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John C. Lehr and Brian McGregor
ISSN 1911-5814
78Prairie Perspectives: Geographical Essays 2016, 18: 78–84
The politics of toponymy
The politics of toponymy: Naming settlements, municipali-
ties and school districts in Canada’s Prairie provinces
John C. Lehr
Department of Geography, University of Winnipeg
Brian McGregor
Department of Geography, University of Winnipeg
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Correspondence to: John C. Lehr, Department of Geography, University of Winnipeg, 515 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg MB, R3B 2E9 Email:
j.lehr@uwinnipeg.ca
Place names reflect the political, military, economic, and social power of a group. When what are now the Canadian Prairie
provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Albertaa were settled by Europeans, the names they bestowed on places revealed
the newcomers’ power and the institutions that constituted the political fabric of the new society. Railway corporations, the
churches, and the imperial government were the principal contributors to toponyms of settled places. At the local level,
hundreds of rural municipalities were named by politicians and thousands of school districts were named by elected school
trustees. Investigation of the naming process reveals how these newcomers negotiated their place in Canadian society and how
they transferred their world views, history, and geography into western Canada.
Keywords: toponyms, school districts, rural municipalities, Canadian prairies
Introduction
Places are social constructs created by human societies who im-
bue them with meaning and values. Assigning a new name to
a place is a powerful statement of political authority that may
subsume religious beliefs, patterns of use, social values, a soci-
ety’s views of the past, and its expectations of the future. The old
axiom that the victors write the history should carry a corollary
that they also get to name—or rename—places. Place names
carry emotional and cultural baggage and are socially and politi-
cally important as products of often conicting ethnic, national,
and community values.
The process of de-colonializing Canada’s North testies to
the deep emotional bond of communities to place and the role of
place names as a form of symbolic capital for both elite and mar-
ginalized groups. The acts of renaming Frobisher Bay to Iqaluit
in 1987 and Eskimo Point to Arviat in 1989, for example, high-
lighted the semiotic relationship between toponyms, power, and
identity. To the Inuit population, restoring the original names
was a symbolic assertion of their presence and an afrmation
of their political primacy in the newly created administrative
territory that would eventually become Nunavut. The process
continues. In Manitoba, the news media has begun to note the
Cree community of Cross Lake is also known as Pimicikamak,
which is Cree for where the lake crosses the river, though the
band’s website insists that the name describes the tribal terri-
tory rather than the community of Cross Lake itself (Cross Lake
John C. Lehr and Brian McGregor
ISSN 1911-5814
79Prairie Perspectives: Geographical Essays 2016, 18: 78–84
The politics of toponymy
Band 2016; Robinson 2016). Such nuances are important, for
the semiotics of renaming speak to the perpetuation of deeply
entrenched power relationships between settler and Aboriginal
societies.
Geographers and historians have long recognized the study
of place names as a valuable aid in interpreting past landscapes.
In Britain, the course of settlement by various invading groups
can be determined through the distribution of Norse and Saxon
place names, while surviving Celtic place names, often highly
descriptive, when translated offer valuable insights into envi-
ronmental conditions thousands of years ago (Readers Digest
Association 1965, 124–5.) A series of publications by the British
Place Name Society has examined the origins and meanings of
place names in ever more detail, extending to the level of farms
and individual elds offering new insights into the landscapes
of bygone eras. Place name evidence was also used by Sousa
and García-Murillo (2001) to reconstruct changes in past envi-
ronments. Elsewhere, Cohen and Kliot (1992) and Katz (1995)
studied place names as part of political processes aimed at le-
gitimizing territorial claims; Guyot and Seethal (2007) argued
they were expressions of social power; while Lester (1979)
viewed place names as integral parts of the colonization and de-
colonization process. This nal point is echoed by Yeoh (1996)
and Tucker and Rose-Redwood (2015), who maintain toponyms
are indicators of social attitudes and political thinking. Place
names are also important to national governments. Radding and
Weston (2010, 394) argue some nations are prepared to go to
war over the naming of a place, believing recognition of a place
name legitimizes a territorial claim.
In Canada, there has been increasing interest in the study
of place names, sparked in part by Alan Rayburn’s popular
book, Naming Canada, which explored the history of Canadi-
an place naming. In the Prairie provinces a series of publica-
tions have listed and, less often, given the etymology of prairie
place names. In Manitoba, Rudnyc’kyj, (1970), Hamm (1980),
and Buchner (2000) maintained a gazetteer-like approach that
provided sophisticated and etymological analyses of provincial
place names. Saskatchewan place names were inventoried and
explained by Russell (1980) and Barry (1997). Marden (1973),
Karamitsanis (1990), Harrison (1994), and Aubrey (1996) have
listed and given the etymology of many Alberta place names.
