. The township reeve,
Thorold Lake, happened to drive by a house in Aultsville
called Ingleside, and suggested this name to the council.
This was accepted, and subsequently endorsed by the
Canadian Board on Geographical Names, as the Geo-
graphical Names Board of Canada was then called.
In early 1956, the Mille Roches and Moulinette Cham-
ber of Commerce proposed Longue Sault as the name for
their new planned urban centre in Cornwall Township,
and this was endorsed in July by the township council.
The Cornwall Standard-Freeholder pointed out that the
proper form was Long Sault, in keeping with the rules of
the French language, and the Canadian Board on Geo-
graphical Names approved this form. However, angry
residents claimed long usage of Longue Sault in the com-
munity, and mustered ample evidence for their claim. In
February 1957, the newly named Longue Sault Chamber
of Commerce pressed for reconsideration of the place's
name, but to no avail.
Names for the twenty-three new islands that would be
formed by the flooding were drawn up by the Ontario-
St. Lawrence Development Commission in the spring of
1956. Names of communities and prominent persons in
Observing Selected Names in Particular Regions 263
the valley's history provided inspiration and the names
were endorsed by the Canadian names board. When
Lionel Chevrier, then president of the St. Lawrence
Seaway Authority, was advised of the new names, he
proposed a number of changes, and several of his sug-
gestions were adopted.
Wales, Mille Roches, and Moulinette are each recalled
in the name of an island. Dickinson Island is for Dickin-
sons Landing. Woodlands Islands - East Woodlands
Island, Centre Woodlands Island, and West Woodlands
Island - all are named for Woodlands. Farrans Point is
remembered in the name Farran Point, a peninsula that
extends into the St. Lawrence beside Ingleside. Ault
Island, the largest of the Canadian islands created by the
flooding, is adjacent to the old site of Aultsville and just
offshore from Upper Canada Village, where pioneer
buildings and traditions are preserved.
Long Sault Rapids is recalled in the name of the urban
centre as well as the Long Sault Parkway, which connects
eleven islands in St. Lawrence Provincial Park to the
mainland at Ingleside and Long Sault.
In the spring of 1958, James Duncan, chairman of the
Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, proposed
naming the new reservoir Lake St. Lawrence. It was
approved by the Canadian names board in June, and later
accepted by the United States Board on Geographic
Names. Some newspapers, including the Cornwall Stan-
dard-Freeholder, objected to its blandness. (They also
reported incorrectly that the official Canadian name was
Lake Elizabeth.) Alternative suggestions flooded into
newspapers and the Canadian names board; among the
more bizarre ones were Lake Elizamerica, Lake Indedom
(independence and dominion), Lake Canusa, Lake Uscan,
and Lake Canarican, but the original proposal prevailed.
Memories of the submerged communities have been
264 Naming Canada
kept alive by the Lost Villages Historical Society,
founded in 1977, and its museum, opened in August
1992 at Ault Park, east of Long Sault. Inundation Day has
been celebrated twice, first on 1 July 1983, and again on
the same day in 1988. Many families were uprooted
nearly forty years ago, but the great beauty of the islands
and shoreline of St. Lawrence Provincial Park and the
charm of Upper Canada Village have provided a large
measure of spiritual compensation for the residents of
the Seaway Valley.
Great Divide Passes in the Rockies
Some of the most historic place names in Canada are
those of the mountain passes on the Great Divide in the
Rocky Mountains.
From Akamina Pass near the United States border to
Monkman Pass in north-central British Columbia, there
are seventy officially named passes. North of Monkman
Pass, the Great Divide skirts west of the Rocky Mountain
Trench and Williston Lake, so that the Rockies in this
area cease to be the continental divide between Pacific
waters on the west and Atlantic (Hudson Bay) and Arctic
waters on the east and north.
Three of the passes are crossed by both railways and
highways: Crowsnest, Kicking Horse, and Yellowhead.
A highway over the Great Divide uses Vermilion Pass.
A railway and a highway also go through Pine Pass in
the Rockies, but at this point these mountains are not the
continental divide.
Another railway was built in 1983-4 through an un-
named pass between Monkman Pass and Pine Pass to
serve the Quintette and Bullmoose coal mines at Tumbler
Ridge.
Observing Selected Names in Particular Regions 265
Two other passes became well known as routes during
the fur-trade era: Athabasca and Howse. Monkman Pass
has neither a railway nor a highway, although several
efforts have been made to link Prince George with Daw-
son Creek and Grande Prairie by building a road
through it.
The area of Crowsnest Pass (elev. 1,357 metres) was
explored in 1858 by Thomas Blakiston of the Palliser
Expedition and in 1882 by George Dawson of the Geo-
logical Survey. In the 1800s, the story was told of ka-ka-iu-
wut-ishis-tun by the Cree and ma-sto-eeas by the Black-
foot, both literally meaning 'the raven's nest,' but trans-
lated as 'the crow's nest.' The hill where the Cree and
Blockfoot believe ravens originally nest is thought to be
30 kilometres east of the present Crowsnest Mountain,
with the latter having been given that name erroneously
by white explorers. The two Aboriginal nations consider
the area of the hill to be the 'crow's nest country,'
accounting for the transfer of the name to the river and
the pass.
Crowsnest Pass attained importance in 1897 when the
Canadian Pacific Railway received a subsidy to build a
railway through the pass and to develop the mineral
deposits of southern British Columbia, for which it guar-
anteed fixed rates for the eastbound shipping of grain
and flour. This Crowsnest Pass Agreement, extended in
1925 to all railways leading east to Lake Superior, kept
the costs of grain transportation down, but resulted in
poor development and maintenance of rail lines. In late
1983, a new 'Crow rate' was worked out to allow the
costs of shipping grain to rise, although the railways are
still supported by large federal subsidies. At the same
time the railways agreed to spend $16 billion by 1992 for
new rolling stock and improvement of service.
Vermilion Pass (elev. 1,651 metres) is 42 kilometres
266 Naming Canada
west of Banff. It links the Bow River valley in Alberta
with the Kootenay River valley in B.C. The name is
derived from the red, yellow, and orange ochre beds in
mineral springs 9 kilometres southwest of the pass. The
springs were frequented through time immemorial by
the Kootenay and the Blackfoot for decorative paint.
After Dr. James Hector crossed Vermilion Pass on
horseback in 1858, he returned to the east side of the
Great Divide by a tumultuous tributary of the Columbia
River. Kicking Horse Pass (elev. 1,627 metres) received its
fascinating name when Hector was kicked by his horse
and knocked senseless. The river, by association, became
the Kicking Horse River.
Although the grade from the top of the pass down
what came to be known as 'the big hill' into Field, B.C.
(elev. 1,241 metres), was greater than 4 per cent, the Kick-
ing Horse was selected for the first railway route to Van-
couver, the CPR completing its line through the pass in
1884. (The grade was reduced to 2 per cent with the
building of the famous spiral tunnels in 1909.)
Otto Klotz, who undertook an astronomical survey
along the CPR right-of-way in 1886, introduced the name
Wapta for the river (from the Stoney word for 'river'),
but the Hector name, Kicking Horse, prevailed. The
Trans-Canada Highway, opened officially in 1962, tra-
verses the pass.
Howse Pass (elev. 1,525 metres), occasionally touted in
recent times as a practical highway route to shorten
travel time between Edmonton and Vancouver, was
crossed in 1810 by Joseph Howse, a Hudson's Bay Com-
pany trader. The pass had been crossed earlier in 1807 by
David Thompson, who gave it the name Howse Pass on
his 1814 map. Howse had been in charge of Carlton
House, near present-day Prince Albert, Sask., from 1799
to 1809. He retired to England in 1815.
Observing Selected Names in Particular Regions 267
Athabasca Pass (elev. 1,748 metres) was crossed by
David Thompson in 1811, and became thereafter an
important route to the Columbia River system. The pass
takes its name from the Athabasca River, which rises
southeast of the pass; the name in Cree means 'where the
reeds are/ a description of the marshy delta where the
river enters Lake Athabasca some 1,000 kilometres away
in northeastern Alberta.
At the summit of the pass is a small round lake called
Committee Punch Bowl, where Sir George Simpson
treated his companions to a bottle of wine in 1825. The
name is a tribute to the governing committee of the Hud-
son's Bay Company.
Yellowhead Pass (elev. 1,133 metres) was not explored
until the 1820s, but ultimately became the most impor-
tant rail and highway pass north of the Kicking Horse
Pass. The pass and the B.C. community of Tete Jaune
Cache both honour a fur trader.
For many years the names of Jasper Hawes, Francois
Decoigne, and Pierre Hatsinaton were advanced as the
'yellow headed' trader in question; but in 1984 David
Smyth, a Parks Canada historian, established beyond
doubt that the blond trader involved was really Pierre
Bostonais. This mixed-blood Iroquois had worked for
both the Hudson's Bay and the North West companies
and was killed in the upper Peace River region in 1827.
The pass, called merely a portage during the fur-trade
era, also became known as Leather Pass in the late 1800s,
as hides had earlier been carried through it by traders
from the Athabasca River on the east to New Caledonia
on the west. Other names noted in the literature include
Cowdung Pass, Leatherhead Pass, Jasper Pass, Jasper
House Pass, Tete Jaune Pass, and Rocky Mountain Pass.
Sir Sandford Fleming failed in the 1880s to persuade
the CPR to follow the route of the Yellowhead Pass, but it
268 Naming Canada
was ultimately chosen by both the Grand Trunk Pacific
and the Canadian Northern. These were united in the
1920s into the Canadian National Railways, which has
continued to use the pass as its main freight route to the
Pacific coast. It is also used by Via Rail for passenger traf-
fic between Vancouver, Edmonton, and Winnipeg. As
well, the pass is the route of the Yellowhead Highway,
which follows the same general route - Winnipeg, Saska-
toon, Edmonton, Jasper, and on to the coast.
Monkman Pass (elev. 1,082 metres) was discovered by
Alexander Monkman in the winter of 1921-2 while on a
trapping and hunting trip. The pass was seriously con-
sidered for a railway to the Peace River country of
Alberta in 1925.
A new provincial park recently established at the pass,
and extensive coal developments north of the pass at
Tumbler Ridge, may encourage the opening of a high-
way through the pass, a route long promoted in the
Grande Prairie region.
The names of these seven passes through the Great
Divide illustrate the diversity in geographical naming in
Canada: The transfer of a Native name from a nearby
feature - Athabasca; the translation of a description
given by two Aboriginal nations - Crowsnest; the occur-
rence of a decorative paint - Vermilion; an incident -
Kicking Horse; a mixed-blood Iroquois fur trader - Yel-
lowhead; a Hudson's Bay trade r - Howse; and a hunter
and trapper from the region - Monkman.
Of course there are many other pass names (Deadman,
Palliser, Assiniboine, Miette, Simpson, to name but a
few), and each has its own interesting tale of discovery
and exploration.
Commemorating Prominent
Individuals and Honouring
Certain Family Names
Sir Guy Carleton: Names Recall a Revered Governor
Ask yourself this question: What individual has had the
greatest influence in shaping Canada, its federation of
provinces and territories, and its unique blend of lan-
guages, traditions, and laws? Many people come to
mind, but my choice above all is Sir Guy Carleton, Baron
Dorchester, the predominant figure in the governing of
the British Province of Quebec (spelled without an
accent) for most of the years from 1766 to 1796.
At a time when victorious nations customarily im-
posed their laws, languages, and customs on the people
of conquered territories, Carleton conceived the 1774
Quebec Act, which recognized French civil law, freedom
of religion, and the right of Catholics to hold public
office. That was more than a half-century before Britain
emancipated Catholics. As commander-in-chief of Brit-
ish forces in the original Province of Quebec, he success-
fully defended the citadel of Quebec City in 1775, and
turned back the American invaders. Carleton partici-
pated in 1791 in the division of the Province of Quebec
into the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, with the
270 Naming Canada
English language and civil law dominant in one, and the
French language and civil law in the other.
Carleton played central roles in two cataclysmic events
that inexorably determined Canada's future. A favourite
of Gen. James Wolfe, he commanded one of the three bat-
talions in 1759 that defeated the forces of Gen. Montcalm
on the Plains of Abraham. He played a key role in trans-
porting 30,000 British troops and 27,000 Loyalists and
their families from New York in 1782 and 1783, and per-
suading the governments of the original provinces of
Nova Scotia and Quebec to grant them free land and a
year's provisions.
Guy Carleton was born in 1824 in Strabane, County
Tyrone, Ireland. Before his eighteenth birthday he was
commissioned an ensign in the British army, rising to the
rank of lieutenant-colonel when he joined Wolfe in 1758
at the capture of Louisbourg. Although he had no civil
government experience, his nomination in 1766 as lieu-
tenant-governor of the old Province of Quebec was sup-
ported by senior officials in the colonial department and
by King George III himself. He was made governor-in-
chief in 1768, and continued in that office for ten years. In
1782, Carleton was appointed commander-in-chief in
North America. Four years later, when he was created
Baron Dorchester, he became commander-in-chief of
British North America.
The earliest naming honour for Sir Guy Carleton
occurred in Prince Edward Island when Samuel Holland,
surveyor general of British North America, named the
closest land to the mainland Carlton [sic] Point in 1765,
and named two little bays Guy Cove and Carlton [sic]
Cove. After the point became the site of a ferry terminal
in 1917, it was renamed Borden Point for Prime Minister
Robert Borden, and Guy Cove became Port Borden. In
1995 the municipal community of Carleton Siding, 3 kilo-
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 271
metres inland, and the town of Borden were merged to
form the municipal community of Borden-Carleton. The
small community of North Carleton is 4 kilometres to the
north.
In 1783, a detachment of disbanded soldiers and their
families sailed from New York to Port Mouton in south-
western Nova Scotia, built 300 houses and called the
place Guysborough to honour the heroic efforts of Sir
Guy in managing the move. The name continued there
as that of a township for many years thereafter, although
the 800 settlers moved to Chedabucto Bay in eastern
Nova Scotia in 1784 after a fire had completely destroyed
their houses. They also transferred the same name to
their new home, with the townsite of Guysborough
being laid out in 1790, and Guysborough County being
created in 1836.
In 1784, Col. Timothy Hierlihy and other officers of the
Nova Scotia Volunteers obtained a grant of 21,600 acres
in the area of present Antigonish County, and arranged
for some Loyalists settlers to take up land there. On
learning of Carleton becoming Lord Dorchester in 1786,
Hierlihy named his projected townsite and township
Dorchester in honour of him. However, the settlement
failed, and by the early 1800s had been supplanted by
Antigonish, 10 kilometres to the southwest.
Carleton is a small community in southwestern Nova
Scotia, 25 kilometres northeast of Yarmouth. It was
founded in the 1830s and first called Temperance. Later it
was renamed after nearby Lake Carleton, named earlier
for Sir Guy Carleton, but now known as Raynards Lake.
In adjoining Shelburne County is Carleton Village,
10 kilometres south of the town of Shelburne. A fort was
built at the mouth of Shelburne Harbour in 1783-4 to
protect the Loyalists settlers being transferred from New
York to Shelburne. According to its postmaster in 1905, it
272 Naming Canada
was named for Thomas Carleton, Sir Guy's youngest
brother, who was lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick
from 1784 to 1817, although he had returned to England
in 1803.
Regarded as the key figure among the founders of New
Brunswick, Thomas Carleton was honoured in the names
of Carleton Parish in Kent County in 1814, Carleton
County in the Saint John River valley above Fredericton in
1831, and Mount Carleton, the province's highest moun-
tain, given in 1899 by natural scientist William R Ganong.
Mount Carleton Provincial Park was created in 1985.
In 1783, when New Brunswick was still part of Nova
Scotia, Governor John Parr gave the name Parr Town to
the heart of the present-day city of Saint John, and the
area of what is now known as Saint John West he called
Carleton, for Sir Guy Carleton. It was still well known as
that at the beginning of the twentieth century.
During three time periods, Carleton served for a total
of sixteen years in Quebec, where he was strongly sup-
ported by the seigneurs and the clergy, it should not be
surprising that many places were named for him in that
province. He is described in Noms et Lieux, Quebec's
voluminous study of its geographical names published
in 1994, as one of the most sympathetic Britons to the
cause of the Quebecois.
Carleton Township on the south side of the Peninsule
de la Gaspesie was named about 1768 while Sir Guy was
still lieutenant-governor of the Province of Quebec. The
town that developed there was earlier known to the Aca-
dians as Tracadieche (from the Mi'kmaq for 'place of
many herons'), but about 1787 it was renamed Carleton
by the Loyalists. In 1928, the 609-metre mountain north
of the town was named Mont Carleton, a name in use
locally for a number of years for what had also been
called Mont Tracadigash.
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 273
Dorchester County in the Beauce country south of
Quebec City was named in 1792. Although the county is
no longer part of the municipal structure of Quebec, it is
recalled in such names as Saint-Prosper-de-Dorchester
and Sainte-Marguerite-de-Dorchester.
To strengthen the defence of the southern entrance to
Lake Ontario, the British built a fort in 1778 on a small
island south of Wolfe Island, and named it for Sir Guy.
However, the military significance of Carleton Island
declined after the signing the Treaty of Paris five years
later. The British continued to occupy it until the War of
1812, although after the signing of Jay's Treaty of 1795, it
had become American territory.
Carleton County at the junction of the Ottawa and
Rideau rivers was named for Sir Guy in 1798, perhaps by
Peter Russell, then administrator of the government of
Upper Canada. In 1969 the county, with the addition
of Cumberland Township, became the Regional Munici-
pality of Ottawa-Carleton. As of 1 January 2001, the
regional municipality disappeared and was replaced by
the new city of Ottawa. Carleton retains a strong pres-
ence in the area in the name of Carleton University
(founded as a college in 1942), with a student population
of 14,800. The town of Carleton Place in nearby Lanark
County was named in 1830, not for Sir Guy, but for Carl-
ton Place, a street in central Glasgow.
Dorchester Township was created in 1798 east of Lon-
don in Middlesex County, and named for Lord Dorches-
ter. It was divided in 1851 into North Dorchester and
South Dorchester townships, with the former remaining
in Middlesex County, and the latter transferring to the
new Elgin County. Dorchester is an urban centre in the
Municipality of Thames Centre, created in 1999 through
the amalgamation of North Dorchester and West Nis-
souri townships.
274 Naming Canada
There are many streets in eastern Canadian cities
called Carleton and Dorchester, but the best known is
Dorchester Boulevard, renamed in 1985 by the city of
Montreal to honour the founder of the Parti Quebecois,
Rene Levesque, who had died that year. However, the
boulevard extends into Westmount, where the name
remains unchanged. The first bridge built across Riviere
Saint-Charles in Quebec City was opened in 1789, and
named for Lord Dorchester. The crossing at the same site
is still identified on maps as Pont Dorchester.
Fraser: A Thoroughly Geographic Name
Fraser is one of the most honoured surnames when it
comes to naming geographical features in Canada. The
most prominent feature is the Fraser River, the mighty
drainage system of British Columbia.
The name Fraser has its roots in a Norman family
whose armorial bearings included the blossom of the
strawberry (fraise). The first Frasers arrived in Britain
with William the Conqueror. They acquired lands in
Scotland's East Lothian in the twelfth century, and subse-
quently spread throughout Scotland. Several Frasers dis-
tinguished themselves in military campaigns in Britain's
defence of its American colonies in the 1700s, and in the
fur trade and related exploratory travels.
One might expect only three or four dozen Fraser
names in the Canadian Geographical Names Data Base,
maintained by the Centre for Topographic Information in
Ottawa. Surprisingly, there are more than four dozen
currently used in British Columbia alone, while Quebec
has four dozen more, and Ontario and Nova Scotia each
have more than three dozen. In total, there are 218 geo-
graphical features in Canada with Fraser as part of their
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 275
names, another 15 names with Frazer, and a further 3
with Frazier. In addition, Fraser (or Frazer/Frazier)
occurs as a part of 103 names previously used for fea-
tures that now have other names.
The Fraser River was named by David Thompson in
1813, five years after Simon Fraser had made his historic
journey to its mouth. Alexander Mackenzie had assumed
in 1793 it was the Columbia, and Simon Fraser expected
he would arrive at the Pacific well below the 49th paral-
lel. Discouraged when he found it was not, he left the
river unnamed.
The river is only one of many features in British Colum-
bia named for the illustrious partner of the North West
Company. Fraser Lake, 125 kilometres west of Prince
George, was named by John Stuart, one of Fraser's clerks.
The present village of Fraser Lake on the lake's south
shore has a population of 1,300. Fraser's first name is
honoured with Simon Bay on the north side of the lake.
Fort Fraser, said to be the first settlement in the so-called
Oregon Territory, was established in 1806 by Simon Fraser
as a fur-trading post at the east end of the lake. The com-
munity of Fort Fraser now has a population of 450.
Near the source of the Fraser River in Mount Robson
Provincial Park in the Rockies is Mount Fraser (elevation
3,270 metres). Its peaks are named Simon, Bennington,
and McDonell in honour of Fraser's first name, his birth-
place in Vermont, and his wife's maiden name. Benning-
ton Glacier is on the British Columbia side of the
Continental Divide; Simon Glacier and Fraser Glacier
drain into Alberta's Simon Creek.
One of the stretches of the Princess Royal Channel
between Princess Royal Island and the mainland, 90 kilo-
metres south of Kitimat, is called Fraser Reach. It was
named in 1866 for Donald Fraser, then a prominent law-
yer and landowner in Victoria.
276 Naming Canada
In Port Alexander, at the north end of Vancouver
Island, is Fraser Island, named about 1860 by Capt. (later
Admiral Sir) George Richards for Alexander Fraser
Boxer, then the master of H.M.S. Alert.
Eighty kilometres northeast of Vernon is Bill Fraser
Lake and Bill Fraser Creek, named for a widely admired
guide who lived in the area from 1907 to 1963. Mount
Fraser and Fraser Creek, 55 kilometres north of Kam-
loops, also are named for the same Bill Fraser. Fraser
Island at the north end of Adams lake, 100 kilometres
northeast of Kamloops, was named in 1972 for another
Bill Fraser, a logger and forest-service patrolman living
at Chase in the 1960s.
On the west side of the Fraser Canyon near North
Bend is Fraser Peak, named in 1956 for Trooper William
E. Fraser, who was killed in action during the Second
World War. Near the British Columbia-Alaska boundary,
30 kilometres north of Stewart, is a 2,440-metre mountain
called Mount White-Fraser, named for George R. White-
Fraser, a member of the International Boundary Com-
mission, 1904-11. (He served during the First World War
in France, and died in 1920.)
Fraser Falls on the Stewart River in the Yukon is
named for a member of an 1885 prospecting party. Fraser
Creek, 125 kilometres southwest of Whitehorse, was
named in 1902 for assistant surgeon S.M. Fraser of the
North West Mounted Police, who was a mining recorder
and customs officer at Dalton Post from 1901 to 1903.
In 1847, John Rae named Fraser Bay, on the west side
of Melville Peninsula in Nunavut, for a friend who was a
chief trader of the Hudson's Bay Company (likely Paul
Fraser, who lived from 1797 to 1855). Six years later,
Elisha Kane, an American explorer, named Cape Fraser
on the east coast of Ellesmere Island for Prof. John F.
Fraser of the University of Pennsylvania.
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 277
Where Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait meet, and off
the northwestern tip of Nottingham Island, is Fraser
Island. It was named in 1965 for Robert James Fraser
(1887-1965), who served as the first Dominion Hydrog-
rapher from 1948 to 1952, and was the father of J. Keith
Fraser, general manager and publisher of Canadian Geo-
graphic, 1982-90. Because Robert Fraser had contributed
forty-five years to the hydrographic surveying of Cana-
dian waters, the hydrographic service wanted to reward
him with a perpetual memorial in the area of Hudson
Bay, where he had undertaken the first hydrographic
surveys during the years 1910-14. The Canadian Hydro-
graphic Service first proposed a sea-floor feature, but I
recommended selecting the then unnamed island so the
name could be displayed on topographical maps.
Saskatchewan has four Fraser features named for Sec-
ond World War casualties: Fraser Bay, in Reindeer Lake,
for Gunner Arthur R. Fraser; Fraser Creek, which flows
into the bay, for Pte. Robert W. Fraser; Fraser Lakes, west
of Reindeer Lake, for Flight Sgt. John S. Fraser; and
Fraser Lake, northwest of Lac la Ronge, for Flying Officer
Alexander M. Fraser. Fraser Bay in Otter Lake, an expan-
sion of Churchill River in Saskatchewan, was named in
1964 for a pioneer teacher and missionary, Canon Albert
Fraser. Fraser Rapids, on Foster River north of Lac la
Ronge, was named in 1966 for James Fraser and his wife
who were homesteaders in the Pambrun area southeast
of Swift Current.
