1897-S. TRANSACTIONS. 3 1 



With Sir William Van Home* we would have to toil 

 and struggle to provide the thousand place-names which had 

 to be selected in connection with the naming of the stations 

 of the C. P. Ry. 



Plenty of cares, many stripes of pain, much vain wrest- 

 ling with mosquitoes and cold and heat and privations of many 

 kinds ; many Nansen-like experiences. But what a host of 

 place-names we would have heard given by these Fathers of 

 our Place-nomenclature. 



We would have to follow in their devious wandering not 

 alone the men who have been named, but also the Aborio-inal 

 Indians (the "naturals," Rev. Richard Hakluyt styled them) 

 as their moccasined feet threaded the way through pathless 

 forests, or their marvellous canoes and their matchless snow- 

 shoes carried them along the streams and plains in their hunt 

 for the sturgeon and the striped or white or blue or black bass 

 and for the beaver, the buffalo, the moose or the caribou, and 

 watch them as with wonderful insight they discover the great 

 topographical features of the country and apply their names 

 of music to them. 



We must (however reluctantly) give upon this occasion, 

 the idea of foUowmg the thought-trails suggested by the ques- 

 tion " Who gave the place-names of Canada,"and confine our- 

 selves to the query : " Why was the name given ?" 



Isaac Taylor says " there are only about 300 German 

 griind-zvorte?' (root words) which, variously combined with 

 the bestimmiings-zvorter (designative words) constitute the 

 500,000 names which are found upon the map of Germany." 

 No such clue have we to guide us through the labyrinth of 

 our place nomenclature. 



With us the first step is to ascertain whether the name 

 is enchorial or is foreign — is local, indigenous, and with the 

 flavour of the soil clinging to it ; or has come to us — as bananas 

 and sardines and lemons and ostrich feathers come — from 

 abroad; is, in fact, home-made, or is an imported article. 



We have borrowed place-names, as well as money, from 

 Great Britain — in the one case as in the other sometimes 

 wisely and oftentimes foolishly. When we called a place Stid- 



*Probably the place-name Father with the most numerous progeny 

 of all the place-name Fathers Canada has ever had, though Dr. Robert 

 Bell is a close second, if he does not take first place, havmg some 1,200 

 place names to his credit in the various regions he has explored. 