Three features in Manitoba are named for Frasers
killed in action during the Second World War: Fraser
Island, in Gilchrist Lake east of Lake Winnipeg, is for
Flying Officer John C. Fraser; Fraser Lake, near Lynn
Lake, is for Flying Officer Alexander D. Fraser; and
Fraser Creek, west of Churchill, is for Flight Sgt. Ian
Fraser. Fraserwood, a small community 15 kilometres
278 Naming Canada
west of Gimli, was called Kreuzburg until 1918, when the
name was changed to honour a local merchant, Samuel J.
Wood, and his fiancee, Annie Bell Fraser.
Fraser Township, west of Pembroke, Ont., was named
in 1854 for Col. Alexander Fraser of Fraserfield, Glen-
garry County, who was a member of the Legislative
Council of Canada in 1841.
A post office was established in 1882 in the community
of Fraserburg, in the present town of Bracebridge, with
Alexander Fraser its first postmaster. The name recalls
Fraserburgh, Scotland, founded by Sir Alexander Fraser
in the late 1500s.
Fraserdale, 110 kilometres north of Cochrane on the
Ontario Northland Railway, is named for Alan Fraser, a
civil engineer on the railway when it was built north to
Moosonee in 1930.
South of Lake Nipissing is Fraser Creek, which crosses
land granted to John Burns Fraser in 1886.
Malcolm Fraser acquired the seigniory of Mount Mur-
ray, east of La Malbaie in Quebec's regional municipal
county of Charlevoix-Est, in 1761. He had served with
distinction with Wolfe at Louisbourg and Quebec, and
was wounded in a skirmish at Ste-Foy in 1860. On Riv-
iere Comporte, east of La Malbaie, is a set of falls named
for him.
North of La Malbaie are two lakes, 18 kilometres apart,
officially called Lac Fraser. The current 1:50,000 topo-
graphical map (1976) identifies each as Fraser Lake. This
happened because of a federal mapping policy, in effect
until 1976, that prescribed English generics for English
names. I argued, unsuccessfully, that the Frasers of La
Malbaie had been intermarried with the French from the
early 1800s, and noted that Fraser itself was not an
English name. The next edition of the map will portray
Lac Fraser for the two features.
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 279
Alexander Fraser (1761-1837), a son of Malcolm
Fraser, served with the North West Company from 1797
to 1809. He spent the winter of 1797 at Bedford House on
Reindeer Lake in present-day Saskatchewan. An island
in the lake is named for him. In 1802, he bought the
seigniory of Riviere-du-Loup-en-Bas. In his honour the
village of Fraserville was established in 1850, becoming a
town in 1874. In 1919, the name was changed to Riviere-
du-Loup. In the 1871 Dominion Directory, the following
leaders of the community were noted: Edward Fraser,
seignior and president of the Fraserville Institute; Will-
iam Fraser, seignior and justice of the peace; and Alex-
ander Fraser, advocate. Today, the town has both a
Fraserville Street and a Fraser Street.
Several Fraser families from Scotland acquired lands
in the Lake St. Francis region of the St. Lawrence River
after 1818. In Quebec's township of Dundee, James and
Alexander Fraser developed farms adjacent to Pointe
Fraser and Ruisseau Fraser. Across the lake on the
Ontario side, Donald Fraser purchased an estate in the
early 1800s at a site that became known as Fraser Point,
and his descendants remained there until 1951. In front
of the point are several small islands called crabs; one is
known as Fraser Crab.
There are seven streams in New Brunswick called
Fraser Brook. One or more of them may be named after
Donald Fraser, who established sawmills at River de
Chute in 1877 and in Edmundston in 1911. After 1917,
Fraser Companies (now Fraser Inc.) set up pulp and
paper mills in Edmundston and in Madawaska, Me.
Bishop William Fraser (1778-1851) was the first Roman
Catholic bishop of Halifax, although he retained his resi-
dence in Arichat on Isle Madame, adjacent to Cape Breton
Island. Four of his brothers - Colin, Thomas, John, and
David - and a sister, Mrs. Donald Chisholm, established
280 Naming Canada
the community of Eraser's Grant, 20 kilometres east of
Antigonish. Fifteen kilometres south of Antigonish on the
South River, Alexander Fraser installed saw and grist
mills in the mid-1800s. The post office there was called
Fraser Mills from 1884 to 1937. Sunnybrae in Pictou
County, 25 kilometres southeast of New Glasgow, also
had a post office called Fraser Mills from 1848 to 1876.
Fraser Settlement in the Musquodoboit Valley was the site
of a grant given to another Alexander Fraser in 1813.
There are only two Fraser names in Newfoundland,
both in Labrador. Fraser Lake, 100 kilometres north of
Churchill Falls, may be named for James D. Fraser, well
known at the turn of the century for his dog teams,
which he used in fur trading on the Labrador coast.
Fraser River, which flows into the Atlantic at Nain, may
be named for James Fraser, who commanded Moravian
vessels on the Labrador coast for some thirty-five years
after 1782.
Prince Edward Island has only a single Fraser name,
Mary Fraser Island in Malpeque Bay.
George Dawson: Inspiration for More than
Twenty-five Names
The most brilliant and versatile scientist in Canada a cen-
tury ago was arguably George Mercer Dawson. Best
known as a geologist, he was also an accomplished bota-
nist, zoologist, ethnologist, historian, geographer, lin-
guist, and yes, even a toponymist. Add to that explorer,
adventurer, diplomat, spellbinding speaker, and pastoral
poet, and you have the quintessential Victorian-era gen-
tleman and scholar - and a worthy inspiration for the
names of more than twenty-five Canadian mountain
peaks, inlets, islands, settlements, and animals.
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 281
The best known are Dawson Creek, B.C., and the
Klondike Gold Rush capital of Dawson City, Yukon,
which both commemorate Dawson's pioneering surveys
of those regions. In two instances, Dawson himself gave
his name to the features he encountered. Otherwise,
other people named places after him, an indication of the
esteem in which he was held, and of the nature of the
man whose physical deformities and boundless energies
earned him a number of admiring sobriquets, such as
'Little Giant' in a 1974 biography by Joyce Barkhouse -
'Little' because a childhood illness had left him head and
shoulders shorter than an average man, with a hunched
back and weak lungs. Despite these handicaps he never
shied from arduous explorations.
Dawson was born in Pictou, N.S., in 1849, the son of
Margaret Mercer and John William Dawson, a respected
geologist and provincial superintendent of education. In
1855, the family moved to Montreal, where George's
father became principal of McGill University and one of
the first Canadian scientists of international note.
George Dawson studied at McGill and then graduated
first in his class from the Royal School of Mines in Lon-
don. In 1873, he was appointed naturalist and botanist
with the British North America Boundary Commission,
and spent two years studying the natural resources
along the 49th parallel between Lake of the Woods and
the Rocky Mountains. An island in Lake of the Woods he
called Middle Island was renamed Dawson Island, possi-
bly by Andrew Lawson, who undertook an extensive
geological survey of the area in 1883. Nearby are Dawson
Channel and Dawson Bay.
In 1875, Dawson joined the Geological Survey of Can-
ada, established thirty-three years earlier to develop
mineral industries in Canada. He became the Survey's
assistant director in 1883 and director in 1895, a position
282 Naming Canada
he still held at the time of his early death in 1901, at
age 52.
Dawson's first assignment with the Survey was a
study of the geology of British Columbia. After complet-
ing extensive surveys of the southern part of the prov-
ince, and recommending a route for the Canadian Pacific
Railway, he went to the Queen Charlotte Islands in 1878,
principally to evaluate the coal deposits there. He also
took time to put together a report on the customs of the
Haida, and to compile comparative vocabularies of the
Haida and adjacent mainland tribes.
During his summer in the Queen Charlottes, Daw son
fixed the present written forms of thirty Haida place
names, and named another seventy-five features, usually
using simple descriptives - Bag Harbour, Slug Rock - but
also honouring noted scientists of the day, including
Charles Lyell, Thomas Huxley, and Charles Darwin. He
named Dawson Head, on a small island on the west side
of Graham Island (the largest of the islands), for himself,
and Rankine Islands, on the east side of Moresby Island,
for his brother and assistant, Rankine Dawson.
In the years following his survey, Dawson was com-
memorated in the Queen Charlottes by other scientists
and surveyors in the names of eight more features: Daw-
son Inlet and Dawson Harbour (1897), Dawson Islands
(1910), Mercer Lake (1914), Dawson Point and Dawson
Bay (1921), Mercer Point (1945), and Dawson Cove
(1948). In addition, a rare caribou on the islands was
identified in 1900 as Rangifer tarandus dawsoni by Ernest
Thompson Seton, the noted naturalist and nature writer.
In 1879, Dawson undertook an arduous reconnais-
sance from the mouth of the Skeena River, now the site of
Prince Rupert, B.C., inland through the mountains and
eventually to Edmonton. In the Peace River country near
the Alberta-B.C. border, he assigned the name Dawson's
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 283
Brook to a minor tributary of the Pouce Coupe River,
which flows into the Peace. According to Philip and
Helen Akrigg, in their British Columbia Place Names
(1997), Henry MacLeod, a CPR explorer who met Daw-
son in the area, may have changed the name to Dawson
Creek - the name adopted when a village was estab-
lished on the site in 1919. The settlement grew, particu-
larly after the railway arrived in 1931, and again after
1942, when it became Mile 0 on the Alaska Highway.
Incorporated as a city in 1958, Dawson Creek had a pop-
ulation of almost 11,100 in 1991.
Dawson's most remarkable overland journey was a
2,200-kilometre trip in the summer of 1887 on the Stikine,
Liard, Pelly, and Yukon rivers in the Yukon and northern
B.C. His carefully prepared map of the Yukon identified
the Klondike River as a possible source of gold. When
the gold rush brought thousands into the area ten years
later, the trader and prospector Joseph Ladue asked Will-
iam Ogilvie to survey a townsite at the river's mouth.
Ogilvie said he would if he could name the town for the
finest man he knew. On receiving news of the honour
from Ogilvie, the 'Little Giant' pencilled in Dawson City
on his map of the Yukon.
Ogilvie had honoured his estimable friend earlier, in
1888, with Mount Dawson, east of Lake Laberge. But
Dawson asked two years later to have it called Mount
Laurier after Wilfrid Laurier, then leader of the Liberal
Party of Canada. Ogilvie may also have named Dawson
Range, a chain of mountains southwest of the Yukon
River.
In the Selkirk Mountains, east of Revelstoke, B.C.,
there is another Dawson Range. Its highest point, at 3,390
metres, is Mount Dawson. It was named in 1888 by Will-
iam Green, a British alpinist and author of a book on the
Selkirks.
284 Naming Canada
Dawson Peaks are five summits of a mountain on the
west side of Teslin Lake, northeast of Atlin, B.C. The
name was noted by John Gwillim in his 1901 report on
the Atlin mining district, and may have been given by
Arthur St-Cyr, who surveyed the B.C.-Yukon boundary
in 1899 and 1900.
Joseph Tyrrell, Dawson's assistant on an 1881 Alberta
expedition, explored the area of Lake Winnipegosis in
1889, and named its northwesterly extremity Dawson
Bay. Dawson Bay is also a small fishing community on
the west side of the bay.
Tyrrell undertook several geological surveys in the
Chesterfield Inlet, Thelon and Dubawnt river areas of
present-day Nunavut. About 1893, he named Dawson
Inlet, on the west coast of Hudson Bay between Arviat
and Rankin Inlet.
A 1910 geological map of the Lake Nipigon area por-
trays several islands and bays with the names of sci-
entists, including Logan, Murchison, and Humboldt.
Dawson Island, in the centre of the lake, may have been
named by Donaldson Dowling, who surveyed the area
in 1894 with William Mclnnes, and on his own in 1898.
During a zoological survey of the Yukon River in the
1880s, Clinton Merriam, chief of the United States Bio-
logical Survey, encountered a new species of mouse and
named it Clethraonomys rutilus dawsoni. I agree with Bark-
house, who says in her biography that the 'Little Giant'
would be more pleased with this honour than any other,
given the image of the little animals scurrying freely
across the same wild lands he had explored and mapped.
Victoria: The Most Honoured Name in Canada
No individual has been more honoured than Queen Vic-
toria in the names of Canada's public buildings, streets,
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 285
populated places, and physical features. Her name
appears more than 300 times on our maps. This is not
surprising, given Victoria's long reign during the great-
est glory of the British Empire, from 1839 to 1901.
Every Canadian can think of at least one public build-
ing or street named for her. Among the notable public
institutions are Victoria University in Toronto, Royal Vic-
toria Hospital in Montreal, and Victoria General Hospital
in Halifax and in Winnipeg. Among Canada's 280 postal
divisions, more than half have at least one thoroughfare
identified by the name Victoria. Most were named to
honour the Queen, but one that was not is Thunder Bay's
Victoria Avenue, named for Victoria McVicar, a Lake-
head landowner in the late 1800s, noted for her dealings
with some celebrated builders of the West, among them
Louis Kiel, founder of Manitoba, and Sir William Van
Home, builder of the CPR.
The first honour for Princess Victoria may date from
1829. Pierre-Georges Roy wrote (1906) in a book on
Quebec's names that Pointe Victoria in the Saguenay had
been named that year for her. But a check of mid-nine-
teenth-century charts and maps has failed to reveal the
point so named.
In 1831, John Ross, while searching for the Northwest
Passage, entered a small bay on the east side of Boothia
Peninsula and named it Victoria Harbour for the thir-
teen-year-old princess. Subsequently, she formally
granted him permission to use her name for this remote
and minor water feature in Canada's Arctic. From then
on, explorers, map makers, and administrators assigned
the name Victoria to a multitude of lakes, points, islands,
and other geographical features all over the Canadian
map.
On the occasions of her golden (1887) and diamond
(1897) anniversaries, many more features were named
for her. And long after her death, Queen Peak in north-
286 Naming Canada
ern British Columbia was named for her in 1933 because
of its associations with nearby Victoria Peak and Consort
Peak.
The best-known place named for the British monarch
is the beautiful city at the southern tip of Vancouver
Island. In 1843, the Hudson's Bay Company resolved to
name the new fort overlooking Juan de Fuca Strait for
her. Briefly, Fort Albert was substituted, but a terse mes-
sage from London insisted on the use of Fort Victoria.
The townsite of Victoria was established at the fort in
1851-2, and in 1868 the growing city became the capital
of the colony of British Columbia, which was to become
a province three years later.
Alberta had a Victoria northeast of Edmonton where
George McDougall established a mission in 1862 and the
Hudson's Bay Company set up a post two years later. In
1887, to avoid confusion with other Victorias, this small
community was renamed Pakan, the nickname of a Cree
chief. The village of Empress, northeast of Medicine Hat,
was named in 1913 in commemoration of the Queen's
imperial title received from Parliament in 1876 when
Benjamin Disraeli was prime minister.
The Marquess of Lome and his wife, Princess Louise
(the Queen's daughter), originally wanted to give the
name Victoria to the capital of the North-West Territories
in 1882, but wisely chose the other half of her Latin title,
Regina.
Manitoba has both a rural municipality and a lake
named Victoria, as well as another municipality called
Victoria Beach.
In terms of geographical names, Ontario is Canada's
most 'Victorian' province. It has at least forty-seven dis-
tinct features with her name: one county, one township,
fourteen populated places, and thirty-one physical fea-
tures. In fact, one does not travel far in Ontario before
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 287
encountering Victoria Corners, Victoria Square, Victoria
Harbour, Victoria Springs, Victoria Lake, or just plain
Victoria.
Evidence of Victoria is less apparent in Quebec,
although the second-largest place in Canada with her
name is in that province. Victoriaville, a city of 38,200
people, was named for the Queen in 1861. There are as
well seven physical features in Quebec with the name
Victoria, including Grand lac Victoria at the head of the
Ottawa River south of Val d'Or.
The Atlantic provinces have twenty-nine places and
features with the name Victoria. Among these are a
county in each of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Vic-
toria is an attractive seaside village in Prince Edward
Island, where there are also places called Victoria Cross
and Victoria West. Newfoundland has a Victoria, a town
of 1,381; it lies on the west side of Conception Bay about
50 kilometres northwest of St. John's.
Our three northern territories have twenty-two fea-
tures with the name Victoria. Among them are Victoria
Island, Canada's second-largest island (after Baffin) in
the Arctic Archipelago, and Victoria and Albert Moun-
tains on Ellesmere Island.
Canadian Tributes for Four Queen Elizabeths
Four Queen Elizabeths have been honoured in Canada's
toponymy. Monarchists know there have been only three
Elizabeths who have been English sovereigns or consorts
since the beginning of British exploration on our Atlantic
coast in the early years of the sixteenth century. There is,
however, a Mount Queen Elizabeth named after a fourth
queen - but more about her later.
Queen Elizabeth Foreland was the first European
288 Naming Canada
name given in the Canadian Arctic. Explorer Martin Fro-
bisher set out in the summer of 1576 to sail through the
perceived Northwest Passage to Cathay, and after pass-
ing Greenland, sighted a 'highe lande' on 20 July, and
named it 'after hyr Majesties name ../
Frobisher then entered a body of water whose shores
to the right he judged belonged to Asia, and those to the
left he assumed was the 'firme' of America, and gave it
the name of 'Frobisher's Streytes/ After his third trip in
1578, he concluded he had only entered a dead-end bay,
now Frobisher Bay, far from the shores of Cathay.
The precise location of the foreland was not clearly
established in the published reports of Frobisher's trav-
els. In 1910, the Geographic Board decided it should be
placed on the southeast side of Loks Land, an island on
the north side of Frobisher Bay, jus t offshore from Baffin
Island. This decision was confirmed in 1957.
Noted American author and admiral Samuel Eliot
Morison, in The European Discovery of America, The North-
ern Voyages, AD 500-1600, published in 1971, suggested
that the geographical and navigational evidence re-
vealed that the foreland was the southeast cape of Reso-
lution Island, on the south side of Frobisher Bay and on
the north side of what Frobisher called 'Mistaken
Straites/ called a century later Hudson Strait for another
famous explorer. Although Adm. Morison did not ques-
tion the Canadian decision (if he even knew about it), his
conclusion as to the actual location of the foreland seems
more realistic. But after a hundred years on Canadian
maps, it would be surprising to find the name relocated
to Resolution Island.
Queen Elizabeth, who herself never travelled outside
England, was so taken with Frobisher's descriptions of
the new-found lands, she christened them Meta Incog-
nita, 'limits unknown/ In 1957, the Canadian Board on
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 289
Geographical Names gave the name Meta Incognita Pen-
insula to the 320-kilometre-long body of land separating
Hudson Strait from Frobisher Bay.
In 1580, Queen Elizabeth issued the fundamental prin-
ciple of the freedom of the seas, declaring that 'neither
can any title to the Ocean belong to any people or private
man, forasmuch as neither nature, nor regard of the pub-
lic use permitteth any possession thereof/ In commemo-
ration of this principle, British Columbia surveyor-
general George Aitken proposed in 1933 the naming of
Mount Queen Bess for her. The mountain, with a eleva-
tion of 3,290 metres, is north of the head of Bute Inlet,
245 kilometres northwest of Vancouver.
In the spring of 1939, King George VI and the highly
popular and gracious Queen Elizabeth (the Queen
Mother after 1952), undertook a very strenuous tour of
Canada and the United States by train, just a few months
before the outbreak of the Second World War. On 29 May,
just eleven days after arriving at Quebec City, they were
in Vancouver. A 52-hectare park in the centre of the city,
which had been set aside as a reserve in 1912, was dedi-
cated in honour of the queen. Queen Elizabeth Park,
with an arboretum, gardens, and sports fields, occupies
the highest point in central Vancouver.
The Royal couple returned to Central Canada, where,
on 7 June, as 100,000 turned out in the city of St.
Catharines to catch a glimpse of them, the Royal automo-
bile broke an electric beam on Canada's first four-lane
highway, and officially inaugurated the Queen Elizabeth
Way. Variously called The QEW and The Queen E, the
controlled-access highway was built between Toronto
and Burlington along the Middle Road between High-
way 2 and Dundas Street, across the land barrier called
Burlington Beach, and then along the Lake Ontario
shoreline to St. Catharines, where it climbed the Niagara
290 Naming Canada
Escarpment to Niagara Falls. It was completed to the
Peace Bridge in Fort Erie in 1956.
The most popular among the Queen Elizabeths in
terms of Canadian geographical features is the highly
esteemed Queen Elizabeth II. A month prior to her coro-
nation on 2 June 1953, the Geographic Board of Alberta
proposed giving the name Queen Elizabeth Ranges to
the towering mountains surrounding Jasper National
Park's picturesque Maligne Lake. The subsequent
announcement by the Canadian Board on Geographical
Names drew attention to the perfect picture of alpine
grandeur, with 'bold rocky forms, ice and snow gleam-
ing against a blue sky, dark forests and a sapphire blue
lake - a fitting memorial to the Queen.'
Patrick Baird, leader of the Arctic Institute's 1953 expe-
dition, proposed the name Mount Queen Elizabeth for a
spectacular peak overlooking the Inuit village of Pang-
nirtung, on the west side of Baffin Island's Cumberland
Peninsula. His proposals for Coronation Fiord and Coro-
nation Glacier were accepted for features on the east side
of the peninsula, but Governor General Vincent Massey
judged the mountain too insignificant as an honour for
the new monarch.
Geologist Hugh Bostock suggested Elizabeth Moun-
tains for the massive alpine region of Ellesmere and Axel
Heiberg islands, the most mountainous region east of the
Canadian Cordillera. Before the merits of Dr. Bostock's
suggestion could be reviewed, Graham Rowley, then
director of northern administration and lands in the
Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources,
proposed Queen Elizabeth Group for all the islands
north of the deep bathymetric trench from Lancaster
Sound in the east through Viscount Melville Sound to
M'Clure Strait on the west. The names board amended
the name to Queen Elizabeth Islands. The department's
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 291
deputy minister, Gordon Robertson, obtained Vincent
Massey's endorsement, and subsequently its minister,
Jean Lesage, announced the naming of the islands in the
House, stating that 'in the reign of her majesty Queen
Elizabeth II, we have every confidence we are on the
threshold of a new age, if not of discovery, then of devel-
opment of our Arctic lands and seas/ Geographer
Andrew Taylor described the islands in the Canadian Geo-
graphical Journal (June 1956) as 'isolated, naked and rug-
ged, set in a sea of ice, they form the northern bastion of
the continent/
One of the most attractive boulevards of the nation's
capital is the route from Parliament Hill to Dows Lake
along the west side of the historic Rideau Canal. Called
simply The Driveway when it was opened in 1904, it was
christened Queen Elizabeth Drive in 1967 during a visit
by the queen to Canada. However, The Driveway contin-
ues to be the preferred designation among local residents.
Montreal's largest hotel, with 1,143 rooms and suites,
is the stately Queen Elizabeth Hotel, opened in the
spring of 1958 by the Canadian National Railways, but
now operated by Canadian Pacific. Its designation in
French, Le Reine Elizabeth, often draws puzzled looks
from francophiles, until they are told the article repre-
sents the masculine noun 'hotel/
Queen Elizabeth II has been honoured in the names of
several schools and hospitals and other public facilities
across Canada. In 1959, a civic auditorium was built in
downtown Vancouver, and named Queen Elizabeth
Theatre in honour of the queen. Canada's first planetar-
ium was the Queen Elizabeth Planetarium, opened in
1962 in Edmonton. In 1978, Lac Cardinal Provincial Park
near Grimshaw in Alberta's Peace River country was
renamed Queen Elizabeth Park to commemorate a visit
by the queen.
292 Naming Canada
The queen's name is also recalled in the Queen Eliza-
beth II Coronation Medal and the Queen Elizabeth II Sil-
ver Jubilee Medal, struck in 1953 and 1977 as Canadian
awards for outstanding public service.
Now for the fourth queen. At the very south end of
Banff National Park, and on the Alberta-British Colum-
bia boundary, at a height of 2,850 metres, is Mount
Queen Elizabeth, and beside it is Mount King Albert.
These names, and those of several other figures promi-
nently associated with Allied victories during the First
World War, were proposed in 1917 by interprovincial
boundary commissioner Arthur O. Wheeler. Elisabeth
(1876-1965), a daughter of the Duke of Bavaria, became
the wife of Belgian Prince Albert in 1900. Albert became
king in 1909, and he and Elisabeth reigned as king and
queen of the Belgians until 1934, when Albert died after a
fall while rock climbing.
Fit for the Prince of Wales
A long-established practice in Canada since the early
1700s has been the naming of physical features, muse-
ums, theatres, and commercial establishments for the
current Prince of Wales. The name has also been given to
a National Hockey League conference (from 1974-5 to
1992-3), as well as a prestigious annual horse race in Fort
Erie, Ont.
The first Prince of Wales to be commemorated in Can-
ada was the son of King George I. Born in 1683, he later
ruled Britain for thirty-three years as King George II. The
name Prince of Wales's Fort was given, in 1719, to the
Hudson's Bay Company's stone-walled post at the
mouth of the Churchill River in northern Manitoba. In
1782, a French fleet under the command of Comte de
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 293
Laperouse blew up Fort Prince of Wales, as it came to be
known. In the 1930s, the fort was restored. Now a
national historic site, it is one of the main attractions in
the Churchill area.
Perhaps the most distinguished visitor to North Amer-
ica in 1860 was Prince Albert Edward, the eldest son of
Queen Victoria and great-great-grandfather of the
present Prince of Wales, Prince Charles. He received a
tumultuous welcome from the time he arrived in St.
John's, Nfld., on 24 July until his departure from Port-
land, Me., on 20 October. Even before his arrival, the
Prince of Wales had been recognized in at least five phys-
ical features named for him. Prince of Wales Island,
located 1,320 kilometres north of Yellowknife, is perhaps
the best known, but it was not the first island in the Arc-
tic to bear his name. When explorer and trader John Rae
crossed Melville Peninsula to the Gulf of Boothia in
1846-7, he named an island in the gulf's Committee Bay
for the then five-year-old prince. In 1926, the Geographic
Board of Canada renamed it Wales Island to avoid confu-
sion with the larger Prince of Wales Island to the west.
In 1850-1, Robert M'Clure wintered in a 275-kilometre-
long passage between Victoria Island and Banks Island.
He named it Prince of Wales Strait. Although it is now
considered part of the main channel of the Northwest Pas-
sage, its first recorded navigation was not until Henry
Larsen's RCMP patrol in 1944. In 1852, a high range on
Ellesmere Island was named Prince of Wales Mountains
after Prince Albert Edward. Finally, Prince of Wales Reach
was assigned in 1859 to a long, narrow passage of Jervis
Inlet, 90 kilometres northwest of Vancouver.
After visits to Halifax and Saint John in 1860, the
prince and his retinue set out for Fredericton. From Saint
John, they travelled 14 kilometres by train before board-
ing a steamer on the Kennebecasis River at Rothesay,
294 Naming Canada
newly named for one of the prince's titles, the Duke of
Rothesay.
The community of Prince of Wales, 18 kilometres
southwest of Saint John, may have been named about
this time. Its choice was perhaps reinforced by the settle-
ment of that area in the late 1780s by the Prince of Wales
American Regiment, Loyalist soldiers who were granted
land there after the American Revolution. The Prince of
Wales post office operated there from 1861 to 1950.
After visiting Charlottetown, where a college was
named in his honour, the prince went up the St.
Lawrence River to Quebec City and Montreal. On 29
August, he travelled on the Grand Trunk Railway to
Dickinson's Landing, 14 kilometres west of Cornwall,
Ont., then returned to Montreal that evening after shoot-
ing the Long Sault Rapids. That year, the Grand Trunk
named its Dickinson's Landing station Wales.
In 1860, a new road leading north from Orangeville,
Ont., was being cut through the woods. On completion
of the road, one of the workmen is said to have
exclaimed that it was fit for the Prince of Wales - to this
day the name remains in use. Streets were also named for
the Prince of Wales in St. John's and Montreal.
The second Prince of Wales to make a popular tour of
Canada was the eldest son of George V - the son who
became Edward VIII, the Duke of Windsor. While the
prince was visiting Ottawa in 1919, he endorsed a pro-
posal to name the falls at Hogs Back on the Rideau River
for him. At the same time, the provincial highway from
Ottawa to the St. Lawrence River at Johnstown, Ont.,
was officially named The Prince of Wales Highway. Nei-
ther name gained public recognition or acceptance.
Prince of Wales Falls remains the official designation on
maps and in publications about the Rideau River and the
Rideau Canal, but it is doubtful anyone outside official
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 295
naming and mapping offices is aware of it. Although
the name of the highway never caught on, that part of
Highway 16 between Carling Avenue and the former
city limits just south of Hog's Back Road acquired
the name Prince of Wales Drive - a name well known
in the national capital region. The Prince of Wales Hotel,
the largest all-wood structure in Western Canada, was
opened in 1927 in Waterton Lakes National Park.
The current Prince of Wales has been honoured by the
Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, a museum of
Aboriginal artifacts in Yellowknife which opened in
1979.
Vanier: Places Honouring an Illustrious Statesman
When the Royal Canadian Geographical Society moved
its headquarters from Wilbrod Street in Ottawa to
Me Arthur Avenue in Vanier in 1988, some Society mem-
bers wondered how far the Society had moved from the
nation's capital. Most were surprised to learn it was only
about half a kilometre to the east.
Located on the eastern bank of the Rideau River, 2
kilometres from its mouth, Vanier was originally settled
in the 1830s, when developer Charles Cummings built a
bridge across the river. The growing community on
Montreal Road was called Cummings Bridge for almost
half a century. In the 1870s, it was renamed Janeville,
either in honour of the wife of another settler of the
1830s, Donald Me Arthu r (hence Me Arthur Avenue), or
for the first child born in the community.
The name Eastview was given on 31 December 1908,
when the communities of Janeville, Clarkstown, and
Clandeboye - in what was then Gloucester Township -
were incorporated into a single village with an area of
296 Naming Canada
2.79 square kilometres. Eastview - the name was chosen
because there is a striking view of the Parliament Build-
ings from its eastern limits - became a town in 1912 and a
city in 1963. In 1950, Eastview applied to the Ontario
Municipal Board to annex adjacent lands in Gloucester
Township, but the board gave approval to Ottawa
instead. That left Eastview surrounded by Ottawa and
set the stage for Vanier's distinction as Canada's smallest
city, which it lost on 1 January 2001, when it was amal-
gamated with the city of Ottawa.
On 1 January 1969, Eastview was renamed Vanier,
primarily to honour the first French Canadian to be
appointed governor general, but also to give the city a
name with francophone character. Fifty-five per cent of
its population of 18,150 is francophone, its street names
are largely French, it is the headquarters of the Associa-
tion canadienne-frangaise de 1'Ontario and other franco-
phone groups, and its distinctly French-Canadian
atmosphere is widely known throughout the national
capital area.
Vanier's population had steadily declined over the
past thirty years as residents left behind their small,
quaint homes on narrow streets for larger houses and
lots in the suburbs. Down from 24,700 in 1963, Vanier
had the smallest population of the five cities in the
former Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton (the
others were Gloucester, Kanata, Ottawa, and Nepean),
before the region became the city of Ottawa on 1 January
2001.
More than once provincially appointed commissions
had urged amalgamation with Ottawa. Even in 1984, a
majority of Vanier's voters recommended joining the
capital city, though Vanier city council at the time
declined to act. Ottawa had provided Vanier with police
service and fire protection but, worried about increased
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 297
costs, resisted annexing its small neighbour, whose
median income was only 70 per cent of Ottawa's. More
recently, Vanier had displayed a renewed pride in itself,
and was determined in the 1990s to go its own way.
Georges Philias Vanier was one of the most admired
governors general to hold that office during Canada's
first century. Born in Montreal in 1888, he studied law at
Universite Laval before becoming a career soldier. He
was one of the founding officers of the 22nd Battalion of
the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and lost a leg during
a First World War battle in France. After the war, the bat-
talion became the Royal 22nd Regiment (the illustrious
Vandoos, an anglicization of vingt-deux), and Vanier
served as its commanding officer from 1926 to 1928. He
distinguished himself in Canadian diplomatic postings
in London, Geneva, and Paris, and recruited French
Canadians to serve in the Second World War. In 1959, he
was appointed governor general, the Queen's represen-
tative in Canada. In the third month of Canada's centen-
nial celebrations, the man who had become renowned
for his love of Canada, and for his deeply spiritual and
moral dimensions, died at Rideau Hall.
Ontario's Vanier has not been the only city in Canada
named for the governor general. In 1966, the Quebec City
suburb of Quebec-Ouest, with an area of 4.68 square
kilometres and a population of about 11,000, was
renamed Vanier. When the legislation to change East-
view's name was being considered in Ontario in 1968,
officials in Vanier, Que., argued that only one Canadian
city should have the name, but the wishes of the Ontario
city's residents prevailed.
In Quebec, four lakes, a township, a creek, a hill, and
an electoral division are named for Vanier. Forty towns
and cities in the province have a Vanier street, boulevard,
or avenue. Elsewhere in Canada, there are another
298 Naming Canada
twenty-six towns and cities with a street, avenue, or
drive named for the former governor general.
In the 1950s, what was thought to be a peninsula of
Bathurst Island in the Arctic Archipelago was found to
be three large islands and two smaller ones. Initially, the
names of three American vessels involved in establishing
early-warning radar stations across the High Arctic were
given by geographer Andrew Taylor to the large islands,
but they were rejected in 1960 by the Canadian Board on
Geographical Names. The board proposed naming the
islands after Vanier and his two predecessors, Vincent
Massey and Viscount Alexander of Tunis. In 1962, the
federal cabinet approved the proposals and stated the
choices would reaffirm Canadian sovereignty in the Arc-
tic. The form lie Vanier was adopted for the largest of the
three islands, at 970 square kilometres.
A year later, the small island between lie Vanier and
Massey Island was named lie Pauline for the popular
and gracious wife of the governor general. Vanier replied
that his wife was pleased indeed that the 'baby' island
was next to his. Knowing that there was a larger
unnamed island between Alexander and Massey islands,
he quipped that after 'forty-two years of marriage she
still prefers my company/
As Robert Speaight noted in his book, Vanier: Soldier,
Diplomat and Governor General (1970), Vanier also mused
whimsically about the appointment of an island man-
ager for lie Vanier, the design of an island flag, and the
publication of two newspapers, one in English and one
in French.
In 1967, the Whitehorse Lions Club proposed naming
a mountain overlooking the north end of Kusawa Lake,
55 kilometres west of Whitehorse, for the governor gen-
eral. A four-member team climbed the mountain on
9 July and erected a cairn at its summit. Some badges
from General Vanier's Royal 22nd uniform and some
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 299
photos of the late governor general were embedded in
the cairn by the regiment's Staff Sgt. Albert Belanger.
The Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical
Names endorsed the names three days after the climb.
Mount Vanier has an elevation of 1,845 metres and is
visible from the Alaska Highway, 20 kilometres to the
north.
Also in 1967, a Royal Air Force expedition from Britain
climbed a mountain near the north end of Ellesmere
Island and named it for Vanier. This second Mount Vanier
in Canada's north, approved in 1971, has an elevation of
2,417 metres, just 200 metres lower than nearby Barbeau
Peak, the highest mountain in the Canadian Arctic.
The name Vanier is recalled in many other ways in
Canada. The Vanier Institute of the Family was estab-
lished in 1964 by Georges and Pauline Vanier to promote
research into the family and study the complexity of
modern living and its effects on the integrity of family
life. Since I960, the Institute of Public Administration of
Canada has annually awarded the gold Vanier Medal to
an individual showing outstanding leadership in Cana-
dian public administration.
A community college in Saint-Laurent, Que., a western
suburb of Montreal, is named Vanier College. Vanier
Park in Vancouver is the site of the City of Vancouver
Archives, and the Centennial Museum and Planetarium.
Nationwide, there are many elementary and secondary
schools bearing his name. And each November since
1965, the best of Canada's university football teams com-
pete for the Vanier Cup.
Reserving Lofty Peaks for Our Prime Ministers
The year 1927 marked a high point in Canada's develop-
ment as an independent state among the world's sover-
300 Naming Canada
eign nations. Canada had reached its diamond jubilee of
Confederation - sixty years of growing independence
from the government of Great Britain. It was just the year
before that Canada had been allowed to designate its
own ambassadors to foreign countries, and to have its
governor general appointed by the Crown and not by the
British government. More independence was still to be
achieved during the remaining years of the twentieth
century - and some will say we still have too many
restraining ties to Britain - but 1927 was a year to cele-
brate the birth of a country.
Parties and celebrations were organized from coast to
coast. Parades with marching bands and decorated floats
were routed through cities, towns, and villages. Speeches
trumpeted the glorious flowering of this great land.
Ideas were solicited to recognize achievements attained.
Suggestions to name either a prominent geographical
feature for Prime Minister Mackenzie King, or impres-
sive features for all of Canada's ten prime ministers
who had served from 1867, were first proposed in May
1927 by the Modern History Club of Victoria High
School. George G. Aitken, the British Columbia mem-
ber of the Geographic Board of Canada, liked the sec-
ond idea, but pointed out that of the ten prime
ministers only four - Sir John Abbott, Sir John Thomp-
son, Sir Mackenzie Bowell, and Mr. King - had not
already been honoured with the naming of a significant
feature in the province. Mountains rising above Rogers
Pass had been named in 1887 for Sir John A. Mac-
donald, Alexander Mackenzie, and Sir Charles Tupper.
Mount Laurier in the Yukon had been named in 1890,
and another Mount Laurier, proposed in 1913 in north-
central British Columbia, was accepted in 1928. Mount
Sir Robert had been given in 1916 in the Coast Moun-
tains for Sir Robert Borden. But Aitken should have said
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 301
five out of the ten, because no major feature had been
named for Arthur Meighen.
In July 1927, the Geographic Board endorsed the idea
of naming peaks for the four prime ministers listed by
Aitken, and added the names of Sir Wilfrid Laurier and
Arthur Meighen. (By adding Laurier's name it appears
the board was currying favour with King, Laurier's suc-
cessor as Liberal leader.) The board reserved an area with
fifteen peaks exceeding 10,000 feet (3,050 metres) in the
southern part of the Cariboo Mountains, on the west side
of the Rocky Mountain Trench, some 90 kilometres west
of the Yellowhead Pass. It was named Premier Group,
'premier' being a common word used at the time for the
prime minister of each of the British dominions.
The highest peak at 11,750 feet (3,580 metres) had been
named Mount Titan in 1924 by American alpinists Allen
Carpe and Rollin Chamberlin, but the Geographic Board
substituted Mount Sir Wilfrid Laurier for it. Another at
11,250 feet (3,430 metres) near the head of the North
Thompson River had been named by Carpe for explorer
David Thompson, but it was renamed Mount Sir John
Thompson. Kiwa Peak, also at 11,250 feet, at the head of
Kiwa Creek, was changed to Mount Sir John Abbott.
Mount Sir Mackenzie Bowell, at 11,000 feet (3,353
metres), had been named Mount Welcome by Carpe.
The Geographic Board hesitated in 1927 to choose peaks
for Arthur Meighen and Mackenzie King, as both were
still living. It concluded it would be too difficult to select
peaks of relative elevation for the two political adversar-
ies. It was not until 1962, two years after the death of
Meighen and twelve after King's death, that the choosing
of peaks for the two prime ministers came up again. With
a height of 10,600 feet (3,230 metres), a reserved peak
was named Mount Mackenzie King by the newly
created Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical
302 Naming Canada
Names. In 1925, climber Don Munday had named it
Mount Hostility. Another peak, at 10,100 feet (3,078
metres), which an American climbing team had named
after Allen Carpe in 1949, was given the name Mount
Arthur Meighen. Mount Richard Bennett, with a height of
10,400 feet (3,170 metres), was named at the same time for
the Conservative prime minister who governed for five
years during the Great Depression. The Permanent Com-
mittee also renamed the group Premier Range.
In August 1927, British Columbia's acting premier, Dr.
John D. MacLean, requested the naming of a mountain in
the Premier Group for British prime minister Stanley
Baldwin, who was then on a tour of Canada. The feature
named Mount Challenger by Carpe was chosen by the
Geographic Board for Mount Stanley Baldwin. Its height
is 10,660 feet (3,249 metres).
In late 1927, Dr. MacLean proposed naming a moun-
tain in the group for John Oliver, premier of British
Columbia from 1918 to his death in August 1927. A
mountain, with the height of 10,500 feet (3,200 metres)
and visible from the Mount Robson and Tete Jaune
Canadian National sidings, was selected by the province,
and approved by the Geographic Board. Called Mount
Aspiration in 1925 by climber Don Munday, Mount John
Oliver is the farthest north of the peaks in the range
named for a first minister of a government, and the only
one named for a British Columbia premier.
The renaming of these mountains did not sit well with
the mountain-climbing community. The most distin-
guished among them in the 1920s, American alpinist Dr.
J. Monroe (Roy) Thorington, claimed the Geographic
Board was violating its own rules of priority publication
and local usage. The board's secretary, Robert Douglas,
acknowledged the valuable contributions of Carpe and
Chamberlin, but pointed out that they had not submitted
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 303
their names to the board for endorsement, so that the fea-
tures were considered officially unnamed. Other alpin-
ists regretted leaving significant features unnamed,
while lesser features lower than 10,000 feet in the Pre-
mier Range (e.g., Mount Milton, Penny Mountain) were
being named.
In 1963, Arthur Laing, then minister of Northern
Affairs and Natural Resources, suggested naming a peak
for former prime minister Louis St-Laurent, who had
retired from public life in 1958. Prime Minister Pearson
endorsed the proposal. A peak said to be 10,365 feet in
height, but later found to be only 9,900 feet (3,017
metres), was selected, and officially named Mount Louis
St-Laurent in October 1964.
Lester Pearson himself died in December 1972. An
unnamed peak rising to 10,500 feet (3,200 metres) was
chosen to honour the distinguished diplomat and head
of the government of Canada. Mount Lester Pearson was
proclaimed in September 1973.
The following year, the name of a premier from
another era was put forward by Barbara McNabb of
Edmonton. She suggested a peak be named for Sir Allan
Napier MacNab, who had been co-premier of Canada
from September 1854 to May 1856. Don R Pearson, the
British Columbia representative on the Permanent Com-
mittee, gave the name Mount Sir Allan MacNab to the
most southeasterly mountain of the range, which rises
only to 7,750 feet (2,360 metres).
On the death of John Diefenbaker in August 1979,
American mountain climber Richard Estock, who had
climbed in the Premier Range earlier that summer,
reported that other climbers were proposing to rename a
mountain, unofficially called Pyramid Peak in the alpine
literature, for him. Because a huge reservoir on the South
Saskatchewan River had been named Lake Diefenbaker
304 Naming Canada
in 1967 - but more likely because of strained relations
between the British Columbia people and the federal
Liberal government - Estock was informed by Don Pear-
son that there were no plans at that time to name a peak
in the Premier Range for Diefenbaker, and, by implica-
tion, for any of his successors.
Five peaks with elevations exceeding 10,000 feet (3,050
metres) remain unnamed in the Premier Range. Deci-
sions to name any them for Diefenbaker and any of his
successors - and even for provincial premiers - rest
entirely with the names authority of British Columbia.
Administrations of Canada's Prime Ministers
Sir John A. Macdonald (1815-1891)
Alexander Mackenzie (1822-1892)
Sir John J.C. Abbott (1821-1893)
Sir John S. Thompson (1845-1894)
Sir Mackenzie Bowell (1823-1917)
Sir Charles Tupper (1821-1915)
Sir Wilfrid Laurier (1841-1919)
Sir Robert L. Borden (1854-1937)
Arthur Meighen (1874-1960)
W.L. Mackenzie King (1874-1950)
Richard B. Bennett (1870-1947)
Louis S. St-Laurent (1882-1973)
John G. Diefenbaker (1895-1979)
Lester B. Pearson (1897-1972)
Pierre E. Trudeau (1919-2000)
C.Joseph Clark (1939-)
John N. Turner (1929-)
M. Brian Mulroney (1939-)
Kim Campbell (1947-)
Jean Chretien (1934-)
1867-73; 1878-91
1873-8
1891-2
1892-4
1894-6
1896
1896-1911
1911-20
1920-1; 1926
1921-6; 1926-30;
1935-48
1930-5
1948-57
1957-63
1963-8
1968-79; 1980-4
1979-80
1984
1984-94
1994
1994-
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 305
A Mountain for Michener, a Lake for Leger
During the first 100 years of Confederation, more than 100
geographic features - and countless more parks, schools,
bridges, and institutions - were named for the nineteen
governors general of Canada. Among those most
honoured in geographic names are the Earl of Dufferin
(eighteen) and the Marquess of Lome (fourteen). But the
story behind the naming of features for the twentieth and
twenty-first governors general, Roland Michener and
Jules Leger, is one of the more unusual ones.
Daniel Roland Michener, governor general from 1967
to 1974, was born 19 April 1900, in Lacombe, Alta., 130
kilometres south of Edmonton, and raised in Red Deer,
25 kilometres farther south. He had a distinguished
career as a parliamentarian, Speaker of the House of
Commons, and High Commissioner to India.
Until he died in 1991, Michener was an active senior
partner in the Toronto legal firm Lang, Michener,
Lawrence and Shaw, and he still followed the vigorous
exercise routine that made him one of the more memora-
ble advocates of Participaction, the organization that
promotes fitness to Canadians.
In 1977, a proposal was sent by the secretariat of the
Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical
Names to the Alberta Historic Sites Board (the body then
responsible for geographic naming in the province) to
name a feature for Michener. The board greeted the sug-
gestion with enthusiasm and proposed it for a prominent
mountain 185 kilometres west of Red Deer.
The mountain is located on the south side of Abraham
Lake along the upper reaches of the North Saskatchewan
River. Its magnificent profile was seldom seen by travel-
lers until the early 1970s, when the David Thompson
Highway was built, linking the town of Rocky Mountain
306 Naming Canada
House to the Icefields Parkway in Banff National Park.
The mountain has an elevation of 2,545 metres and rises
1,220 metres above the lake.
Before proceeding with the naming, the board con-
sulted the Stoney tribal council, as the surrounding terri-
tory is traditional Stoney land. Although the Stoney
know the feature as iyarhe kta uiha, meaning 'person who
dwells in the mountains/ they endorsed the idea of
Mount Michener as its official name.
The naming ceremony took place at Windy Point, on
the north side of the lake, on 26 August 1979. After unveil-
ing a plaque, then-premier Peter Lougheed observed, 'We
think this mountain ... will be a continual reminder to
Albertans and visitors to our province of the outstanding
contributions made by Mr. Michener to the life of this
country.'
On learning that Michener had been seen jogging
beside the highway before the ceremony, Lougheed
remarked that he almost expected the athletic 79-year-
old to cross the lake and climb to the summit of the
mountain. Perhaps that suggestion inspired Michener,
because nearly three years later he did climb to the top,
accompanied by two mountain guides.
Author Peter Stursberg, in The Last Viceroy (1989),
claimed that Michener set 'a record as the only person
after whom a mountain was named who ever reached its
peak/ If he had substituted 'octogenarian' for 'person/
his claim would likely be unassailable.
In 1976, Michener was among the guests of his succes-
sor, Jules Leger, during one of Queen Elizabeth's visits to
Canada. During an informal conversation, Leger asked
Michener if he knew of a tradition of naming features for
governors general during their terms of office, and he
understood Michener to say that, indeed, there had been
a feature named for him in the North. (In fact, what had
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 307
been named, earlier in 1976, was the Norah Willis
Michener Game Preserve on the Northwest Territories-
Yukon boundary - for Michener's accomplished wife.)
Acting on the knowledge that an Arctic island had
been named in 1962 for Georges Vanier, and assuming a
feature had been named for Michener while he was in
office, Government House contacted the Canadian Per-
manent Committee on Geographical Names to find out
when a feature would be named for Leger.
The response was that there was no such established
custom. In fact, the committee and most provincial
names boards had taken a fairly rigid stance in the 1970s
against naming features for living persons. Mount
Michener was among the last to be allowed.
When Leger learned in 1979 that a mountain had been
named for Michener, he asked when a feature would be
named for him, adding that he would prefer a lake in his
native Quebec. His suggestion was sent to the Commis-
sion de toponymie du Quebec, but because of the com-
mission's rigid adherence to its principle against naming
features for living persons, a decision was deferred.
Leger was born in 1913 in Saint-Anicet, on the south
shore of Lake St. Francis, a widening of the St. Lawrence
River 60 kilometres southwest of Montreal. After a bril-
liant diplomatic career, he served as under-secretary of
state before being appointed governor general in 1974.
Although a stroke impaired his speech and mobility,
Leger continued to perform the duties of his office with
the quiet dignity for which he had become widely
known over the years.
Leger died in Ottawa in November 1980. Two years
later, the commission gave the name Lac Jules-Leger to a
lake in north-central Quebec near the great divide sepa-
rating the headwaters of the St. Lawrence from the Hud-
son Bay drainage basin. At her home in Ottawa,
308 Naming Canada
Gabrielle Leger, the governor general's widow, was pre-
sented with a laminated map of the region surrounding
Lac Jules-Leger.
Laurier: Most-Commemorated Canadian
The individual most honoured by names on our maps is
Queen Victoria. However, the most-commemorated
Canadian is Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who has thirty-seven
geographical features named for him, to say nothing of
dozens of schools, parks, and streets from Newfound-
land to the Yukon.
Laurier - born in 1841 in Saint-Lin, Que., 35 kilometres
northwest of Montreal - was prime minister of Canada
from 1896 to 1911. During this time, the Geographic
Board was set up to coordinate naming in Canada.
Before he died in 1919, at a time when naming for living
persons was common, at least eleven communities and
features had been named for him. By 1928, the total was
up to twenty, and seventeen more were added in subse-
quent years.
Widely respected in both English and French Canada,
Laurier has been commemorated in the names of twelve
features in Quebec, seven in Ontario, six in British
Columbia, seven in the Prairie provinces, three in the
Territories, and two in the Atlantic provinces.
In 1896, geologist Robert Bell explored a vast area of
west-central Quebec surrounding Lac Matagami. South
of the lake he observed a mountain, the most conspicu-
ous feature of the landscape, and named it Mount Lau-
rier (officially it is now Mont Laurier) for the recently
elected prime minister.
From 1859 to 1902, the area of Laurierville, 65 kilome-
tres southwest of Quebec City, was part of the civil par-
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 309
ish of Sainte-Julie-de-Somerset. In 1902, the village was
incorporated and named for the prime minister. It now
has a population of 885.
When the Intercolonial Railway was built from Saint-
Hyacinthe to Levis, one of the stations on the line was
Saint-Flavien. Located 48 kilometres southwest of Levis,
the station was renamed Laurier when the Intercolonial
became part of she Canadian National Railway system.
A village that developed around the station was incorpo-
rated as Laurier-Station in 1951. Situated beside the busy
Trans-Canada Highway, it now has a population of 2,175.
The area of the present town of Mont-Laurier, 175 kilo-
metres northwest of Montreal, was settled in the late
1800s. The community of Rapide-a-1'Orignal had been
established at a stretch of rough waters on the Riviere du
Lievre. In 1909, Cure Genier, the parish priest, urged
Quebec's premier Lomer Gouin to designate the village
as the centre of the new judicial district being planned in
the area, and enlisted the support of the prime minister
in his cause. As a result, the village was incorporated as
Mont-Laurier. Elevated to town status in 1950, Mont-
Laurier is now an active commercial and tourist centre,
with a population of 7,865.
In 1934, the name Mont Laurier was proposed for a
mountain, 16 kilometres north of the community. Point-
ing out that another mountain near Lac Matagami was
already named that, the authorities substituted Mont Sir-
Wilfrid.
About 40 kilometres east of La Tuque (north of Trois-
Rivieres) is a township named Laurier. Within the town-
ship are Lac Laurier and Lac Wilfrid, both named in
1948. There is another Lac Laurier in Pare des Lauren-
tides, 35 kilometres south of Chicoutimi. In Pare de la
Verendrye northwest of the town of Mont-Laurier, there
is another Lac Laurier, so named in 1973.
310 Naming Canada
In New Brunswick, a post office (now closed), 35 kilo-
metres northeast of Chatham, was named Saint-Wilfred
in 1932 in honour of the former prime minister, although
his name was spelled incorrectly. In 1958, a small islet in
Lockeport Harbour, N.S., was named Laurier Rock.
Laurier Township in the Parry Sound District of
Ontario was named in 1878 when Laurier was minister
of inland revenue. This appears to be the earliest use of
his name for a feature. Within the township, Fox Lake
was renamed Laurier Lake in 1951.
At the point where the Spanish River flows into Lake
Huron, there are two small islands called Laurier Island
and Wilfrid Island. About 20 kilometres northeast of
Kenora is a small lake called Laurier Lake, which may
have been named at the turn of the century during a rail-
way survey. The lake is drained by Laurier Creek.
Among settlers in an area 45 kilometres southeast of
Dauphin, Man., were some Quebec farmers who were
admirers of Wilfrid Laurier. When Laurier was first
elected prime minister in 1896, the name Laurier was
substituted for Fosbery.
Laurier Island in Cree Lake in northern Saskatchewan
was named in 1938. Laurier Rural Municipality in the
area of Radville, Sask., 110 kilometres southeast of
Regina, was also named for Sir Wilfrid in 1909.
Alberta also has a Laurier Rural Municipality named
for Sir Wilfrid. The municipality, west of the town of St.
Paul and 130 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, was
named in 1914. There is a Laurier Lake 60 kilometres east
of St. Paul.
The earliest use of Sir Wilfrid's name in British Colum-
bia was in 1897, when J.D. Moodie of the North West
Mounted Police took an inspection trip from Edmonton
to the Yukon. He named Laurier Pass, which traverses
the Rocky Mountains 190 kilometres northwest of Fort
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 311
St. John. In 1913, the peak on the south side of the pass
was named Mount Laurier by RK. Vreeland of New
York. Although the Geographic Board was reluctant to
have another mountain named for the prime minister,
the name was adopted fifteen years later. At the same
time, Mount Lady Laurier, 25 kilometres west of the
pass, was named for his wife.
A year earlier, in 1927, a mountain rising to 3,580
metres in the Premier Range in British Columbia was
named Mount Sir Wilfrid Laurier. The range is directly
west of Valemount and 50 kilometres south of Mount
Robson, at 3,942 metres the highest peak in the Rockies.
Several Canadian prime ministers, and some other first
ministers of British Columbia and Great Britain, have
been honoured in the names of mountains in the Premier
Range rising above 3,050 metres (see also pp. 299-304).
Laurier Cove in Tuck Inlet north of Prince Rupert may
have been named in 1906 during a survey of the inlet, or
in 1910 when the prime minister visited the western ter-
minus of the Grand Trunk Pacific.
In 1888, surveyor William Ogilvie named a mountain
overlooking Lake Laberge, 25 kilometres north of White-
horse, for the indefatigable scientist and explorer George
M. Dawson. Two years later, Dr. Dawson insisted that the
name be changed from Mount Dawson to Mount Lau-
rier. Later, in 1936, Laurier Creek, which flows west into
Lake Laberge, was also named for Sir Wilfrid.
In Quebec, two-thirds of the current 89 postal divi-
sions have a thoroughfare named for Sir Wilfrid. Else-
where in Canada, one-quarter of the 201 postal divisions
have a street commemorating the former prime minister.
Prominent among them is Laurier Avenue in Ottawa,
where Sir Wilfrid owned a large house, now a museum.
Among schools, the most noteworthy is Wilfrid Lau-
rier University in Waterloo, Ont. Founded as Waterloo
312 Naming Canada
College, and named Waterloo Lutheran University in
1957, it was renamed for the former prime minister in
1973 when it became a provincially funded institution.
There are secondary schools in Ottawa, Scarborough,
London, and Calgary named for Sir Wilfrid, and primary
schools in Vancouver, Brampton, Ont, and Ste. Rose du
Lac, Man., among others named for him (although sev-
eral spell his first name Wilfred).
One of Ottawa's most distinctive landmarks, the Cha-
teau Laurier, was opened in June 1912 by Sir Wilfrid,
then leader of the opposition. Across the Ottawa River in
Hull, the Canadian Museum of Civilization is located in
Laurier Park.
Remembering John F. Kenned y
Where were you on that black day in 1963 when the
shots rang out in Dallas? For millions around the world,
the answer is seared in our memories. It was as if a fam-
ily member had been cut down at the height of his prom-
ise and, with him, the potential for a more caring society,
a greater sense of dignity for the individual.
I heard the heart-rending news on that fateful 22
November in my office on Booth Street in Ottawa, where
I was working as a toponymic researcher. I still recall
joining with my colleagues to share our anguish and,
later, tearfully comforting my wife, who, like myself, was
deeply distressed by the assassination of President John
F. Kennedy.
Almost immediately, President Lyndon B. Johnson
proclaimed the renaming of Idlewild Airport at New
York and Cape Canaveral Space Center and Cape Canav-
eral in Florida for the slain president. In 1973, the name
Cape Canaveral was restored for the prominent point
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 313
extending into the Atlantic Ocean, east of Orlando. The
John F. Kennedy Space Center remains the name of the
site for spacecraft launchings.
The earliest honour in Canada was Avenue du Presi-
dent-Kennedy, given on 9 January 1964 by the city of
Montreal for a new street south of McGill University,
between and parallel to Sherbrooke and Sainte-Cathe-
rine. The province of Quebec gave the name Route du
President-Kennedy to Highway 173 leading south from
Levis, on the St. Lawrence River opposite Quebec City, to
the Maine boundary.
In early 1964, the residents of Sevogle, N.B., 21 kilome-
tres northwest of Newcastle, asked the provincial gov-
ernment to change the name of their small community
to Mount Kennedy. A year later, the Northumberland
County Council and the Miramichi Historical Society
expressed their opposition. Nothing more was heard
about Sevogle's efforts to sanctify - as I characterize
commemorative community names like Mount Kennedy
- the late president in the Miramichi.
For several months in 1963 I had been working on
names proposed for mountain divisions for a new physi-
ographic map of British Columbia. Specifically, I had
been investigating the hierarchy of 'mountains/ 'ranges'
within mountains, and each named 'range' within
ranges.
In the northern Rockies, 160 kilometres west of Fort
Nelson, Mount Roosevelt and Churchill Peak were
found to be located in an unnamed range of the Muskwa
Ranges. I suggested Statesmen Range for it, with the fur-
ther suggestion that the unnamed peaks within it be
reserved for prominent world statesmen. A few days
after Kennedy's assassination I proposed commemorat-
ing him on one of the many unnamed peaks in the
'Statesmen Range/
314 Naming Canada
In early December 1963, the names of Statesmen Range
and Mount Kennedy were submitted to the British
Columbia representative on the Canadian Permanent
Committee on Geographical Names, with the added
suggestion that the selected peak might be visible from
the Alaska Highway, 40 kilometres north of Mount
Roosevelt.
The British Columbia government was not enthusias-
tic about either proposal, especially the idea of naming a
group of peaks Statesmen Range. It did not like the idea
of reserving peaks for noted international figures, prefer-
ring to have names evolve as the features were climbed
by mountaineers or explored by geologists. With some
reluctance, it selected a peak for Kennedy midway
between Mount Roosevelt and Churchill Peak.
Later, another peak 10 kilometres northwest of Mount
Roosevelt, and closer to the Alaska Highway, was
selected. Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson wanted to
make the announcement on the first anniversary of the
assassination.
However, at its annual meeting on 5 October 1964,
the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical
Names, with convincing arguments put forward by its
Alberta member (his province had never forgiven Mack-
enzie King for changing Castle Mountain to Mount
Eisenhower in 1948), rejected the naming of a peak for
Kennedy. It noted his position in world history could not
yet be properly assessed, and pointed out that since few
unnamed major peaks remained in Canada, they should
be reserved for worthy Canadians.
But Pearson, a great admirer of the late charismatic
president, was not to be dissuaded. Since the authority
for naming in the northern territories was then vested in
the federal government, the prime minister suggested a
peak in the Yukon in the St. Elias Mountains, near the
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 315
Alaska boundary. An unnamed peak near Mount Logan
was chosen, even though its elevation was found to be
only 3,776 metres, making it more than 2,175 metres
lower than Mount Logan, the highest point in Canada.
On 20 November Pearson made the official announce-
ment in the House of Commons.
Two weeks later, Walter Wood, then president of the
American Geographical Society and a veteran mountain
climber in Alaska and Yukon, informed the Canadian
government that the peak named for the president was
really only a part of the Mount Logan uplift. He sug-
gested selecting one of the highest unnamed peaks in
Canada, a distinct mountain 85 kilometres to the south-
east, but within 6 kilometres of Mount Alverstone and
Mount Hubbard on the United States-Canada boundary.
Bradford Washburn, then director of the Museum of
Science in Boston, who had crossed the St. Elias Moun-
tains in 1935 and photographed several lofty mountains
en route, also urged Canadian authorities to adopt
Wood's proposed peak. On 22 December, the new, higher
Mount Kennedy was approved.
In March 1965, Sen. Robert R Kennedy ascended the
peak with seven experienced mountain climbers, and
went on record as the first person to reach the 4,238-
metre summit. Writing in National Geographic (July 1965),
Senator Kennedy observed that his brother 'would be
pleased that this lonely, beautiful mountain in the Yukon
bears his name, and that in this way, at least, he has
joined the fraternity of those who live outdoors, battle
the elements, and climb mountains/ Five years later,
Robert Kennedy also was gunned down, another victim
of a violent decade for American public figures.
Half the presidents - twenty-one out of forty-two -
have been honoured in one or more of Canada's geo-
graphical names. John F. Kennedy was the last to receive
316 Naming Canada
such an honour. With a policy now in place to limit com-
memorating of non-Canadians, it is unlikely other presi-
dents will have their names assigned to geographical
features in Canada.
Smith: We Are Blessed with 439 of Them!
No other family name is more common in the English-
speaking world than Smith. In The Book of Smiths (1978),
Elsdon Smith estimated that there were 2.8 million peo-
ple with this surname in the world, with nearly 75,000 of
them in Canada. It is the number-one surname in the
United States, England, and Scotland, and is probably
the leading surname in Canada as well.
Smith and its cognates Smyth and Smythe represent
the most prominent family name among Canada's place
names. The length and breadth of the country is blessed
with 439 mountains, creeks, points, capes, rivers, and
populated places with this surname. Not counted are
such names as Arrowsmith, Goldsmith, or Sexsmith, but
ones like Allansmith River and Ladysmith are included
because Smith is a distinct component in the original
family name.
Ontario has the largest number of Smith names, with
ninety, followed by Newfoundland, with seventy-one;
British Columbia, with fifty-eight; and Saskatchewan,
with fifty-two. Prince Edward Island has no places or
features called Smith; in 1765, Samuel Holland named
Smith Point in Kings County for one of three officers he
had served with, but today the name is unknown locally.
Few of the geographical names with Smith in Canada
are particularly prominent, with perhaps only Smiths
Falls in Ontario and Fort Smith in the Northwest Territo-
ries known fairly widely.
Smiths Falls commemorates Maj. Thomas Smyth, who
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 317
was granted 400 acres (162 hectares) at the Rideau River
millsite in 1804, but subsequently lost his holdings in
1826 to Charles Jones, who sold out to Abel Ward. Ward,
who built the first mills, called the new settlement
Wardsville, but the settlers persisted in using Smyth's
Falls. Smith's Falls was incorporated as a village in 1854,
and as a town in 1882. Although it had long been spelled
locally without the apostrophe, a special act of the
Ontario legislature had to be passed in 1968 to allow the
town to issue debentures in the name of Smiths Falls. A
move in the 1930s to call it Rideau City - as a name more
suitable for a rising metropolis - failed.
Fort Smith, on the N.W.T.-Alberta border, was estab-
lished as a Hudson's Bay Company trading centre in
1874, and named for Sir Donald A. Smith, Lord Strath-
cona (1820-1914), a member of the first council of the
Northwest Territories and president of the Canadian
Pacific Railway. In 1910, Medicine Hat was almost
renamed Smithville in his honour. Strathcona in Alberta,
Mount Sir Donald in British Columbia, and Strathcona
Sound in Nunavut were also named for him.
Smithville in the Niagara Peninsula was first known as
Griffintown, but was renamed by Smith Griffin in the
early 1800s for his mother's family. Foxboro near
Belleville was called Smithville from about 1800 to about
1860, when the present name was adopted. A few miles
to the southwest, near Trenton, is the community of
Smithfield, where John Smith was a pioneer settler in
1793, and where Abijah Smith was the postmaster from
1860 to 1870.
On the west side of Peterborough is Smith Township,
named in 1821 likely for Samuel Smith, then a member of
the executive council of Upper Canada, who had been
administrator of the province from 1817 to 1820, when a
lieutenant-governor was not present. The township was
318 Naming Canada
probably not named after Sir David Smith (Smyth), sur-
veyor general of Upper Canada, 1792-1804, who had
returned to England in 1805.
The site of Port Hope, Ont., was settled in 1760 by
Peter Smith, and became known as Smith's Creek. Subse-
quently, the place was called Toronto, and then Port
Hope in 1817, and the stream was called Ganaraska
River, a name of Aboriginal origin.
The name Smith Sound, suggesting an arm of the sea,
occurs no fewer than four times in Canada. In 1616, Will-
iam Baffin named Smith Sound, one of the narrow chan-
nels between Ellesmere Island and Greenland, for Sir
Thomas Smith, an English merchant and promoter of
exploration into the Northwest Passage. The origins of
the same name in British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and
Newfoundland are not noted in the records of the Geo-
graphical Names Board of Canada.
The naming of geographical features in the 1950s and
1960s for soldiers killed during the Second World War
was widely practised by some provinces. Thus were
forty features in Canada named Smith or a variant of it.
Among Saskatchewan's fifty-two names with Smith are
no fewer than five called Smith Peninsula, and four of
them honour servicemen who lost their lives. Four fea-
tures called Smith Lake in Saskatchewan also commemo-
rate Second World War casualties. Smith-Jones Lake in
that province was named in 1955 for Fit. Sgt. Henry
Smith-Jones, who was killed in Europe in 1943; and
Smith-Windsor Islands in Lake Athabasca was given in
1953 for Grenville Smith-Windsor, who was killed in
North Africa in 1942.
Among British Columbia's fifty-eight names with
Smith is Mount Robert Smith in the Selkirk Mountains,
named for a land surveyor killed during the First World
War. Mount DeCosmos, west of Nanaimo on Vancouver
Commemorating Prominent Individuals 319
Island, commemorates William Alexander Smith, but he
was better known as Amor DeCosmos when he was pre-
mier of British Columbia and a federal MP in the 1870s.
Ladysmith occurs as a place name in Quebec, Ontario,
and British Columbia. They all commemorate the British
victory at Ladysmith, Natal, in 1900. The latter was
named in 1851 for the Spanish-born wife of the governor
of Natal, Sir Harry Smith, who had rescued her during
the sacking of Badajos in Spain in 1812, and later married
her (see also pp. 123-8).
Unusual names with Smith across the country include
Cougar Smith Creek in British Columbia, Canon Smith
Lake in Alberta, Smith Coulee in Saskatchewan, Smiths
Slough in Manitoba, Smiths Shanty Hill in Ontario, Lac
Mackey-Smith in Quebec, Billy Smith Rips in New Brun-
swick, Neddie Smiths Pond in Nova Scotia, and Hick
Smith Stillwater in Newfoundland.
From Smiths Falls in Ontario to Fort Smith in the
Northwest Territories, it is quite evident that the Smiths
have had a lasting and distinctive impact on Canada's
history.
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Index
Abbotsford, B.C., 75
Abbott, Mount Sir John, B.C.,
300-1
Abel, Mount, B.C., 133
aboiteau, 155
aboriginal names, 181-3
Acadia, 16, 219-22
Acadia, Alta., 222
Acadian Peninsula, N.B., 222
Acadia University, N.S., 222
Acadia Valley, Alta., 222
Acadie-Bathurst, N.B., 39, 222
Acadieville, N.B., 222
acronyms, 67-9
Adam River, B.C., 167
Admiralty Islands, Ont., 258
Ainleyville, Ont., 96
Air Line Junction, Ont., 142
Ajax, Ont., 58
Aklavik, Y.T., 55
Akrigg, Philip and Helen, 65,
100, 282
Alameda, Sask., 117
Alberni Inlet, B.C., 113
Alberta Historic Sites Board,
88-9,254, 305
Albertan, 50
Alberta River, 85
Albertland, 16
Albertoria, 16
Albionara, 16
Albona, 16
Aldrich, Cape, Nun., 23-4
Alexander Island, Nun., 298
Alexandria, B.C., 252
Alexandrina, 16
Algommequins, Riviere des,
Ont., Que., 230
Allan, Mount, Alta., 254
Alma, N.B., 119
Alma, N.S., 119
Alma, P.E.I., 119
Alma, Que., 119
Alma Parish, N.B., 119
Almonte, Ont., 114-15
Alsask, Sask., 68
Altario, Alta., 68
Ambitious City, 44
Amherst Island, Ont., 257
Amherstonian, 51
Amiens, Lac, Que., 129
Amoureux, Baie des, Que., 167
Amour, Lac de 1', Que., 167
Amours, Ruisseau d', Que., 167
322 Index
Amsterdam, Sask., 97
Anderson Siding, N.B., 130
Anian, Straits of, 111
Angelo Peak, B.C., 158
Annapolis Valley-Hants, N.S., 40
Anse aux Basques, Que., 110
Anse aux Morts, Nfld., 167
Anse du Chafaud aux Basques,
Que., 110
Antigonish, N.S., 33,55,181
Anzac, Alta., 101
Anzac, B.C., 100-1
Anzac Lake, B.C., 101
Anzac River, B.C., 100
Apex, Nun., 184
Apex Hill, Nun., 184
Apohaqui, N.B., 55
Apohaqui Island, Ont., 260
apostrophe, 69, 316
Aquaforte, Nfld., 55,64,104
Aquilonia, 16
Arabella Island, Ont., 260
Arcs, Lac des, Alta., 253
Armentieres Channel, B.C., 130
Armentieres, Lac, Que., 129
Armentieres Rock, B.C., 130
Arras, Lac, Que., 129
Artois, Canton, Que., 130
Arviat, Nun., 186
Arvida, Que., 68, 75
Aspasia Island, Ont., 258
Aspiration, Mount, B.C., 302
Assiniboia, Sask., 36
Assiniboia, District of, N.W.T.,
36,189
Assiniboine River, Man., Sask.,
36
Athabasca, Alta., 40,60-1,182
Athabasca, District of, N.W.T., 60
Athabasca Falls, Alta., 61
Athabasca Glacier, Alta., 61
Athabasca, Lake, Alta., Sask.,
60-1,248,267
Athabasca, Mount, Alta., 60-1
Athabasca Pass, Alta., B.C., 267-8
Athabasca River, Alta., 60-1,248,
267
Athabaska, Alta., 61
Athabaska Airways, 61
Athens, Ont., 95
Athens of the Dominion, 45
Aulavik National Park, N.W.T.,
32
Ault Island, Ont., 263
Aultsville, Ont., 260-2, 263
Aussie Creek, Y.T., 102
Australia Creek, Y.T., 101
Australia Gulch, Y.T., 102
Australia Hill, Y.T., 102
Auyuittuq National Park, Nun.,
33,182
Avondale, Ont., 262
Avonmore, Ont., 262
Avon River, Ont., 156
Axeman Island, Ont., 258
Ayer's Cliff, Que, 72
Ayer's-Cliffois, 50
Azazel, Mount, B.C., 171
Bacalaos, Tierra de, Nfld., 108
Baccalieu Island, Nfld., 104,108
Baccaro Point, N.S., 108
Backside of Hell Cove, Nfld., 168
Baddeck, N.S., 183
Baddeck Lakes, N.S., 175
Baden, Man., 125
Baden-Powell Lake, Ont., 125
Baden Township, Ont., 125
Bagdad, N.B., 90,98
Bag Harbour, B.C., 282
Baie des Ha! Ha!, Que., 179-80
Baie du Ha! Ha!, Que., 178
Index 323
Bale du Havre aux Basques,
Que., 110
Bakeapple Bay, Nfld., 163
Balaclava, Ont., 119
Balaklava Island, B.C., 119
Baldwin, Mount Stanley, B.C.,
302
Baldy Mountain, Man., 26
Ballarat Creek, Y.T., 101
Banff, Alta., 28-9
Banffite, 51
Banff National Park, Alta., 29
Banks of Padou Bogan, N.B., 154
Banquo, Mount, B.C., 159
barachois, 153
Barachois-de-Malbaie, Que., Ill,
154
Barachois Outside Pond, Nfld.,
154
Barachoix, Nfld., 154
Barasway Cove, Nfld., 154
Barasway de Cerf, Nfld., 154
Barasway Harbour, Nfld., 154
Barbeau Peak, Nun., 27,299
Barkley, Capt. Charles W., 111-1 2
Barkham, Selma, 106-9
Barrie-ite, 51
Barrio Deadwater, N.S., 153
Barry Head, P.E.I., 64
Barry's Bay, Ont., 66-7, 71
Basque, lie aux, Que., 110
Basque names, 106-11
Basques, Anse aux, Que., 110
Bastard and South Burgess
Township, Ont., 86
Bastard Township, Ont., 86
Bat-le-Diable, Lac, Que., 169
Batawa, Ont., 68
Bathurstian, 51
Bathurst Island, Ont., 258
Bay d'Espoir, Nfld., 54
bay men, 51
Bay of Fundy, N.B., N.S., 31
Bay of Gods Mercy, Nun., 168
Bayollais, 50
Beacon Hill Park, B.C., 176
Beacon Mountain, Nun., 176
Bear River, N.S., 64
Beatty, Mount, Alta., 255
Beauport-Montmorency-Cote-
de-Beauport-Ile d'Orleans,
Que., 40
Beaurivage Island, Ont., 260
Beausejour, N.B., 41
Beausejour-Petitcodiac, N.B., 41
Beaverbrook, Lord, 189
Beaver Brook, N.B., 189
Beaver Island, Man., 101
Bedford, N.S., 75
Beelzebub, Mount, B.C., 171
Belabourer Island, Ont., 258
Belfast of America, 45
Belial, Mount, B.C., 171
Bell, Robert, 150,308
Belleoram Barasway, Nfld., 154
Belles Amours, Havre des, Que.,
167
Bellevillian, 51
Bellevonian, 51
Bellevue, Alta., 74
Bellin (Payne), Que., 185
Bell Lakes, N.S., 74
Bell's Corners, Ont., 157
Belly River, Alta., 84-6
Bennett Lake, B.C., 101
Bennett Lake, Ont., 200
Bennett, Mount Richard, B.C.,
302
Bennington Glacier, B.C., 275
Bennington Peak, B.C., 275
Benvolio, Mount, B.C., 158
Berlin, Ont., 78-9,96-7
324 Index
Berry Head, P.E.I., 64
Berton, Pierre, 48
Bethany, Ont., 94
Bethel, Ont., 94
Bethesda, Ont., 94
Bethleem, Que., 94
Biencourt, Que., 163
Bienfait, Sask., 55
Biggar, Sask., 45
Big Smoke, 46
Big Tracadie Gully, N.B., 152
Bill Fraser Creek, B.C., 276
Bill Fraser Lake, B.C., 276
Billy Smiths Rips, N.B., 319
Black Georges Savannah, N.S.,
155
Black Hummock Gully, Nfld.,
153
Black Prince, Mount, Alta., 255
Black Rattle Stillwater, N.S., 153
Blackstrap Coulee, Sask., 151
Blair, Ont., 76
Blairmore, Alta., 73
Blakiston, Thomas, 84, 87,264
Blind Mugford Tickle, Nfld., 153
Bliss, Michael, 47
Blitzen, Mount, N.B., 161
Bloodletter Island, Ont., 258
blow-me-down, 155
Blue Heaven Lake, Ont., 134
Bocas de Winthuysen, B.C., 113
Bodega y Quadra, Juan Francisco
de la, 112,295
bogan, 154
Bogart, Mount, Alta., 255
Bonanza Creek, Y.T., 37,118,
242
Bonaventure-Gaspe-Iles-de-la-
Madeleine-Pabok, Que., 43
Bonavista, Nfld., 33,103
Bonavista, Cape, Nfld., 33,105
Bonavista-Trinity-Conception,
Nfld., 33,44
Bonavista-Twillingate, Nfld., 33,
38
Bonbons, Lac des, Que., 163
Booth Island, Nun., 232
Borden, P.E.I., 271
Borden, Port, P.E.I., 270
Borden-Carleton, P.E.I., 271
Borealia, 16
Bosporus, Alta., 30
Bostock, Hugh S., 26,249
Bostwick Island, Ont., 258
Botha, Alta., 126
Botha River, Alta., 126
Botha Township, Ont., 127
Bouchette, Joseph, 177
Bouquet Point, P.E.I., 167
Bourassa, Que., 41
Bourgeau, Eugene, 254
Bow and Arrow Shoal, Nfld., 166
Bow City, Alta., 143
Bowell, Mount Sir Mackenzie,
B.C., 300-1
Bowers Lake, Ont., 71
Bow Hills, Alta., 253
Bowmanville, Ont., 147
Bow River, Alta., 84-6, 253
Box Canyon, B.C., 167
Bracebridge, Ont., 147
Brampton, Ont., 45
brandies, 155
Brandonite, 51
Brandon-Souris, Man., 42
Brandy Brook, N.B., 163
Bras d'Or-Cape Breton, N.S., 40
Bras d'Or Lake, N.S., 103,106
Breadalbane, P.E.I., 55
Breton, Cape, N.S., 32
Bretons, Tierra de los, N.S., 220
Britannica, 16
Index 325
Broadway North, 46
Brock, Sask., 100
Brock Group, Ont., 259
Brock Island, Ont., 258
Brock, Mount, Alta., 255
Brockville, Ont., 50
Brockvillian, 50
Brome-Missisquoi, Que., 40
Bronson Island, Nun., 232
Broughton Archipelago, B.C., 245
Bruat, Mount, Nun., 122
Brudenell Township, Ont., 121
Bruges, Lac, Que., 129
Brussels, Ont., 96
Bruxelles, Man., 96
Buade, Isle, Ont., 257
Buies, Arthur, 177
Buller Township, Ont., 124
Bunbury, P.E.I., 76
Burbridge, Que., 130
Burgeo, Nfld., 103,105
Burgeo Islands, Nfld., 105
Burin Peninsula, Nfld., 110
Burk's Falls, Ont., 71
Burns Lake, B.C., 174
Burstall, Mount, Alta., 255
Burton City, B.C., 143
Bury Head, P.E.I., 64
Bute Inlet, B.C., 244
butte, 149-50
Buttermilk Creek, N.B., 122
Byers Bay, Ont., 67
Bytown, Ont., 45,229-30
Caamano Sound, B.C., 113
Cabot, John, 21,56,103-4
Cabotia, 16
Cadomin, Alta., 69
Caesarea, Ont., 55, 94
Cain, Mount, B.C., 133
Cairo, Ont., 92,98
Cairo Township, Ont., 92
Caledon, Ont., 58
Caledon Village, Ont., 58
Calgarian, 49,51
Calgary, Alta., 46,53, 74,141, 253
Calgary Southeast, Alta., 43
Calgary Southwest, Alta., 43
Calico City, Y.T., 144
California, Ont., 116
Cambrai, Canton, Que., 129
Cambrai, Mont, Que., 129
Cambridge, Ont., 76
Cambridge Bay, Nun., 187
Camel Chute, Ont., 66
Camelot Island, Ont., 258
Campbell's Bay, Que., 70
Canaan, N.S., 93
Canaan, Ont., 92
Canaan Rapids, N.B., 93
Canaan River, N.B., 93
Canaan Road, N.B., 93
Canaan Station, N.B., 93
Canada, 13-17,19
Canada Bay, Austr., 99,136
Canada Day, 17-19
Canada East, 16
Canada Hill, Scot., 135
Canada Walk, Eng., 135
Canada Way, Eng., 135-6
Canada West, 16
Canadensia, 16
Canadian Bay, Austr., 99
Canadian Board on Geographical
Names, 226,262,288-9,290,
298
Canadian Permanent Commit-
tee on Geographical Names,
25,87,161,249,257,298-9,301,
305, 307
Canarican, Lake, Ont., 263
Canmore, Alta., 256
326 Index
Canon Smith Lake, Alta., 319
Canora, Sask., 59,69
Canrobert, Que., 121
Canrobert Hills, Nun., 122
Canso, N.S., 202-6
Canso, Cape, N.S., 205
Canso Causeway, N.S., 205-6
Canso, Gut of, N.S., 205
Canso Harbour, N.S., 203
Canso, Strait of, N.S., 205
Canusa, Lake, Ont., 263
Canyon City, Y.T., 144
Cap Degrat, Nfld., 110
Cap d'Esperance, Nfld., 21
Cap d'Espoir, Nfld., 21
Cape Aldrich, Nun., 23-4
Cape Bay, Nfld., 22
Cape Bonavista, Nfld., 33,105
Cape Breton, N.S., 32
Cape Breton Highlands, N.S., 28,
40
Cape Breton Highlands-Canso,
N.S., 40
Cape Breton Highlands National
Park, N.S., 31
Cape Breton Island, N.S., 32
Cape Bretoners, 52
Cape Canso, N.S., 205
Cape Chapeau Rouge, Nfld., 105
Cape Columbia, Nun., 23-4
Cape Fogo, Nfld., 105
Cape Fraser, Nun, 276
Cape Freels, Nfld., 105
Cape Mackenzie, N.W.T., 245
Cape Pine, Nfld., 105
Cape Race, Nfld., 104
Cape Ray, Nfld., 105,108
Capers, 52
Cape Spear, Nfld., 21,104
Cape Split, N.S., 31
Cape St. Francis, Nfld., 104
Cape St. George, Nfld., 106
Cape St. Mary's, Nfld., 105
Cap-Pele, N.B., 222
Capreol, Ont., 147
Capulet Creek, B.C., 158
Caraquet, N.B., 222
Card Lake, N.S., 167
Cardigan Rocks, B.C., 121
Cardigan Strait, Nun., 121
Careless, J.M.S., 47,235
Cariboo-Chilcotin, B.C., 40,43
Cariboo City, B.C., 143
Caribou City, Y.T., 144
Cario, Ont., 92
Carleton, Sir Guy, 56,269-74
Carleton, Thomas, 28,134,272
Carleton, N.B., 56,272
Carleton, N.S., 271
Carleton, Que., 272
Carleton County, N.B., 272
Carleton County, Ont., 273
Carleton Cove, P.E.I., 270
Carleton Island, N.Y., 259, 273
Carleton Lake, N.S., 271
Carleton, Mont, Que, 272
Carleton, Mount, N.B., 28, 272
Carleton Parish, N.B., 272
Carleton Place, Ont., 64, 273
Carleton Siding, P.E.I., 270
Carleton Township, Que., 272
Carleton University, Ont., 273
Carleton Village, N.S., 271
Carlton Cove, P.E.I., 270
Carlton Point, P.E.I., 270
Carronbrook, Ont., 97
Carrot River, Sask., 163
Cartier, Jacques, 13-15,31,39,
187-8, 223-4
Castle Butte, Sask., 149
Castle Junction, Alta., 89
Castle Mountain, Alta., 87-9,314
Index 327
Catalina, Nfld., 105
Cathcart, Ont., 121
Caubvick, Mount, Nfld., 27
Cawdor Mountain, Nun., 159
cay, 155
Cayen, 50
Cedoux, Sask., 64
Celestial City, 44
Celista, B.C., 65
Celista Creek, 65
Celista Mountain, 65
Central Nova, N.S., 40
Centre East Pubnico, N.S., 34
Centre of the Universe, 46
Centre Woodlands Island, Ont.,
263
Chafaud aux Basques, Anse du,
Que., 110
Chaleur, N.B., 39
Chambly, Que., 41
Champagne, Pointe a, Que., 163
Champlain, Samuel de, 56,64,
110,188, 205, 220, 224, 230-1,
234
Channel-Port aux Basques,
Nfld., 108
Chapeau Rouge, Cape, Nfld., 105
Chapleau, Que., 39
Charite, L., Que., 226
Charlesbourg, Que., 41
Charles Dickens Point, Nun., 163
Charlton, Ont., 146
Charlevoix, Fr. Pierre, 14, 22, 256
Charlevoix, Que., 41
Charlottetown, P.E.I., 44
Charlottetowner, 51
Chateau Laurier, Ont., 312
Chatham, N.B., 59,73,188
Chatham, Ont., 59
Chebucto, N.S., 181
Chedabucto Bay, N.S., 203-4
Chester, Mount, Alta., 255
Chesterfield Inlet, Nun., 187
Cheticamp, N.S., 222
Chicago of the Canadian West, 45
Chicoutimi, Que., 40,183
Chilliwack, B.C., 61
Chinamans Peak, Alta., 81,256
Chin Coulee, Alta., 151
Chinguacousy Township, Ont.,
182
Chocolate Cove, N.B., 167
Christmas Bay, Y.T., 162
Christmas Creek, Alta., 162
Christmas Creek, B.C., 162
Christmas Creek, Y.T., 162
Christmas Head, Nfld, 162
Christmas Hill, B.C., 162
Christmas Island, N.S., 163
Christmas Island, Ont., 162
Christmas Lake, Man., 162
Christmas names, 160-3
Christmas Point, B.C., 162
Christmas Pond, Nfld., 163
Churchill, Sir Winston, 57,79-80,
123
Churchill, P.E.I., 123
Churchill Falls, Nfld., 57
Churchill Peak, B.C., 314
Churchill River, Man., Sask., 57
Churchill River, Nfld., 57, 77
Circle City, B.C., 143
cities, 140-4
City of Bridges, 44,193
City of Churches, 46
City that Works, 46
Claies, Lac aux, Ont., 235-6
Clandeboye, Ont., 295
Clarington. Ont., 74,147-8
Clarke Township, Ont., 74
Clarkstown, Ont., 295
Closeleigh, Y.T., 37
328 Index
Coaticook, Que., 182
Cobalt, Ont., 35
Cocagne River, N.B., 132
Cochrane, Alta., 59
Cochrane, Ont., 59
Cockburn Island, Ont., 259
Codroy, Nfld., 106
Coffee Creek, Ont., 163
Coleman, Alta., 74
Colenso, Ont., 124
Colenso Township, Ont., 124
Colonia, 16
Colpoy's Bay, Ont., 71, 72
Columbia, Cape, Nun., 23-^1
Columbia, Mount, Alta., 26
Columbia River, B.C., 26,251,275
Colviletown, B.C., 208
Comeauville, N.S., 222
Comet, Mount, N.B., 161
Commission de toponymie du
Quebec, 27,49, 63,180,185,
223,226,307
Committee Punch Bowl, Alta.,
B.C., 163,267
Commonwealth Lake, Man., 101
Conception Bay, Nfld., 104
Conrad City, Y.T., 144
Conran Island, Ont., 259
Consort Peak, B.C., 286
Cook, Capt. James, 25, 111, 248
Cooksville, Ont., 237
Coolan Deadwater, N.S., 153
Cootes Paradise, Ont., 132
Copenhagen, Ont., 97
Coppermine, Nun., 187
Coral Harbour, Nun., 187
Cordova Bay, B.C., 113
Cordova Mines, Ont., 117
Corkum Stillwater, N.S., 153
Cormorandiere Rocks, N.S., 110
Cornwall Canal, Ont., 261
Cornwallite, 51
Coronation Fiord, Nun., 290
Coronation Glacier, Nun., 290
Corte-Real, Caspar, 33,103-4,
105
Corte-Real, Miguel, 104
Cortes Island, B.C., 113
Cosmos Lake, N.W.T., 176
Cote-Saint-Luc, Que., 140
Couchiching, Lake, Ont., 234
Cougar Smith Creek, B.C., 319
coulee, 150-2
Courcelette, Que., 129
Courcelette, Lac, Que., 129
Courtrai, Lac, Que., 129
Cowdung Pass, Alta., B.C., 267
Cowtown, 46
Cradle of Confederation, 44
Cramahe Township, Ont., 55
Cranberry Point, P.E.I., 163
Creighton, Sask., 239
Crimean War names, 118-23
Cross Lake, Ont., 83
Crossroads, P.E.I., 76
Crotch Lake, Ont., 83-4
Crowfoot, Alta., 43
Crowsnest Mountain, Alta., 264
Crowsnest Pass, Alta., B.C., 73,
264-5,268
Crystal City, Man., 141,143
Cullite Cove, B.C., 82
Cumberland, Ont., 77, 232,273
Cummings Bridge, Ont., 295
Cupers Cove, Nfld., 165,217
Cupid Island, Ont., 165
Cupid, Mount, N.B., 161
Cupids, Nfld., 65,216-19
Cupids Cove, Nfld., 165,217-18
Cupids Rock, Ont., 165
Currie, Mount, Alta., 255
Cypress Hills, Alta., Sask., 26,151
Index 329
Cypress Hills-Grasslands, Sask
v
42
Cyrus Field Bay, Nun., 175
Dagon, Mount, B.C., 171
Dain City, Ont., 142
Dalhousie, N.B., 53, 92
Dalhousie Township, Ont., 53
Dalhousie University, N.S., 53
Damascus, N.B., 92
Damascus, Ont., 92,98
Dancer, Mount, N.B., 161
Dancing Hill, Man., 168
Dardenelles, Alta., 30
Daredevil Hill, Man., 170
Darlington Township, Ont., 74
Dartmouth, N.S., 75
Darwin Point, B.C., 282
Dasher, Mount, N.B., 161
Dauphin-Swan River, Man., 42
Davis Corners, Ont., 100
Dawson, George M., 254, 255-6,
265, 280-4
Dawson Bay, B.C., 282
Dawson Bay, Man., 282
Dawson Bay, Ont., 281
Dawson Channel, Ont., 281
Dawson City, B.C., 143
Dawson City, Y.T., 38, 58,144,
241, 281,283
Dawson Cove, B.C., 282
Dawson Creek, B.C., 58, 281,
282-3
Dawson Harbour, B.C., 282
Dawson Head, B.C., 282
Dawson Inlet, B.C., 284
Dawson Inlet, Nun., 284
Dawson Island, Ont., 281,284
Dawson Islands, B.C., 282
Dawson, Mount, B.C., 283
Dawson, Mount, Y.T., 283,311
Dawson Peaks, B.C., 284
Dawson Point, B.C., 282
Dawson Range, B.C., 283
Dawson Range, Y.T., 283
Dead Man's Flat, Alta., 256
dead water, 153
Deathdealer Island, Ont., 258
DeCosmos, Mount, B.C., 318-19
Delhi, Ont., 98
Demarcation Point, Y.T., 23
De Monts, Sieur, 56, 64, 220
Denain, Canton, Que., 129
Denison Township, Ont., 77
Denys, Nicolas, 107,152,188,205
De Rottenburg Island, Ont., 259
DesBarres, Joseph F.W., 205
Desceliers, Pierre, 15, 224
Des Joachims, Que., 55
Devil Door Rapids, Ont., 170
Devilhole Creek, Y.T., 172
Devil Island, Nun., 171
Devil names, 168-72
Devil Pike Brook, N.B., 169
Devil Shoepack Falls, Ont., 170
Devils Back Brook, N.B., 169
Devil's Bite, Alta., 170-1
Devils Burrow, The, N.S., 169
Devils Cellar Rapids, Ont., 170
Devils Claw Mountain, B.C., 171
Devil's Club Creek, Y.T., 172
Devils Club Mountain, B.C., 171
Devils Cove, Nfld., 168
Devils Cupboard, N.S., 169
Devils Dancing Place, Nfld., 168
Devils Dancing Table, Nfld., 168
Devils Den Lake, B.C., 171
Devils Dressing Place, Nfld., 168
Devils Elbow, Y.T., 172
Devils Elbow Rapids, N.B., 169
Devils Funnel Stillwater, N.S.,
153,169
330 Index
Devils Glen, Ont., 170
Devils Half Acre, N.B., 169
Devils Hand, N.B., 169
Devils Kitchen, Nfld., 168
Devils Knob, Nfld., 168
Devils Limb, N.S., 169
Devils Lookout Island, Nfld., 168
Devils Portage, Man., 170
Devils Punch Bowl, Man., 170
Devils Punchbowl Lake, Ont.,
170
Devils Punchbowl Provincial
Park, P.E.I., 169
Devil's Rectum, B.C., 171
Devils Spire, B.C., 171
Devils Thumb, Alta., 171
Devils Thumb, B.C., 171
Devils Tongue, B.C., 171
Devils Tooth, B.C., 171
Devil's Warehouse Island, Ont.,
170
De Watteville Island, Ont., 259
Diable Bay, Nfld., 168
Diable, Crique du, Que., 169
Diable, Pointe au, Que., 169
Diable, Pont du, Que., 169
Diable, Rapides du, Que., 169
Diable, Riviere du, Que., 169
Diable, Ruisseau du, Que.,
169-70
Diavolo Peak, B.C., 158
D'Iberville, Mont, Que., 27
Dickinson Island, Ont., 263
Dickinsons Landing, Ont., 260-1,
293
Dickinson's Landing Station,
Ont., 261,293
Diefenbaker, John, 88,303
Difenbaker, Lake, Sask., 303
Digdeguash River, N.B., 54
Dingle, Ont., 96
Dinner Place Creek, Man., 163
Disappointment, River, N.W.T.,
249
disgusting names, 82-6
Distress, Nfld., 83
Dixon Entrance, B.C., 113
Dominion, 17-21
Dominion, N.S., 21
Dominion City, Man., 21,142
Dominion Day, 20
Dominionville, Ont., 20,21
Donder, Mount, N.B., 161
Donnacona, 13
Dorchester, N.B., 59
Dorchester, N.S., 271
Dorchester, Ont., 59,273
Dorchester Boulevard, Que., 274
Dorchester County, Que., 273
Dorchester, Lord, 235-6,269-74
Dorchester, Pont, Que., 274
Dorchester Township, Ont., 59
Dorsey Heath, N.B., 155
Dorval, Que., 140
Douai, Lac, Que., 129
Doucet, Michael, 47
Downie Island, Ont., 258
Drakes Perdue Bogan, N.B., 154
droke, 155
drook, 155
Dryden, Ont., 145
Dublin, Ont., 97
Dublin Shore, N.S., 98
Dubreuil, Ont., 66
Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey,
Ont., 40,42
Du Gua de Monts, Pierre, 56,64,
220
Dumfounder Island, Ont., 258
Dumpling Savannah, N.S., 155
Duncan City, B.C., 143
Dundas, Ont., 58
Index 331
Dundas County, Ont., 58
Dundas Island, B.C., 245
Dunnville, Ont., 146
Duplessis, Maurice, 19
Durban, Man., 125
Durham, Ont., 58
Durham, Regional Municipality
of, Ont., 58
Dwight, Ont., 175
dyke, 155
East Pubnico, N.S., 34
Eastview, Ont., 295-6
East Woodlands Island, Ont., 263
East York, Ont., 75
Ebenezer, Ont., 94
Eden, Man., 91,133
Eden, N.S., 91
Eden, Ont., 91,133
Edenbridge, Sask., 133
Edenburg, Man., 133
Eden Grove, Ont., 91,133
Eden Indian Reserve, Alta., 133
Eden Island, Nun., 133
Eden Lake, Alta., 133
Eden Lake, N.S., 91,133
Eden Mills, Ont., 91,133
Eden Mountain, B.C., 133
Edenvale, Ont., 91,133
Edenwold, Sask., 91,133
Edmonton, Alta., 44,74
Edmontonian, 50
Edmonton Northwest, Alta., 43
Edmonton Southeast, Alta., 43
Edmonton Southwest, Alta., 43
Edmonton-Strathcona, Alta., 40,
43
Edmundston, N.B., 60
Efisga, 16
Egypt, Ont., 92
Egypte, Que., 92
Egypt Road, N.S., 92
Eisenhower, Mount, Alta., 87-9,
314
Eisenhower Peak, Alta., 88-9,314
Eldorado, Ont., 117
Eldorado Creek, Y.T., 118
electoral ridings, 38-44
Elginburg, Ont., 53
Elijaks Steady, Nfld., 153
Elizabeth, Lake, Ont., 263
Elizamerica, Lake, Ont., 263
Ellesmere Island Park Reserve,
Nun., 33
Elliot Lake, Ont., 144,145
Empress, Alta., 286
Endymion Island, Ont., 258
Engadine, Mount, Alta., 255
Entrada de Juan Perez, B.C., 113
Erato Lake, Ont., 165
Erindale, Ont., 237
Eros Lake, Ont., 165
Eskimo Point, Nun., 186
Espanola, Ont., 116
Esperance, Cap d', Nfld., 21
Espoir, Bay d', Nfld., 54
Espoir, Cap d', Nfld., 21
Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, B.C., 43
Esterhazy, Sask., 36
Estevan, Sask., 69
Etobicoke, Ont., 54, 75,237-8
Etzikom Coulee, Alta., 151
Eurydice, Mount, B.C., 167
Evan-Thomas, Mount, Alta., 255
Eve River, B.C., 167
Exshaw, Alta., 256
Eyremore, Alta., 143
Fagundes, Joao Alvares, 105
Fairhaven, Nfld., 83
Fairweather Mountain, B.C., 25
Falstaff Island, Nun., 159
332 Index
Famish Gut, Nfld
v
 83
Fanton Bogan, N.B., 154
Farbus, Lac, Que., 129
Farmersville, Ont., 95
Farran Point, Ont., 263
Farrans Point, Ont., 260-1,263
Fastest Growing City in the
World, 193
Fat City, 46
federal ridings, 38-44
Fenwick, N.S., 120
Fenwick Township, Ont., 120
Fermeuse, Nfld., 104
Fernandes, Joao, 21,103
Ferolle, Nfld., 109
Ferryland, Nfld., 104
Festubert, Canton, Que., 129
Fiddlers Elbow, Ont., 260
Fideen, 50
Field, B.C., 175, 266
Field, Mount, B.C., 175
Figure of Eight Rapids, N.W.T.,
171
Fiji Island, N.W.T., 102
First World War names, 128-31
Fisher Range, Alta., 255
Flanders, Que., 131
Flanders, Lac, Que., 129
Flanders Mountain, B.C., 130
Flanders Township, Ont., 130
Flandre, Canton, Que., 131
Flavelle, Sir Joseph, 47
Fleming, Sir Sandford, 256,267
Fleurbaix Creek, B.C., 130
Flin Flon, Man., Sask., 238-40
Flin Floner, 51
Florence, Ont., 122
Florence, Mount, B.C., 122
Florenceville, N.B., 122
Flores Island, B.C., 113
flowage, 155
Flowers Cove, Nfld., 167
Flowertown, 45
Foch, Mount, Alta., 255
Fogo, Cape, Nfld., 105
Fogo Island, Nfld., 105
foreign capitals, 95-9
Forest City, 44
Forest City, N.B., 142
Forillon National Park, Que., 31
Forks of the Thames, Ont., 236
Forsey, Eugene, 20
Fort Alexandria, B.C., 251
Fort Chimo, Que., 185
Fort-Chimo, Que., 185
Fort Chipewyan, Alta., 248-50
Fort Brian, 51
Fort Fraser, B.C., 275
Fort Norman, N.W.T, 187
Fort Prince of Wales, Man., 293
Fort Rouille, Ont., 233
Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., 58
Fort Smith, N.W.T., 316-17
Fort Toronto, Ont., 233
Fortune Bay, Nfld., 105
Fort Victoria, B.C., 285
Fort William, Ont., 73
Fosbery, Man., 310
Foul Bay, B.C., 82
Foul Bay Road, B.C., 82
Foxboro, Ont., 317
Framboise Intervale, N.S., 154
Frank, Alta., 74
Franklin, Sir John, 23,99,191,249
Fraser, Robert, 276
Fraser, Simon, 251,275
Fraser Bay, Nun., 276
Fraser Bay, Sask., 277
Fraser Brook, N.B., 279
Fraserburg, Ont., 278
Fraser Canyon, B.C., 276
Fraser, Cape, Nun., 276
Index 333
Fraser, Chutes, Que., 278
Fraser Crab, Ont., 279
Fraser Creek, B.C., 276
Fraser Creek, Man., 277
Fraser Creek, Ont., 278
Fraser Creek, Sask., 277
Fraser Creek, Y.T., 276
Fraserdale, Ont., 278
Fraser Falls, Y.T., 276
Fraser Glacier, Alta., 275
Fraser Island, B.C., 276
Fraser Island, Man., 277
Fraser Island, Nun., 277
Fraser Island, Sask., 279
Fraser, Lac, Que., 278
Fraser Lake, B.C., 275
Fraser Lake, Man., 277
Fraser Lake, Nfld., 280
Fraser Lake, Sask., 277
Fraser Lakes, Sask., 277
Fraser Mills, N.S., 280
Fraser, Mount, B.C., 275, 276
Fraser Peak, B.C., 276
Fraser Point, Ont., 279
Fraser, Pointe, Que., 279
Fraser Rapids, Sask., 277
Fraser Reach, B.C., 275
Fraser River, B.C., 113,251,275
Fraser River, Nfld., 280
Fraser, Ruisseau, Que., 279
Fraser Settlement, N.S., 280
Fraser's Grant, N.S., 280
Fraser Township, Ont., 278
Fraser Valley, B.C., 43
Fraser Valley East, B.C., 43
Fraser Valley West, B.C., 43
Fraserville, Que., 279
Fraserwood, Man., 277
Frederick Island, B.C., 22
Fredericksburg, Ont., 96
Fredericton, N.B., 41,44,53
Frederictonian, 50
Freels, Cape, Nfld., 105
Frenchman Butte, Sask., 150
Frobisher Bay, Nun., 183-4,288
Fundy, Bay of, N.B., N.S., 31
Fundy National Park, N.B., 31
Fundy-Royal, N.B., 40
Gabarus, N.S., 55
Gabarus Barachois, N.S., 154
Galatea, Mount, Alta., 255
Galiano Island, B.C., 113
Galilee, Ont., 94
Gait, Ont., 76
Galtonian, 51
Gananoque, Ont., 147
Ganaraska River, Ont., 318
Gander-Grand Falls, Nfld., 33,38
Gander-Twillingate, Nfld., 33,38
Ganong, William K, 28,107,189,
204,221
Ganounkousenot, Ont., 257
Garden of Eden, N.S., 91,133
Garden of Eden, Ont., 91
Garden of Eden Barrens, N.S.,
133
Garden of the Gulf, 45
Gasburg, Alta., 196
Gaspe, Que., 107
Gaspesien, 49
Gastown, B.C., 45,246
Gateway to the North, 44
Gatineau, Que., 39
Gatineau-La Lievre, Que., 39
Geary, N.B., 64
generic terms, 149-52,278
gentiles, 49-50
Geographical Names Board of
Canada, 262
Geographic Board of Alberta, 61,
87,290
334 Index
Geographic Board of Canada, 23,
60-1,70,82,85,87,112-13,142,
226,241,245,254,288,301,302
George River, Que., 185-6
Georgian Bay Islands National
Park, Ont., 30
Georgia, Strait of, B.C., 113,244
Georgina, Ont., 96
German-Mills, Ont., 78
Gibsons, B.C., 72
Gibson's Landing, B.C., 72
Gift Lake, Alta., 167
Gilmour Island, Nun., 232
Givenchy, Lac, Que., 129
Glacier National Park, B.C., 29
Gleichen, Alta., 54
Glen Eden, Ont., 133
Glen Valley, P.E.I., 28
Gloin, Doug, 48
Gloin, Lew, 47
Gloucester, N.B., 39
Gloucester, Ont., 77, 232,296
Gods Lake, Man., 168
God's Mercie, Islands of, Nun.,
168
Gods Mercy, Bay of, Nun., 168
Gonzales Bay, 82
Goshen, N.B., 92
Goshen, N.S., 93
Goshen, Ont., 92
Goulbourn Township, Ont., 77,
232
Granbyite, 51
Gran Canal de Nuestra Senora
del Rosario la Marinera, B.C.,
113 , 244
Grand Bruit, Nfld., 55
Grand Codroy River, Nfld., 109
Grande Isle, Ont., 256
Grande Riviere, Ont., Que., 230
Grand Falls-Windsor, Nfld., 58,
75
Grand lac Victoria, Que., 287
Grand Miramichi, N.B., 188
Grand River, N.W.T., 249
Grand River, Ont., Que., 230
Grants Point, Ont., 214
Granville, B.C., 246
Grasslands National Park, Sask.,
30
Gravenhurst, Ont., 147
Great Colinet Island, Nfld.,
105
Great Devil Rapids, Sask., 170
Great Divide passes, 9, 264-8
Greater Sudbury, Ont., 77,147
Great River, N.W.T., 249
Great Slave Lake, N.W.T., 248
Great Whale River, Que., 186
Greenwich, N.B., 53
Greenwich, N.S., 53
Greenwich, P.E.I., 53
Greenwood, B.C., 141
Grenadier Island, Ont., 258
Grenville Channel, B.C., 245
Griffin, Dick, 48
Griff into wn, Ont., 317
Griffith Township, Ont., 121
Gros Morne, Nfld., 32
Gros Morne National Park,
Nfld., 32
Grosvenor Lakes, N.S., 175
Guelph, Ont., 44
Guelphite, 51
Guie, Nicholas, 165,218
gulch, 155
Gulf Islander, 52
Gulf Islands, B.C., 244
gully, 152
gut, 155
Gut of Canso, N.S., 205
Guy, John, 165, 216-1 8
Guy Cove, P.E.I., 270
Guysborough, N.S., 271
Index 335
Guysborough County, N.S.,
271
Gwaii Haanas Park Reserve,
B.C., 30
Hades Islands, Ont., 170
Hades, Lac, Que., 170
Hague, Sask., 95
Ha Ha, Nfld., 179
Ha! Ha!, Bale des, Que., 178-80
Ha! Ha!, Bale du, Que., 178
Ha Ha Bay, Nfld., 179
Ha! Ha!, Lac, Que., 179
Ha Ha Mountain, Nfld., 179
haha names, 177-80
Ha! Ha!, Petit lac, Que., 179
Ha Ha Point, Nfld., 179
Ha! Ha!, Riviere, Que., 179
Ha Ha Rock, Ont., 179
Ha Ha, The, Nfld., 179
Haig, Mount, Alta., 255
Haldimand, Ont., 146
Haldimand-Norfolk, Regional
Municipality of, Ont., 145
Halifax, N.S., 50, 75
Halifax, Regional Municipality
of, N.S., 75
Haligonian, 49-50
Ha Ling Peak, Alta., 81,256
Hall Beach, Nun., 187
Hamelin, Mount, Nun., 122
Hamilton, Ont., 44, 45, 229
Hamiltonian, 50
Hamilton River, Nfld., 57
Hamlet, Ont., 157
Hamlet Township, Ont., 157
Hanging Heart Lake, Alta.,
166
Hansen Township, Ont., 80-1
Happyland Creek, Sask., 168
Harmony Mills, N.S., 135
Haro Strait, B.C., 113
Harrington Lake, Que., 225,
227-8
Harrington Ridge, Que., 228
Hastings, B.C., 246
Hastings, Ont., 58
Hastings County, Ont., 58
Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and
Addington, Ont., 41
Havre aux Basques, Baie du,
Que., 110
Havre-Saint-Pierre, Que., 50
Hawkesbury Island, B.C., 245
Hay Island, Ont., 258
Headforemost Tickle, Nfld., 153
Heart Island, N.Y., 259
Heart Lake Indian Reserve, Alta.,
166
Heart Mountain, Alta., 256
Heart's Content, Nfld., 72,165
Heart's Delight, Nfld., 165
Heart's Delight-Islington, Nfld.,
165
Heart's Desire, Nfld., 165
Hearts Hill, Sask., 166
Heart Shoal, Ont., 166
Hearts Point, Nfld., 166
Heartstone Peak, B.C., 166
heath, 154-5
heavenly names, 131-5
Hebron, Nfld., 93
Hecate Strait, B.C., 55
Hector, Dr. James, 86-7, 256,
266
Heidenreich, Conrad, 293
Hellangone Lake, Ont., 170
Hellcat Brook, N.B., 169
Helldiver Bay, Ont., 170
Helldiver Lake, Sask., 170
Hellfire Creek, Sask., 170
Hell Fire Pond, Nfld., 168
Hell Gate, B.C., 171
Hell Gate, Nun., 171
336 Index
Hell Grapple Hill, Nfld., 168
hell names, 168-72
Hell Rackets, N.S., 169
Hell Raving Creek, B.C., 171
Hellroarer Creek, B.C., 171
Hell Roaring Creek, N.W.T., 171
Hell-Roaring Falls, Alta., 171
Hells Al, Nfld., 168
Hells Gate, B.C., 171
Hellsgate Rapid, Y.T., 172
Hells Gate Rapids, N.B., 169
Hell's Gate Rapids, N.W.T., 171
Hells Gates, N.S., 169
Hellsgate Slough, B.C., 171
Hells Kitchen, N.B., 169
Helluva Hole, N.S., 169
Helluva, Lac, Que., 170
Hennepin, Fr. Louis, 14
Henry and Harry's Butte, Sask.,
150
Hernando Island, B.C., 11 3
Hespeler, Ont., 76
Hickey Island, Ont., 258
Hick Smith Stillwater, Nfld.,
319
highest points, 25-8
Hillcrest Mines, Alta., 74
Hill Island, Ont., 258
Hillsborough, P.E.I., 40
Hills, Lake of, Alta., Sask., 248
Hispanic-American names,
113-18
Hobbema, Alta., 55
Hochelaga, Que., 13,16,223
Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Que.,
40,44
Hogg's Hollow, Ont., 48
Hogtown, 44-8
Hollywood North, 46
Holy Land names, 90-4
homonyms, 56-9
Honeymoon Capital of the
World, 44
Hood, Mount, Alta., 255
Hostility, Mount, B.C., 302
Howe Island, Ont., 257
Howse Pass, Alta., B.C., 266,268
Hub of the Maritimes, 44, 63
Hudson Bay, 70
Hudson Bay, Sask., 58, 70
Hudson's Bay Company, 69-70,
184, 215,266-7,292,317
Hudsons Hope, B.C., 72
Hudson's Hope, B.C., 72
Hudson Strait, 70,288
Humber-Port au Port-St. Barbe,
Nfld., 40
Humber River, Ont., 233, 237
Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte,
Nfld., 40
Humboldt Island, Ont., 284
Huntsville, Ont., 147
Huxley Island, B.C., 282
Hyperborean Sea, N.W.T., 249
lago, B.C., 158
lago, Mount, B.C., 158
Igluligaarjuk, Nun., 187
Ikaluit, Nun., 184
Ikaluktutiak, Nun., 187
lie Pauline, Nun., 298
lie Vanier, Nun., 298
Illecillewaet River, B.C., 182
Indedom, Lake, Ont., 263
Indefatigable, Mount, Alta., 255
indigenous names, 183-7
Ingargarnekulluk Tickle, Nfld.,
153
Ingleside, Ont., 260,262
Inglewood, Calif., 138
Inglewood, Ont., 138
Ingornachoix Bay, Nfld., 109
Index 337
Inker-man, Ont
v
 119
Inkerman Parish, N.B., 119
Inoucdjouac, Que., 185
International Rapids, Ont., 260
International Rift, Ont., 260
intervale, 154
Inukjuak, Que., 185
Invincible, Mount, Alta., 255
Iqaluit, Nun., 183^
Iroquois, Ont., 260
Ishpatina Ridge, Ont., 27
Islanders, 52
Islands of God's Mercie, Nun.,
168
Isle Buade, Ont., 257
Ivujuvik, Que., 185
Ivvavik National Park, N.W.T.,
32
Jaffray Melick, Ont., 68
Janeville, Ont., 295
Jasper House Pass, Alta., B.C.,
267
Jasper National Park, Alta., 29
Jasper Pass, Alta., B.C., 267
Jellicoe, Mount, Alta., 255
Jervis Inlet, B.C., 244
Jessica, B.C., 158
Jim Fiji Harbour, N.W.T., 102
Joffre, Mount, Alta., 255
Johnstone Strait, B.C., 244-5
Jonquiere, Que., 75
Jordan, Ont., 94
Juan de Fuca Strait, B.C., 111-12,
244
Juan Perez, Entrada de, B.C.,
11 3
Judasville, 197
Jules-Leger, Lac, Que., 306-9
Juliet, B.C., 158
Juliet Creek, B.C., 159
Juliet, Mount, B.C., 158,167
Kalaria Island, Ont., 260
Kaleden, B.C., 91,133
Kaministiquia, Ont., 182
Kamloopsian, 51
Kamouraska-Riviere-de-Loup-
Les Basques, Que., 110
Kananaskis Provincial Park,
Alta., 254
Kananaskis River, Alta., 254
Kanata, Ont., 77,232,262,296
Kangaroo Island, Man., 101
Kangiqsualujjuaq, Que., 185-6
Kangiqsujuaq, Que., 185-6
Kangirsuk, Que., 185
Kars, Ont., 119-20
Karsdale, N.S., 120
Kars Parish, N.B., 120
Kars Township, Ont., 120
Kashagawigamog Lake, Ont.,
182
Kashutl Inlet, B.C., 82
Kathryn, Alta., 65
Kathyrn, Alta., 65
Kazabazua, Que., 55
Keewatin, Ont., 68
Kejimkujik Lake, N.S., 32
Kejimkujik National Park, N.S.,
32
Kelowna, B.C., 43
Kelownan, 50
Kennedy, John F., 312-1 6
Kennedy, Mount, B.C., 313-14
Kennedy, Mount, Y.T., 314-1 5
Kenogami, Que., 75
Kenora, Ont., 59,67-8
Kenoraite, 50
Keppoch-Kinlock, P.E.I., 76
Keremeos, B.C., 37,181
Kertch, Ont., 120
338 Index
Khartum, Ont., 97
Kicking Horse Pass, Alta., B.C.,
264,266,268
Kicking Horse River, B.C., 266
Kidd, Mount, Alta., 255
Killiniq, Nun., 185
Kimberley, B.C., 128
Kinburn, Ont., 120
King, Mackenzie, 87,314
King Albert, Mount, Alta., B.C.,
292
King City, Ont., 141-2
King, Mount Mackenzie, B.C.,
300-1
Kings-Hants, N.S., 41
Kingston, Ont., 45, 229
Kipling, Rudyard, 196-7
Kirkland Lake, Ont., 80
Kiss, Lac, Que., 168
Kitchener, Ont., 78-9,97
Kitchener Township, Ont., 127
Kitchisippi, Ont., Que., 198,230
Kitley Township, Ont., 86
Kitsymenie Island, Ont., 260
Kitwanga, B.C., 37,182
Kiwa Peak, B.C., 301
Kiwi Island, Man., 101
Klondike, Y.T., 37,138,241-2
Klondike City, Y.T., 144
Klondike River, Y.T., 37,241-2
Kluane National Park, Y.T., 32
Kneehill, Alta., 43
Knight Inlet, B.C., 244
Koartac, Que., 185
Koartak, Que., 185
Kokshittle Arm, B.C., 82
Koksoak, Riviere, Que., 182
Koocanusa Lake, B.C., 68-9
Kootenay, B.C., 59,62
Kootenay National Park, B.C., 29
Kootenay River, B.C., 29,68
Kouchibouguac, N.B., 31,34
Kouchibouguac National Park,
N.B., 31,34
Kouchibouguac River, N.B., 31,
34
Kowshet Cove, B.C., 82
Kugluktuk, Nun., 187
Kuujjuaq, Que., 185
Kuujjuarapik, Que., 186
Laberge, Lake, Y.T., 240- 1
Labrador, Austr., 99
Labrador, Nfld., 103-4
Labrador City, Nfld., 141
Labradorian, 52
Lacadie, 220
L'Acadie, Que., 222
Lac Cardinal Provincial Park,
Alta., 291
Lac des Arcs, Alta., 253
Lac des Bonbons, Que, 163
Lacey Point, Nun., 168
Lac Ha! Ha!, Que., 179
Lac Jules-Leger, Que., 306-9
Lac Meech, Que., 225-8
Lacombe, Alta., 37
Lac-Saint-Louis, Que., 41
Lady Laurier, Mount, B.C., 311
Lady Macbeth, Mount, B.C., 159
Ladysmith, B.C., 124,319
Ladysmith, Ont., 124,319
Ladysmith, Que., 124,319
Ladysmith Township, Ont., 124
La Grande Basque, Que., 110
Lake Athabasca, Alta., Sask.,
60-1,248,267
Lake Canarican, Ont., 263
Lake Canusa, Ont., 263
Lake Diefenbaker, Sask., 303
Lake Elizabeth, Ont., 263
Lake Elizamerica, Ont., 263
Index 339
Lake Fleet Islands, Ont
v
 257
Lakehead, Ont
v
 73
Lakeheader, 52
Lake Indedom, Ont., 263
Lake Laberge, Y.T., 240-1
Lake Muskoka, Ont., 35
Lake of the Hills, Alta., Sask., 248
Lake St. Lawrence, Ont., 260, 263
Lake Uscan, Ont., 263
Lake Utopia, N.B., 134
Lamaline, Nfld., 105
La Mauricie National Park, Que.,
31
La Nativite, Que., 163
Landsat Island, Nfld., 176
Langelier, Que., 41
Langemarck, Lac, Que., 129
Langemarck Township, Ont., 131
Langenburg, Sask., 55
Langley-Abbotsford, B.C., 43
L'Anse-Amour, Nfld., 167
L'Anse au Diable Brook, Nfld.,
168
L'Anse au Loup Barasway, Nfld.,
154
L'Anse aux Meadows, Nfld., 216
La Petite Basque, Que, 110
L'Ardoise, N.S., 55
Lasqueti Island, B.C., 113
Latchford, Ont., 146
Laurentia, 16
Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 308-12
Laurier, Man., 310
Laurier Avenue, Ont., 311
Laurier, Canton, Que., 309
Laurier Cove, B.C., 311
Laurier Creek, Ont., 310
Laurier Creek, Y.T., 311
Laurier Island, Ont., 310
Laurier Island, Sask., 310
Laurier, Lac, Que., 309
Laurier Lake, Alta., 310
Laurier Lake, Ont., 310
Laurier, Mont, Que., 308
Laurier, Mount, B.C., 311
Laurier, Mount, Y.T., 283,311
Laurier, Mount Sir Wilfrid, B.C.,
301,311
Laurier Park, Que., 312
Laurier Pass, B.C., 310
Laurier Rock, N.S., 310
Laurier Rural Municipality, Alta.,
310
Laurier Rural Municipality,
Sask., 310
Laurier Township, Ont., 310
Laurier-Station, Que., 309
Laurierville, Que., 308-9
Lax Kw'alaams, B.C., 186
lead, 155
Lear, B.C., 158
Leatherhead Pass, Alta., B.C.,
267
Leather Pass, Alta., B.C., 267
Lebanon, Ont., 92
Leek Island, Ont., 258
Leeville, Sask., 36
Leger, Jules, 306-9
Leman, Mount, Alta., 255
Lens, Canton, Que., 129
L'Epiphanie, Que., 163
Leroux Island, Ont., 259
Les Basques, Que., 110
Lescarbot, Marc, 107,204,215
Les Fourneaux, Que., 109,110
Lethbridge, Alta., 83-6
Lethbridge River, Alta., 85-6
Levis, Que., 76
Levis-Lauzon, Que, 76
Lewes River, Y.T., 241
Lewis Hills, Nfld., 27
Lewis Pond, Nfld., 163
340 Index
Ligne du Telegraphe, lie du,
Que., 174
Limestone City, 45
Lion Island, Man., 101
Lions Bay, B.C., 72
Lions Gate Bridge, B.C., 72
Lion's Head, Ont., 70, 71
Little Apple, 45
Little Booth Island, N.W.T., 102
Little Canada, Minn., 136
Little Devil Rapids, Sask., 70
Little Egypt, Ont., 92
Little Heart's Ease, Nfld., 165
Little Heaven Island, Ont., 134
Little Mississippi River, Ont., 202
Little Ottawa Branch, N.B., 232
Little Saskatchewan River, Man.,
36
Little Southwest Miramichi
River, N.B., 187
Little Thames River, Ont., 156
Little York, Ont., 45
Lively, Ont., 77
Livingstone, Mount, Alta., 128
Logan, Sir William E., 25
Logan Island, Ont., 284
Logan, Mount, Y.T., 25, 315
Loks Land, Nun., 288
London, Ont., 44, 77, 95-6
Londoner, 51
Lone Eagle Butte, Alta., 149
Long Range Mountains, Nfld.,
27
Long Sault, Ont., 260,262
Long Sault, Ont., Que., 214
Long Sault Parkway, Ont., 263
Long Sault Rapids, Ont., 261,263
Longue Sault, Ont., 262
look-alikes, 56-9
Loos, Lac, Que., 129
Lorette, Mount, Alta., 255
L'Orignal, Ont., 214
Lorneville, N.B., 83
Lotbiniere, Que., 41
Lotus Land, 45
Lougheed, Mount, Alta., 254
Louis-Hebert, Que., 41
Louis St-Laurent, Mount, B.C.,
303
Love, Sask., 166
Love Lake, Man., 166
Lovers Cove, Nfld., 166
Lovers Cove, N.S., 166
Lovers Creek, Ont., 166
Lovers Isle, Ont., 166
Lovers Lane, Ont., 166, 259
Lower California, N.B., 116
Lower Canada, 16
Lower East Pubnico, N.S., 34
Lower North Branch Little
Southwest Miramichi River,
N.B., 187
Lower Sackville, N.S., 57
Lower West Pubnico, N.S., 34
Loyalist City, 44
Lucan, Ont., 121
Lucan Islands, B.C., 121
Lucifer, Lac, Que., 170
Lucifer Peak, B.C., 171
Lunenburger, 51
Lutselk'e, N.W.T, 187
Lyell Island, B.C., 282
Lynx City, Y.T., 144
Lys Creek, B.C., 130
Macbeth, Mount, B.C., 158,159
Macbeth Neve, B.C., 159
Macbeth Township, Ont., 157
MacBrien, Mount Sir James,
N.W.T., 26
Macdonald, Mount, B.C., 300
Macduff, Mount, B.C., 159
Index 341
Mackenzie, Alexander (prime
minister), 250
Mackenzie, Sir Alexander,
247-53
Mackenzie, B.C., 251
Mackenzie Bay, N.W.T., 249
Mackenzie, Cape, N.W.T., 249
Mackenzie Delta, N.W.T., 249
Mackenzie, District of, N.W.T.,
249
Mackenzie Highway, Alta.,
N.W.T., 250
Mackenzie King, Mount, B.C.,
300
Mackenzie, Mount, B.C., 251,300
Mackenzie Mountains, N.W.T.,
Y.T., 250
Mackenzie Pass, B.C., 251
Mackenzie Point, N.W.T., 249
Mackenzie River, N.W.T., 249
Mackenzie Valley, B.C., 251
Mackey-Smith, Lac, Que., 319
MacLean Barachois, N.S., 154
MacNab, Mount Sir Allan, B.C.,
303
Madawaska, N.B., 182
Madawaska, Ont., 182
Madawaska-Restigouche, N.B.,
39
Madawaska River, N.B., 65
Madawaska River, Ont., 65-6,
198
Mafeking, Man., 125
Mafeking, Ont., 125
Mafeking Township, Ont., 124
Magaguadavic River, N.B., 54,
182
Main-a-Dieu, N.S., 69
Malakoff, N.B., 120
Malakoff, Ont., 119
Malaspina Strait, B.C., 113,244
Malpeque, P.E.I., 44
Malpeque Bay, P.E.I., 182
Manilla, Ont., 98
Maniwaki, Que., 35
Mankota, Sask., 68
Manomin Island, Ont., 260
Mantario, Sask., 67
Mara Township, Ont., 77
Marconi, Butte du, Que., 173
Marconi Towers, N.S., 172-3
Margaree, N.S., 55
Maricourt (Wakeham), Que., 185
Mariposa, Ont., 98
Markham, Ont., 144
Marne Township, Ont., 131
Marwayne, Alta., 69
Mary Eraser Island, P.E.I., 280
Maryhill, Ont, 78
Marysvale, Nfld., 83
mash, 155
Massacre Butte, Alta., 149
Massey Island, Nun., 298
Matsqui, B.C., 75
Maugerville, N.B., 55
Mazinaw Rock, Ont., 200
McBeth Fiord, Nun., 159
M'Clure, Robert, 293
McDonell Peak, B.C., 275
McDougall, Mount, Alta., 255
McGillivray, Mount, Alta., 255
McNair Island, Ont., 257
Meach, Lac, Que., 63,226
Meares, Capt. John, 112
Medicine Hat, Alta., 44,45,
194-7, 317
Medicine Hatter, 51
Meduxnekeag Intervale, N.B.,
154
Meech, Lac, Que., 63,225-8
Meech Lake, Que., 63, 225-8
Meech Lake Accord, 63,226
342 Index
Meelpaeg Lake, Nfld., 182
Meetinghouse Rips, N.B., 155
Meighen, Alta., 83
Meighen, Mount Sir Arthur, B.C.,
301-2
Melba Creek, Y.T., 10 2
Melbourne, Man., 102-3
Melita, Man., 55
Melville Island, Ont., 258
Menagoueche, N.B., 56
Mercer Lake, B.C., 282
Mercer, Mount, Alta., 255
Mercer Point, B.C., 282
Mercutio Lake, Ont., 157
Merriton, Ont., 166
Merrymeeting Point, Nfld., 166
Mersereau Bogan, N.B., 154
Mesopelagia, 16
Messines, Que., 130
Messines, Lac, Que., 129
Meta Incognita Peninsula, Nun.,
288-9
Metropolitan Toronto, Ont., 75,
237-8
Michener, Roland, 305-7
Michener Game Preserve, Norah
Willis, N.W.T., 307
Michener, Mount, Alta., 305-6
Middle Barachois River, Nfld.,
154
Middle East names, 90-4
Middle East Pubnico, N.S., 34
Middle Island, Ont., 22
Middle Sackville, N.S., 57
Middleton, Ont., 98
Middle West Pubnico, N.S., 34
Midnight Dome, Y.T., 242
Mille Roches, Ont., 260-1
Mille Roches Island, Ont., 263
Million Acre Farm, 45
Milner, B.C., 127
Milner Township, Ont., 127
Milton, Mount, B.C., 303
Mineral City, B.C., 143
Mingan, Que., 31,109
Mingan Archipelago National
Park, Que., 31
Minnedosa, Man., 35-6,182
Minnedosa River, Man., 36
Minnetonka, Sask., 190
Minota Island, Ont., 260
Miracle City of the West, 193
Miramichi, N.B., 41, 73,187-9
Miramichi, N.S., 188
Miramichi, Ont., 188
Miramichi Bay, N.B., 188
Miramichi-Newcastle, N.B., 188
Miramichi River, N.B., 188
mish, 155
Mississauga, Ont., 183,237
Mississaugan, 50
Mississippi, Ont., 201
Mississippi Lake, Ont., 199-201
Mississippi Mills, Ont., 114
Mississippi River, Ont., 197-202
Mississippi Snye, Ont., 198
Mississippi Station, Ont., 201
mistakes, 63-7
mocauque, 155
Moloch, Mount, B.C., 171
Monchy, Sask., 130
Monckton Township, N.B., 63
Moncton, N.B., 44,63
Monctonian, 50
Monkman Pass, Alta., B.C., 264,
268
Mons Peak, B.C., 130
Mons Township, Ont., 131
Montague Creek, B.C., 158
Mont Cambrai, Que., 129
Mont D'Iberville, Que., 27
Mont Laurier, Que, 308
Index 343
Mont-Laurier, Que., 309
Mont Nebo, Sask., 93
Montreal, Ark., 138
Montreal, Mo., 138
Montreal, Que., 45, 77,140-1,
223-5,229
Montreal, Wise., 138
Montrealais, 49
Montrealer, 49
Montreal-Est, Que., 225
Montreal-Nord, 37,225
Montreal-Quest, Que., 225
Montreal River, Mich., Wise.,
138
Mont Royal, Que., 223-5
Mont-Royal, Que. 43
Mont Sir-Wilfrid, Que., 309
Mont Sorrel, Que., 129
Mont Vimy, Que., 129
Moose Bath Pond, B.C., 215
Moose Creek, Ont., 214
Moose Ear Pond, Nfld., 215
Moose Factory, Ont., 213
Moose Factory Island, Ont.,
212-13
Moosehide Hills, Y.T., 215
Moose Javian, 52
Moose law, Sask., 213-14
Moose law River, Sask., 213-14
Mooseland, N.S., 215
Moose Mountain, Sask., 213
moose names, 212-15
Moose River, N.S., 215
Moose River, Ont., 212
Moose River Gold Mines, N.S.,
215
Moosichapishanisippian, 52
Moosomin, Sask., 214
Moosomin Indian Reserve, Sask.,
214
Moosonee, Ont., 213
Morrisburg, Ont., 260
Morts, Anse aux, Nfld., 167
Moscow, Ont., 96
Motor City, 45
Moulinette, Ont., 260-1
Mount Abel, B.C., 133
Mount Adam, N.S., 133
Mount Allan, Alta., 254
Mount Arthur Meighen, B.C.,
301-2
Mount Athabasca, Alta., 60-1
Mount Azazel, B.C., 171
Mount Banquo, B.C., 159
Mount Beatty, Alta., 255
Mount Beelzebub, B.C., 171
Mount Belial, B.C., 171
Mount Benvolio, B.C., 158
Mount Black Prince, Alta., 255
Mount Blitzen, N.B., 161
Mount Bogart, Alta., 255
Mount Brock, Alta., 255
Mount Bruat, Nun., 122
Mount Burstall, Alta., 255
Mount Cain, B.C., 133
Mount Carleton, N.B., 28,272
Mount Carmel, Ont., 93
Mount Carmel, P.E.I., 93
Mount Carpe, B.C., 302
Mount Caubvick, Nfld., 27
Mount Chester, Alta., 255
Mount Columbia, Alta., 26
Mount Comet, N.B., 161
Mount Cupid, N.B., 161
Mount Currie, Alta., 255
Mount Dagon, B.C., 171
Mount Dancer, N.B., 161
Mount Dasher, N.B., 161
Mount Dawson, B.C., 283
Mount Dawson, Y.T., 283, 310
Mount DeCosmos, B.C., 318-19
Mount Donder, N.B., 161
344 Index
Mount Eisenhower, Alta., 87-9,
314
Mount Engadine, Alta., 255
Mount Eurydice, B.C., 167
Mount Evan-Thomas, Alta., 255
Mount Florence, B.C., 122
Mount Foch, Alta., 255
Mount Fraser, B.C., 275, 276
Mount Galatea, Alta., 255
Mount Glasgow, Alta., 255
Mount Haig, Alta., 255
Mount Hamelin, Nun., 122
Mount Hebron, N.B., 93
Mount Hood, Alta., 255
Mount Hostility, B.C., 302
Mount lago, B.C., 158
Mount Indefatigable, Alta., 255
Mount Invincible, Alta., 255
Mount Jellicoe, Alta., 255
Mount Joffre, Alta., B.C., 255
Mount John Oliver, B.C., 302
Mount Juliet, B.C., 158,167
Mount Kennedy, B.C., 313-14
Mount Kennedy, N.B., 313
Mount Kennedy, Y.T., 314-15
Mount Kidd, Alta., 255
Mount King Albert, Alta., B.C.,
292
Mount Lady Laurier, B.C., 311
Mount Lady Macbeth, B.C., 159
Mount Laurier, B.C., 300,311
Mount Laurier, Y.T., 300,311
Mount Leman, Alta., B.C., 255
Mount Lester Pearson, B.C., 303
Mount Livingstone, Alta., 128
Mount Logan, Y.T., 25,315
Mount Lorette, Alta., 255
Mount Lougheed, Alta., 254
Mount Louis St-Laurent, B.C.,
303
Mount Macdonald, B.C., 300
Mount Macduff, B.C., 159
Mount Mackenzie, B.C., 251,310
Mount Mackenzie King, B.C.,
300-1
Mount Marconi, B.C., 173
Mount McDougall, Alta., 255
Mount McGillivray, Alta., 255
Mount Mercer, Alta., 255
Mount Michener, Alta., 305-7
Mount Milner, B.C., 127
Mount Milton, B.C., 303
Mount Moloch, B.C., 171
Mount Nightingale, B.C., 122
Mount Nirvana, N.W.T., 26
Mount Orpheus, B.C., 167
Mount Peck, B.C., 80-1
Mount Penelope, B.C., 167
Mount Petain, Alta., B.C., 80
Mount Pisgah, N.B., 93
Mount Prancer, N.B., 161
Mount Putnik, Alta., 255
Mount Queen Elizabeth, Alta.,
292
Mount Revelstoke National Park,
B.C., 30
Mount Rhodes, B.C., 127
Mount Richard Bennett, B.C., 302
Mount Rimmon, B.C., 171
Mount Roberts, B.C., 127
Mount Robert Service, Y.T., 242
Mount Robert Smith, B.C., 318
Mount Robson, B.C., 26, 311
Mount Romeo, B.C., 158,167
Mount Roosevelt, B.C., 314
Mount Royal, Que., 43,225
Mount Rudolph, N.B., 161
Mount Rundle, Alta., 256
Mount St. Elias, Y.T., 23,25
Mount St. Nicholas, N.B., 161
Mount Satan, B.C., 171
Mount Shark, Alta., 255
Index 345
Mount Sir Alexander, B.C., 251
Mount Sir Allan MacNab, B.C.,
303
Mount Sir Donald, B.C., 317
Mount Sir James MacBrien,
N.W.T., 26
Mount Sir John Abbott, B.C.,
300-1
Mount Sir John Thompson, B.C.,
300-1
Mount Sir Mackenzie Bowell,
B.C., 300-1
Mount Sir Robert, B.C., 300
Mount Sir Wilfrid Laurier, B.C.,
301, 311
Mount Smuts, Alta., 127, 255
Mount Sparrowhawk, Alta., 254
Mount Stalin, B.C., 80-1
Mount Stanley, B.C., 128
Mount Stanley Baldwin, B.C.,
302
Mount Titan, B.C., 301
Mount Torrens, Alta., 101
Mount Tupper, B.C., 300
Mount Turner, Alta., 255
Mount Ulysses, B.C., 167
Mount Vancouver, B.C., 246
Mount Vanier, Nun., 299
Mount Vanier, Y.T., 298- 9
Mount Vixen, N.B., 161
Mount Waddington, B.C., 25
Mount Warrior, Alta., 255
Mount Warspite, Alta., 255
Mount Welcome, B.C., 301
Mount White-Fraser, B.C., 276
Mousseau, Lac, Que., 227-8
Mousseau, Ruisseau, Que., 228
Muddy York, Ont., 45, 236
Mulcaster Island, Ont., 258
Murchison Island, Ont., 284
Muskoka, Ont., 35,182
Muskoka, District Municipality
of, 146-7
Muskoka, Lake, Ont., 35
Musquodoboit, N.S., 182
Myers Island, Ont., 259
Nackawic, N.B., 34
Nackawic Stream, N.B., 34
Nahanni Butte, N.W.T., 149,187
Nahanni National Park, N.W.T.,
32
Nakiska, Alta., 254
Nanaimo, B.C., 44,206-11
Nanaimo-Cowichan, B.C., 43
Nanaimo Harbour, B.C., 113
Nanaimoite, 51
Nanaimo River, B.C., 207
Nanisivik, Nun., 38
Nanticoke, Ont., 54,58,145-6
Nares, Sir George, 23
Narrows, The, N.S., 181
Narrows, The, Ont., 234
national park names, 28-33
Natal, B.C., 125
Natal Township, Ont., 126
native names, 181-7
Navy Islands, Ont., 258
Nazareth, Que., 94
Necum Teuch, N.S., 55
Neddie Smiths Pond, N.S., 319
Needle's Eye, Ont., 260
negative connotations, 77-81
Nelson-Miramichi, N.B., 187
Nepean, Ont., 77,232,296
Nerissa, N.S., 160
Nerissa Round Lake, N.S., 160
New Acadia, P.E.I., 222
New Albion, 16
Newark, Ont., 236
New Brunswick, 19
New Canaan, N.B., 93
346 Index
New Canaan, N.S., 93
New Canada, S. Africa, 136
Newcastle, N.B., 73,188
Newcastle, Ont., 74,147
Newcastle Island, B.C., 209
New Denmark, N.B., 77
New Dublin, Ont., 97-8
New Dublin Township, N.S., 98
New Dominion, P.E.I., 21
New Ferolle Peninsula, Nfld.,
109
Newfoundland, 54
Newfoundlander, 50
Newfoundland Geographical
Names Board, 27,180
New France, 16
New Gary, N.B., 64
New Germany, Ont., 78
New Glasgow, N.S., 77
New Harmony, P.E.I., 135
New Hermon, Ont., 93
New Kiew, Alta., 98
New London, P.E.I, 98
New Lunnon, Alta., 98
New Niagara, N.B., 64
New Salem, N.S., 94
New Sarepta, Alta., 94
New Stockholm, Sask., 97
New Toronto, Ont., 237
New Westminster, B.C., 44
New Zealand, P.E.I., 99
New Zion, N.B., 93
Niagara, Ont., 236
Niagara Falls, Ont., 44
Niagara Fallsian, 52
Niagarentia, 16
Nicabong, Que., 55
Nichols Lake, Ont., 71
Nickel Belt, Ont., 44
Nickel Centre, Ont., 147
nicknames, 49-50
Nightingale, Alta., 122
Nightingale, Mount, B.C., 122
Nineveh, N.S., 90
Nirvana, Lac, Que., 134-5
Nirvana, Mount, N.W.T., 26
Nirvana Pass, B.C., 135
Noel, Lac, Que., 163
Nolalu, Ont., 68
Nolan Point, B.C., 121
Nootka Sound, B.C., 245
Norah Willis Michener Game
Preserve, N.W.T., 307
Noranda, Que., 68
Nord, Riviere du, Que., 230
Norland, 16
Norman, Ont., 68
North Bay, Ont., 44
North Bayite, 52
North Carleton, P.E.I., 271
North Dorchester Township,
Ont., 273
Northeastern Manitoulin and the
Islands, Ont., 77
Northern Yukon National Park,
Y.T., 32
North Frontenac Township, Ont.,
77
North Gower, Ont., 55
North Pole Mountain, N.B., 161
North Pole Stream, N.B., 160
North Thames River, Ont., 156
Northumberland-Miramichi,
N.B., 41,188
Northwest Miramichi River,
N.B., 187
North York, Ont., 75,238
Notre-Dame-dTvugivic, Que.,
185
Notre-Dame-de-Koartac, Que.,
185
Nova Scotia, 19
Index 347
nub, 155
Nunavut, 44
Nunavutan, 50
Nutana, Sask., 192-3
Oberon, Man., 160
Oberon, Lac, Que., 160
Odessa, Ont., 120
Odium, B.C., 80
offensive names, 82-6
Ogidaki Mountain, Ont., 27
Ogilvie, William, 283
Ogre Mountain, B.C., 171
Okanagan, B.C., 62
Okanagan Centre, B.C., 43
Okanagan-Coquihalla, B.C., 43
Okanagan-Similkameen-
Merritt, B.C., 43
Oldman River, Alta., 84-6
Old Shop Steadies, Nfld., 153
Onaping Falls, Ont., 147
Onoman, Lac, Que., 183
Ontario, 181
Ontario, Calif., 136
Ontario, Ore., 136
Ontario Geographic Names
Board, 142
Ontario Northland Railway, 62,
213
Ophelia Creek, B.C., 159
Ophir, Ont., 92
Ophir Creek, Y.T., 91
Ophir Township, Ont., 92
Orignac, R de 1', N.S., 215
orignal, 111
Oro-Medonte Township, Ont.,
144
Oromocto, N.B., 182
Orpheus, Mount, B.C., 167
Osgoode Township, Ont., 77, 232
Oshawa, Ont., 45
Oshawan, 50
Osnabruck, Ont., 262
Othello, B.C., 158-9
Ottawa, 111., 138
Ottawa, Kans., 138
Ottawa, Ont., 45,46, 77,183,
229-33,296
Ottawa-Carleton, Regional
Municipality of, Ont., 77, 273,
296
Ottawa Centre, Ont., 42
Ottawa Islands, Nun., 232
Ottawa River, Ont., Que., 198,
232
Ottawa River (South Branch),
Ont., 198
Ottawa South, Ont., 42
Ouentara, Le lac, Ont., 234
Ouigoudi, N.B., 56
Outaouais, Riviere des, Ont.,
Que., 230, 232
Outremont, Que., 141
oven,155
Owen Island, Ont., 258
Oyster Harbour, B.C., 124
padou, 154
Pakan, Alta., 286
Palliser, John, 84, 86, 213, 256, 265
Paradise, Nfld., 132
Paradise, N.S., 132
Paradise Arm, Nfld., 132
Paradise Brook, N.S., 132
Paradise Cove, Nfld., 132
Paradise Creek, Y.T., 133
Paradise Hill, Sask., 132-3
Paradise River, Nfld., 132
Paradise Sound, Nfld., 132
Paris, Ont., 95
Paris of Canada, 45
Parkway, Ont., 78
348 Index
Parrsboro Aboiteau, N.S., 155
Parr Town, N.B., 56,273
Partridge Berry Gully, Nfld., 153
Pasadena, Nfld., 117
Paska, Ont., 83
Paska Creek, Ont., 83
Paska Lake, Ont., 83
Paska Township, Ont., 83
Passchendaele, N.S., 131
passes, 264-8
Pauline, lie, Nun., 298
Payne Bay, Que., 185
Peace River, Alta., 44
Pearson, Lester B., 314
Pearson, Mount Lester, B.C., 303
Peas Brook, N.S., 163
Peck, Mount, B.C., 81
Pelee Island, Ont., 22
Pelee National Park, Ont., 31
Pelee, Point, Ont., 22, 31
Peltry Barasway, Nfld., 154
Pembroke, Ont., 145,188
Penelope, Mount, B.C., 167
Penetanguishine, Ont., 146
Penguin Islands, Nfld., 105
Penny Ice Cap, Nun., 32
Perth, Ont., 58,146
Perth County, Ont., 58
Petain, B.C., 80
Petain, Canton, Que., 80
Petain, Lac, Que., 80
Petain, Mount, Alta., B.C., 80
Peterborough, Ont., 40
Peterburian, 51
Peter Lougheed Provincial Park,
Alta., 254
Petitcodiac, N.B., 183
Petit lac Ha! Ha!, Que., 179
Petit Miramichi, N.B., 188
Petrolia, Ont., 146
Philippe, Lac, Que., 228
Philip's Lake, Que., 228
Philp Coulee, Alta., 150
Pickards Padou, N.B., 154
Pickering, Ont., 58
Pickering Village, Ont., 58
Picton, Ont., 51
Pictonian, 51
Picton Island, N.Y., 259
Pictou, N.S., 51
Picture Butte, Alta., 149
Pigeon Mountain, Alta., 256
Pile o' Bones, Sask., 45
Pincher Creek, Alta., 36
Pinchgut Tickle, Nfld., 153
Pine, Cape, Nfld., 105
Pisarinco, N.B., 83
Pisgah, Mount, N.B., 93
Pitt Island, B.C., 245
Pittsburgh of Canada, 45
Place du Quebec, Fr., 137
Placentia, Nfld., 110
Plaza de Quebec, Mex., 137
Plumas, Man., 118
Pocomoonshine Deadwater,
N.B., 153
Pocowagamis Deadwater, N.B.,
153
Pointe-a-1'Orignal, Ont., 214
Point Pelee, Ont., 22, 30
Poirier, Jean, 136, 223^
political corrections, 77-81
Poperinghe, Lac, Que., 129
portage, 149
Port Arthur, Ont., 73
Port au Choix, Nfld., 109
Port au Port Bay, Nfld., 109
Port au Port Peninsula, Nfld., 109
Port aux Basques, Nfld., 108
Port Borden, P.E.I., 270
Port Brabant, N.W.T., 184
Port Burwell, Nun., 185
Index 349
Port Dalhousie, Ont., 53, 75
Porte d'Enfer Rapids, B.C., 171
Port Harrison, Que., 185
Port Hope, Ont., 146,237,318
Portia, Man., 160
Portia, B.C., 158
Portland Canal, B.C., 245
Portneuf, Que., 41
Port-Nouveau-Quebec, Que.,
185
Port Simpson, B.C., 186
Portuguese, 14,33,21-2
Portuguese names, 21-2, 64,
103-6
Port Williams, N.S., 120
possessive names, 69-72
Poste-de-la-Baleine, Que., 186
Potato Creek, Y.T., 163
Pouce Coupe, B.C., 55
Powell, Man., 125
Powell Township, Ont., 125
prairie, 149
Prancer, Mount, N.B., 161
Premier Range, B.C., 301-2, 311
Prescott, Ont., 58,147
Prescott County, Ont., 58
President-Kennedy, Avenue du,
Que., 313
President-Kennedy, Route du,
Que., 313
Preston, Ont., 76
prime ministers' mountains,
B.C., 299-304
Prince Albert, Sask., 30,44
Prince Albert National Park,
Sask., 30
Prince Edward-Hastings, Ont.,
42
Prince Edward Island, 45
Prince of Wales, 292-5
Prince of Wales, N.B., 294
Prince of Wales College, P.E.I.,
294
Prince of Wales Drive, Ont., 295
Prince of Wales Falls, Ont., 294
Prince of Wales Highway, The,
Ont., 294
Prince of Wales Hotel, Alta., 295
Prince of Wales Island, Nun., 293
Prince of Wales Mountains,
Nun., 293
Prince of Wales Northern Heri-
tage Centre, N.W.T., 295
Prince of Wales Reach, B.C., 293
Prince of Wales Road, Ont., 294
Prince of Wales's Fort, Man., 292
Prince of Wales Strait, N.W.T.,
293
Prince Philip Basin, Nun., 86
pronunciation, 53-5
Provost, Alta., 55
Pubnico, N.S., 34, 222
Pudding Burn, B.C., 163
Puerto de Revillagigedo, B.C.,
11 3
Pukaskwa National Park, Ont.,
31
Pukaskwa River, 31
Punnichy, Sask., 55
Purgatory Glacier, B.C., 171
Putnik, Mount, Alta., 225
Pyramid Peak, B.C., 303
Qausuittuq, Nun., 187
Quadra and Vancouver's Island,
B.C., 112,245
Quadra Island, B.C., 113,245
Quamquamqua, B.C., 207
Quaqtaq, Que., 185
Quebec, 58,181
Quebec, Eng., 137
Quebec City, Que., 58,140,229
350 Index
Quebecer, 50
Quebec-Est, Que., 41
Quebeck, Term., 137
Quebecker, 50
Quebecois, 50
Quebec-Quest, Que., 41,297
Quebec, Place du, Fr., 137
Quebec, Plaza de, Mex., 137
Queen Bess, Mount, B.C., 289
Queen Charlotte, B.C., 144
Queen Charlotte City, B.C., 144
Queen Charlotte Islands, B.C.,
22, 246
Queen City, 44
Queen Elizabeth Drive, Ont., 291
Queen Elizabeth Foreland, Nun.,
287
Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Que., 291
Queen Elizabeth Islands, Nun.,
N.W.T., 290-1
Queen Elizabeth, Mount, Alta.,
B.C., 292
Queen Elizabeth Park, Alta., 291
Queen Elizabeth Park, B.C., 289
Queen Elizabeth Planetarium,
B.C., 291
Queen Elizabeth Ranges, Alta.,
290
Queen Elizabeth Theatre, B.C.,
291
Queen Elizabeth Way, Ont., 289
Queen Peak, B.C., 285
Queen's Park, Ont., 46
Queen Victoria, 284-7
Quesnel, B.C., 55
Quirpon, Nfld., 55
Quttinirpaaq National Park,
Nun., 33
Rabbit Creek, Y.T., 118 , 242
Race, Cape, Nfld., 104
Rada de Valdes y Bazan, B.C., 113
Radio Hill, Ont., 176
Radio Island, Nun., 176
Ragged Range, N.W.T., 26
Raglan, Ont., 121
Raglan Point, B.C., 121
Raglan Range, N.W.T., 121
Raglan Township, Ont., 121
Railway Hub of the West, 193
Raleigh, Nfld., 179
Rama Township, Ont., 77
Ramara Township, Ont., 77
Ramsay, Ont., 114
Rancheria, Y.T., 55
Rand, Rev. Silas, 204
Ranfurly, Alta., 100
Rankine Islands, B.C., 282
Rapid City, Man., 142
Rapide-a-1'Orignal, Que., 309
Rat Portage, Ont., 68
Rattling Brook Steadies, Nfld.,
153
Ray, Cape, Nfld., 105,108
Raynards Lake, N.S., 271
Rayside-Balfour, Ont., 147
R de TOrignac, N.S., 215
Redan, Ont, 119
Red Island, Nfld., 105
Redvers, Sask., 126
Redvers Township, Ont., 124
Regina, Sask., 44,45,194,286
Reginan, 52
Regina-Qu'Appelle, Sask., 40,42
Rencontre, Nfld., 55
Rene-Levesque, Boulevard, Que.,
274
Renews, Nfld., 104, 217
Resolute, N.W.T, 187
Resolution Island, Nun., 288
Restigouche, N.B., 39
Restigouche-Chaleur, N.B., 39
Index 351
Restigouche River, N.B., 188
Revelstoke, B.C., 30
Revillagigedo, Puerto de, B.C.,
11 3
Reykjavik, Man., 96
Rhodes, Mount, B.C., 127
Rhodes Township, Ont., 127
Richards, Capt. George, 246,276
Richmond, B.C., 100
Rideau City, Ont., 317
Rideau Lakes Township, Ont., 86
Rideau Township, Ont., 77, 232
Riding Mountain, Man., 30
Riding Mountain National Park,
Man., 30
Riga, Sask., 96
Rimmon, Mount, B.C., 171
Rio Florida Blanca, B.C., 113
rips, 155
River Disappointment, N.W.T.,
249
Riversdale, Sask., 193
Rivers Inlet, B.C., 244
River Styx, Ont., 167,170
Riviere-du-Loup, Que., 279
Riviere Ha! Ha!, Que., 179
Robert Service Creek, Y.T., 242
Robert Service, Mount, Y.T., 242
Robert Smith, Mount, B.C., 318
Roberts, Mount, B.C., 127
Roberts Township, Ont., 127
Robson, Mount, B.C., 26, 311
Rocky Barachois Bight, Nfld., 154
Rocky Mountain Pass, Alta.,
B.C., 267
Rocky Mountain passes, 264-8
Rocky Mountains, Alta., B.C., 250
Rocky Mountains Park, Alta., 29
Romaine, Riviere, Que., 183
romantic names, 164-8
Romeo, B.C., 158
Romeo, Mount, B.C., 158,167
Roosevelt, Mount, B.C., 314
Roseau, Man., 142
Rosseau, Ont., 142
Rothesay, N.B., 293-4
Rouge River, Ont., 44
Rouyn-Noranda, Que., 68, 75
Royal City, 44
Royal, Mont, Que., 223-4
Royal Roads, B.C., 113
Royal Victoria Hospital, Que.,
285
Rudolph, Mount, N.B., 161
Rundle, Mount, Alta., 256
runround, 155
Rustico, P.E.I., 34
Rustico Bay, P.E.I., 34
Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C., 43
Sackville, N.B., 57
Sackville, N.S., 57
Sagard, Gabriel, 235
Saglouc, Que., 186
Saguenay, Riviere, Que., 183
St. Arnaud Hills, Nun., 121
St. Brides, Nfld., 83
St. Catharines, Ont., 59-60, 75
St. Catharinite, 51
Saint-David-de-1'Auberiviere,
Que., 76
Sainte-Elisabeth, Que., 50
Sainte-Foy, Que., 50
Sainte-Julie-de-Somerset, Que.,
309
St. Elias, Mount, Y.T., 23,25
St. Elias Mountains, Y.T., 25,
314-15
Sainte-Marguerite-de-
Dorchester, Que., 273
St. Francis, Cape, Nfld., 104
St. George, Cape, Nfld., 106
352 Index
Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que.,
57
Saint John, N.B., 44,53-4,56-7,
141, 272
Saint Johner, 51
St. John River, N.B., 56
St. John's, Nfld., 53,56-7,70,
104
St. Johns, Que., 57
St. John's East, Nfld., 40
St. Johnsian, 51
St. John's West, Nfld., 40
Saint John West, N.B., 272
St. Julien Township, Ont., 131
St. Kyran's, Nfld., 72
St-Laurent, Louis, 19
St-Laurent, Mount Louis, B.C.,
303
St. Lawrence, Nfld., 105
St. Lawrence Island, Ont., 258
St. Lawrence Islands National
Park, Ont., 30,259
St. Lawrence, Lake, Ont., 260, 263
St. Lawrence Provincial Park,
Ont., 264
St. Lawrence River, 13
St. Lawrence Seaway, Ont., 260
Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, Que.,
177-8
St. Mary River, Alta., 85
St. Marys, Ont., 71,147
St. Mary's Bay, Nfld., 105
St. Mary's, Cape, Nfld., 105
St-Maurice, Riviere, Que., 31
St. Nicholas, Mount, N.B., 161
St. Nicholas Peak, B.C., 161
Saint-Nicolas, Que., 163
Saint-Noel, Que., 163
St. Peter's, N.S., 70
Saint Pierre and Miquelon, 105
Saint-Pol, Lac, Que., 129
Saint-Prosper-de-Dorchester,
Que., 273
St-Quentin, N.B., 130
St. Stephen, N.B., 76
St. Stephen-Milltown, N.B., 76
Saint-Valentin, Que., 164
Saint-Wilfred, N.B., 310
Salem, N.S., 94
Salem, Ont., 94
Salem Corners, Ont., 93-4
Salem Road, N.S., 94
Salliq, Nun., 187
Salluit, Que., 186
Sandon, B.C., 141
Sanirajak, Nun., 187
Santa Lake, Ont., 162
Santa's Village, Ont., 162
Santy Lake, Sask., 162
Sarcee Butte, Alta., 149
Sardis, B.C., 94
Sarnia, Ont., 76
Sarnia-Clearwater, Ont., 76
Saskatchewan, 54
Saskatchewan City, Man., 142
Saskatonian, 51
Saskatoon, Sask., 44,189-94
Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing,
Sask., 42
Saskatoon Drive, Ont., 194
Saskatoon Hill, Alta., 194
Saskatoon-Humboldt, Sask., 42
Saskatoon Island Provincial
Park, Alta., 194
Saskatoon Lake, Alta., 194
Saskatoon Lake, Sask., 194
Saskatoon Mountain, Alta., 194
Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, 42
Satan, Mount, B.C., 171
Satellite Hill, B.C., 176
Saugeen River, Ont., 183
Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., 45
Index 353
savannah, 155
Scadding, Henry, 235
Scarborough, Ont., 75,238
Scarlett Point, B.C., 121
Schreiber, Ont., 55
Scilly Cove, Nfld., 83
Sebastopol Township, Ont., 119
Secret Creek, Y.T., 168
Semiwagan Deadwater, N.B., 153
sensitive names, 82-6
Service, Robert, 240
Service, Mount Robert, Y.T., 242
Severn River, Ont., 234
Sevogle, N.B., 313
Shakespeare Island, Ont., 157
Shakespeare names, 155-60
Shakespeare Township, Ont., 157
Shark, Mount, Alta., 255
Sharon, Ont., 94
Shawvillite, 50
Sheaffe Island, Ont., 259
Sheba, N.B., 93
Sheba, Ont., 92
Sheba Township, Ont., 92
Shefford, Que., 41
Shepherd's Falls, Ont., 114
Sheppard, Robert, 48
Sherbrooke, Austr., 99
Sherridon, Man., 69
Shipman's Falls, Ont., 114
Shippagan, N.B., 62
Shippegan, N.B., 62
Shippegan Bay, N.B., 62
Shippegan Beach, N.B., 62
Shippegan Channel, N.B., 62
Shippegan Harbour, N.B., 62
Shippegan Parish, N.B., 62
Shippegan Park, N.B., 62
Shippigan, N.B., 62
Shubenacadie River, N.S., 222
Sidney, B.C., 58
Sidney, Man., 102-3
Signal Hill, Nfld., 172
Siloam, Ont., 94
Silver City, Y.T., 144
Simcoe, Capt. John, 236
Simcoe, John Graves, 96,236
Simcoe, Ala., 138-9
Simcoe, Ont., 58
Simcoe County, Ont., 58
Simcoe, Lake, Ont., 233,234
Simcoe North, Ont., 42
Similkameen, B.C., 181
Simon Bay, B.C., 275
Simon Creek, Alta., 275
Simon Glacier, Alta., 275
Simon Peak, Alta., B.C., 275
Sipweske, Man., 83
Sir Alexander Mackenzie Provin-
cial Park, B.C., 252
Sir Alexander, Mount, B.C., 251
Sir Allan MacNab, Mount, B.C.,
303
Sir Donald, Mount, B.C., 317
Sir James MacBrien, Mount,
N.W.T., 26
Sir John Abbott, Mount, B.C.,
300-1
Sir John Thompson, Mount, B.C.,
300-1
Sir Mackenzie Bowell, Mount,
B.C., 300-1
Sirmilik National Park, Nun., 33
Sir-Wilfrid, Mont, Que., 309
Siward Glacier, Nun., 159
Skeena, B.C., 40,44
Skidegate, B.C., 55
Slocan, B.C., 143^
Slocan City, B.C., 144
Slug Rock, B.C., 282
Smallwood, Joseph, 57
Smith Coulee, Sask., 319
354 Index
Smithfield, Ont, 317
Smith-Jones Lake, Sask., 318
Smith Lake, Sask., 318
Smith names, 316-19
Smith Peninsula, Sask., 318
Smith Point, P.E.I., 316
Smith's Creek, Ont., 318
Smiths Falls, Ont., 71,147,316-17
Smiths Shanty Hill, Ont., 319
Smiths Slough, Man., 319
Smith Sound, Nun., 318
Smith Township, Ont., 317
Smith-Windsor Islands, Sask.,
318
Smithville, Alta., 197,317
Smithville, Ont., 317
Smuts, Mount, Alta., 127, 253
Snafu Creek, Y.T., 69
Snowdrift, N.W.T, 187
soi, 155
Sointula, B.C., 135
Somme Creek, Y.T., 13 1
Somme, Lac, Que., 129
Somme, Riviere, Que., 129
Somme Township, Ont., 131
Sooite, 51
Sooke Inlet, B.C., 113
Sorcerer Mountain, B.C., 171
Sorcier, Mont du, Que., 170
Sorel, Que. 34
Sorrel, Mont, Que., 129
sound-alikes, 56-9
Souris, Man., 53
Souris, P.E.I., 53
Souris-Moose Mountain, Sask.,
214
South Bruce Peninsula Town-
ship, Ont., 77
South Dorchester Township,
Ont., 273
South Nahanni River, N.W.T., 32
Southport, P.E.I., 76
South Saskatchewan River, 84-6,
190,192
South Seas names, 99-103
Southwest Miramichi, N.B., 188
Southwest Miramichi River,
N.B., 187
South West Nova, N.S., 40
Spaniard's Bay, Nfld., 117
Spanish names, 111-13
Spanish River, Ont., 115-16
Sparrowhawk, Mount, Alta., 254
Spear Bay, Nfld., 22
Spear Bay Brook, Nfld., 22
Spear, Cape, Nfld., 21,104
spelling, 59-62
spelling mistakes, 59-62
Spence Bay, Nun., 186
Spilsbury Island, Ont., 258
Spinneys Heath, N.S., 154
Spion Kop, B.C., 126
Spionkop Creek, Alta., 126
Spionkop Ridge, Alta., 126
Split, Cape, N.S., 31
Springfield, Ont., 96, 237
Spud Island, 45
Spud Islanders, 52
Squaw Island, Ont., 258
Stadacona, 13
Stalin, Mount, B.C., 80-1
Stalin Township, Ont., 80-1
Stanley Baldwin, Mount, B.C.,
302
Stanley, Mount, B.C., 128
Stanleyville, Ont., 157
Star City, Sask., 143
Statesmen Range, B.C., 313-14
steady, 153
Steckley, John, 234
Steeltown, 45
Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, 102,184
Index 355
stillwater, 153
Stli'ilep, B.C., 206
Stockholm, Sask., 97
Stouffville, Ont., 54
Stovin Island, Ont., 259
Strait of Canso, N.S., 205
Strait of Georgia, B.C., 113,244
Straits of Anian, 111
Stratford, Ont., 156
Stratford, P.E.I., 76
Stratfordian, 51
Strathcona, Alta., 317
Strathcona Sound, Nun., 317
Strathgartney Provincial Park,
P.E.I., 34
Stupendous Mountain, B.C., 252
Styx Glacier, B.C., 167
Styx Mountain, B.C., 171
Styx, River, Ont., 167,170
Sudburian, 51
Sudbury, Regional Municipality
of, Ont., 147
Sugar Island, Ont., 258
Sugar Island Padou, N.B., 154
Sugluk, Que., 186
Summersider, 51
Suni, Ont., 83
Suni Creek, Ont., 83
Suni Lake, Ont., 83
Suni Township, Ont., 83
Sunnyvale, Ont., 262
Superior, 16
Sutherland's, Ont., 92
Swastika, Ont., 79-80
Sydney, N.S., 45,58
Sydney ite, 51
Sydney-Victoria, N.S., 40
Tabusintac Gully, N.B., 152
Taloyoak, Nun., 186
Tarfu Creek, Y.T., 69
Taronto, Lac de, Ont., 233-4
Taronto, Le passage, Ont., 233
Taronto, Riviere, Ont., 233
Tasmania Islands, Nun., 99
Telegraph Bay, B.C., 174
Telegraph Coulee, Sask., 174
Telegraph Creek, Alta., 174
Telegraph Creek, B.C., 174
Telegraphe, Colline de, Que., 174
Telegraph Hill, N.B., 175
Telegraph Island, Ont., 174
Telegraph Mountain, B.C., 174
Telegraph Narrows, B.C., 174
Telegraph Narrows, Ont., 174
Telegraph Range, B.C., 174
Telephone Bay, Ont., 175
Telephone Lake, Man., 175
Telephone Lake, Ont., 175
Temiscaming, Que., 62
Temiscamingue, Que., 43,62
Temiscamingue, Lac, Que., 62
Temiscouata, Lac, Que., 183
Temiskaming and Northern
Ontario Railway, 62,213
Temperance, N.S., 271
Terra Nova National Park, Nfld.,
32
Tete Jaune Cache, B.C., 55,267
Tete Jaune Pass, Alta., B.C., 267
Texada Island, B.C., 113
Thames Centre, Ont., 273
Thane Lake, Nun., 159
Thane River, Nun., 159
The Forks, Ont., 96
The Ha Ha, Nfld., 179
The Hat, 45
The Lakehead, Ont., 73
The Narrows, N.S., 181
The Peg, 45
The Rock, 45
The Soo, 45
356 Index
Thompson, David, 191, 266,275
Thompson, Mount Sir John, B.C.,
300-1
Thompsonite, 51
Thornhill, Ont., 40
thoroughfare, 155
Thousand Islands, Ont., 256-60
Three Sisters, The, Alta., 256
thrum, 155
Thunder Bay, Ont., 73
Thunder Bayite, 52
Thwartway Island, Ont., 258
tickle, 153
Tidds Island, Ont., 258
Tierra de los Bretons, N.S., 220
Tilleys Gullies, Nfld., 152
Timiskaming, Ont., 62,183
Timiskaming, District of, Ont., 62
Timiskaming, Lake, Ont., 62
Timmins, Ont., 141
Timmins-Chapleau, Ont., 40
Timon, Lac, Que., 160
Tiny Tim Lake, B.C., 162
Tip Top Mountain, Ont., 27
Titania, Lac, Que., 160
Titan, Mount, B.C., 301
Tobique River, N.B., 55
Tofino Inlet, B.C., 113
Toledo, Ont., 116
tolt, 155
Tom Howes Gully, Nfld., 152
Tomissipii, Ont., 200
Tomissisippi, Ont., 200
Toniata, Ont., 258
Torngat Mountains, Nfld., Que.,
27,168
Toronto, Austr., 99,137
Toronto, Ind., 137
Toronto, Iowa, 137
Toronto, Kans
v
 137
Toronto, Mo., 137
Toronto, Ohio, 137
Toronto, Ont., 44-8,53,141,145,
229, 233-8
Toronto, Tenn., 137
Toronto Gore Township, Ont.,
237
Torontonian, 49
Toronto the Good, 46
Toronto Township, Ont., 237
Torrens, Mount, Alta., 101
townies, 50
Tracadie Bay, P.E.I., 222
Tracadieche, Que., 272
Tracadigash, Mont, Que., 272
Transatlantica, 16
Transcona, Man., 69
Transylvania, 16
Tremont Island, Ont., 258
Trepassey, Nfld., 55
Trifluvien, 50
Trinity Bay, Nfld., 105,165
Trois-Rivieres, Que., 43,50
Trout Lake City, B.C., 143
Troy, N.S., 94
Troy, Ont., 94
Trudeau, Pierre Elliott, 25
Tsawwassen, B.C., 55
Tthenaagoo, N.W.T., 187
Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., 184-5
Tuktuk Nogait National Park,
N.W.T., 32
Tulita, N.W.T., 187
Tumbler Ridge, B.C., 264, 268
Tupona, 16
Tuponia, 16
Tupper, Mount, B.C., 300
Turk's Gut, Nfld., 83
Turkey Point, Ont., 163
Turner, Mount, Alta., 255
Tuurngatalik Island, Nun., 171-2
Twillingate, Nfld., 33,38
Index 357
Ucluelet, B.C., 55
Ulysses, Mount, B.C., 167
undesirable names, 82-6
Upper California, N.B., 116
Upper Canada, 16,237
Upper Canada Village, Ont., 264
Upper Christmas Pond, Nfld.,
163
Upper Sackville, N.S., 57
Upper Thorne Centre, Que., 124
Upper West Pubnico, N.S., 34
Uranium City, Sask., 143
Urbainville, P.E.I., 222
Ursalia, 16
Uscan, Lake, Ont., 263
Utopia, Ont., 134
Utopia Lake, B.C., 134
Utopia, Lake, N.B., 134
Valdes Island, B.C., 113
Valdes y Bazan, Rada de, B.C.,
113
Valenciennes River, B.C., 130
Valentine, Ont., 167
Valentine Creek, Sask., 164
Valentine Hill, B.C., 164
Valentine Lake, N.B., 164-5
Valentine Lake, Nfld., 164
Valentine Lake, Ont., 164
Valentine names, 164
Valhalla, Alta., 134
Valhalla, Man., 134
Valhalla Lake, Ont., 134
Valhalla Mountain, Nun., 134
Valhalla Ranges, B.C., 134
Valley East, Ont., 147
Valparaiso, Sask., 116-17
Valpy, Michael, 20
Vancouver, Capt. George, 113,
243-7
Vancouver, B.C., 58,175-6, 246
Vancouver Bay, B.C., 246
Vancouver Island, B.C., 58,
112-13,245
Vancouverite, 49,50
Vancouver, Mount, B.C., 246
Vancouver-Quadra, B.C., 43
Vancouver River, B.C., 246
Vancouver Rock, B.C., 246
Van Home, Sir William, 69,195,
246,285
Vanier, Georges, 112, 295-9
Vanier, Ont., 77,141,232,295-6
Vanier, Que., 297
Vanier College, Que., 299
Vanier Cup, 299
Vanier, lie, Nun., 248
Vanier Institute of the Family, 299
Vanier Medal, 299
Vanier, Mount, Nun., 299
Vanier, Mount, Y.T., 298-9
Vanier Park, B.C., 299
Varna, Ont., 120
vault, 155
Vegreville, Alta., 44
Veldt, Alta., 126
Verdun Glacier, B.C., 130
Verdun, Lac, Que., 129
Verdun Township, Ont., 131
Vermilion Pass, Alta., B.C., 264-6,
268
Verrazzano, Giovanni de, 219
Vesperia, 16
Victoria, Queen, 19,284-7
Victoria, Alta., 286
Victoria, B.C., 286
Victoria, Nfld., 287
Victoria, Ont., 122,287
Victoria, P.E.I., 287
Victoria, Sask., 286
Victoria and Albert Mountains,
Nun., 287
358 Index
Victoria Avenue, Ont, 285
Victoria Beach, Man., 286
Victoria Corners Ont., 287
Victoria County, N.B., 287
Victoria County, N.S., 287
Victoria County, Ont., 286
Victoria Cross, P.E.I., 287
Victoria General Hospital, Man.,
285
Victoria General Hospital, N.S.,
285
Victoria, Grand lac, Que., 287
Victoria Harbour, Nun., 285
Victoria Harbour, Ont., 287
Victoria Island, Nun., N.W.T., 287
Victoria Lake, Man., 286
Victoria Lake, Ont., 287
Victoria, Lake, Ont., 156
Victorialand, 16
Victorialia, 16
Victorian, 50
Victoria Peak, B.C., 286
Victoria, Pointe, Que., 285
Victoria Springs, Ont., 287
Victoria Square, Ont., 287
Victoria Township, Ont., 286
Victoria University, Ont., 285
Victoriaville, Ont., 114
Victoriaville, Que., 287
Victoriaville-Arthabaska, Que.,
287
Victoria West, P.E.I., 287
Vienna, Ont., 97
Viking, Alta., 83
Ville-Marie, Que., 224
Vimy, Alta., 129
Vimy Barracks, Ont., 129
Vimy, Canton, Que., 129
Vimy Lakes, B.C., 130
Vimy, Mont, Que., 129
Vimy Peak, Alta., 129
Vimy Ridge, Alta., 129
Vimy Ridge, B.C., 130
Vimy Ridge, Ont., 129
Vimy Ridge Island, Ont., 129
Vittoria, Ont., 96
Vixen, Mount, N.B., 161
Waddington, Mount, B.C., 25
Wakeham Bay, Que., 185
Walbran, Capt. John, 111
Walden, Ont., 77,147
Wales, Prince of, 392-5
Wales, Ont., 260-2,294
Wales Island, Nun., 263,293
Walhalla Creek, Y.T., 102
Wanapitei, Ont., 55
Wanderers Channel, Ont., 260
Wapta River, B.C., 266
Wapusk National Park, Man., 30
Wardsville, Ont., 317
Warrior, Mount, Alta., 255
Warsaw, Ont., 95
War spite, Mount, Alta., 255
Wascana, Sask., 182
Washington of the North, 45
Waterford, Ont., 114
Waterloo, Ont., 79
Waters Township, Ont., 77
Waterton Lakes National Park,
Alta., 30
Waterview, P.E.I., 76
Wauchope, Sask., 55,126
Wauchope Township, Ont., 124
Wawanesa, Man., 35, 83,182
Welcome, Mount, B.C., 301
Welland Junction, Ont., 142
Wellesley Island, N.Y., 259
Wellington, Ont., 58,120
Wellington County, Ont., 58
Wendigo Beach, Man., 170
Wendigo Lake, Ont., 170
Index 359
Wendigo Point, Man., 170
Wendigo River, Man., 170
Wenonah, Sask., 193
West, Bruce, 48
West Carleton Township, Ont.,
77,232
West Dublin, N.S., 98
West Islanders, 52
Westlock, Alta., 69
West Mississippi Lake, Ont., 200
Westmorland-Kent, N.B., 41
West Paradise, N.S., 132
West Pubnico, N.S., 34
West Road (Blackwater) River,
B.C., 251
West Saskatoon, Sask., 192
West Woodlands Island, Ont.,
263
Wetaskiwin, Alta., 40
Wet Lake, Ont., 157
Whapmagoostui, Que., 186
White-Fraser, Mount, B.C., 276
White Hill, N.S., 28
Whitehorse, Y.T., 37, 241
Whitehorse Rapids, Y.T., 37
Whonnock, B.C., 61
Wild Rose, Alta., 43
Wilfrid Island, Ont., 310
Wilfrid, Lac, Que., 309
Wilfrid Laurier University, Ont.,
311-12
William Henry, Que., 35
Wind City, Y.T., 144
Windigo Island, Ont., 170
Windigo Lake, Man., 170
Windigo Lake, Ont., 170
Winding Stairs Rips, N.B., 155
Wind Mountain, Alta., 254
Windsor, N.B., 58
Windsor, N.S., 58
Windsor, Ont., 58
Windsor, Que., 58
Windsor Mountain, Alta., 87
Windtower, Alta., 254
Windy Mountain, Alta., 254
Winnipeg, Man., 45, 46, 74,182
Winnipegger, 49,51
Winnipeg North Centre, Man., 42
Winnipeg South Centre, Man., 42
Winnipeg-Transcona, Man., 40
Winona, Ont., 193
Winona, Sask., 193
Winston, Ont., 79-80
Winterpeg, 46
Winterton, Nfld., 83
Winthuysen, Bocas de, B.C., 113
Wintuhuysen Inlet, 207
Witch Spirit Lake, B.C., 271
Wolfe Island, Ont., 157
Wood Buffalo National Park,
Alta., N.W.T, 30
Woodlands, Ont., 260
Woodlands Islands, Ont., 263
Woods Lake, Ont, 71
Woodstonian, 51
Wunnammin Lake, Ont., 183
Yahk, B.C., 62
Yarmouthian, 51
Yellowhead Highway, Alta., B.C.,
Man., Sask., 268
Yellowhead Pass, Alta., B.C., 264,
267-8
Yellowknife, N.W.T., 38
Yellowknifer, 51
Yoho National Park, B.C., 29
Yoho River, B.C., 29
Yorick, Lac, Que., 160
York, Ont., 75,145,236,238
Yorke Island, Ont., 258
York-Sunbury, N.B., 41
Yorkton-Melville, Sask., 42