More recently however, Berg and Vuolteenaho (2009) and Rose-
Redwood et al. (2010) have argued for a critical reformulation
of the study of toponomy, urging a move beyond the traditional
focus on etymology and taxonomy and re-examination of the
politics of naming places.
The reformulated critical approach to toponymic enquiry ar-
gues that power, narrowly and simplistically dened as politics,
misses all the other inuences on place names and the effects
they have on people. A critical, far broader, and more encom-
passing view, acknowledges that naming places is inextricably
bound up with both governmental and societal power relations.
Laura Bigon’s (2016) edited volume on the colonial legacies
embedded in African toponomys is an example. The contribu-
tors recognize that the relationship between governed and gov-
ernment as manifested in place names is complex and nuanced
by the semiotics of place and agency. The critical approach to
the examination of prairie toponymy, adopted here, emphasizes
the nuances of naming rural municipalities and school districts
by settlers. In so doing, it reveals something of the complexity
surrounding place, toponymy, society, politics, and power. Thus
the toponomys found on the prairies may be seen variously as
statements of imperialism, settler appropriation, Aboriginal re-
sistance, and ethnic resistance or acculturation.
Toponyms in the Prairie provinces
For millennia before the arrival of Europeans in the territory that
now comprises the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and
Alberta, the land was occupied by Aboriginal peoples who as-
signed names to those features and points signicant to them for
religious, territorial, or economic reasons. As is common when
invaders dispossess the original inhabitants and occupy a new
territory, in those parts of the prairie provinces settled by Eu-
ropean agriculturalists, the newcomers transplanted their politi-
cal and social values and impressed their weltanschauung into
the landscape by creating, naming, and renaming places. Today,
relatively few original Aboriginal place names survive in their
original form, though many “English” place names are simply
the original Aboriginal names appropriated and translated into
English. Head-Smashed-In and Swift Current are but two ex-
amples. Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan is actually a poor rendition
of an Aboriginal name that had nothing to do with the animal
or its jaw. For the most part those Aboriginal place names that
have survived without being translated into English or French,
or mangled in pronunciation, occur most frequently in areas that
were settled only sparsely by Europeans, such as the northern
shield areas unsuited to commercial agriculture.
Since western Canada was surveyed long before any sig-
nicant settlement by Europeans, the Crown, represented by the
Dominion Government, and later by provincial governments
and their agencies, was a powerful institution that monitored
and registered place names, thereby controlling the majority of
the toponomy of the country. Government surveyors recorded
names obtained from Aboriginal people or squatters who were
present when the survey came through. At least in the early pe-
riod of European exploration, the toponyms appearing on maps
were the product of negotiation between pre-existing Aboriginal
knowledge and cartographic expedience. The Canadian geolo-
gist J. B. Tyrrell explained the process of naming places in areas
new to Europeans:
… many of the names in use by the local tribes were obtained
from them. Where such names did not conict with similar
names in use elsewhere, they were generally adopted in my
reports and on maps. When no native Indian names were ob-
tainable, I made use of such names as seemed appropriate at the
time (Tyrrell 1915, 214).
John C. Lehr and Brian McGregor
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80Prairie Perspectives: Geographical Essays 2016, 18: 78–84
The politics of toponymy
Tyrrell listed some 230 Aboriginal place names in “Manito-
ba and vicinity,” all of which referred to natural features: lakes,
rivers, rapids, islands, portages, and so forth (Tyrrell 1915, 214–
231). These names had been in use by local Aboriginal popula-
tions according to Tyrrell “from time immemorial.” Some, he
thought, were “evidently contractions or corruptions” with their
original meanings lost. When he considered Aboriginal names
too long or difcult for Europeans to pronounce, he shortened
them to “about four syllables, retaining, as far as possible, the
general character and sound of the words” as pronounced by
the Aboriginal population (Tyrrell 1915, 215). Most surviving
Aboriginal place names are descriptive. Some examples include
Patemaykwan Lake [where beaver are put in a re to burn the
fur off], Pembina [summer berry], Pukatawagen [shing place],
Pisew Falls [lynx] and Manigotagen [bad throat] (Buchner
2000). Athabasca [grass and reeds here and there], Manitou
[supernatural spirit or god], Ponoka [elk], Saskatchewan [swift
owing river], Wetaskiwin [the hills where peace was made]
and Winnipeg [muddy waters] are among the relatively few Ab-
original names on the prairies that survived the inrush of Euro-
pean settlement (Russell 1980).
The Canadian government had no real presence in the re-
gion prior to 1870. Before then, corporations were the de facto
European claim to power for all the territory that later became
the Prairie provinces. Two fur-trading enterprises, the Northwest
Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), maintained
posts along the rivers that fed their respective trades. In northern
Manitoba, along the rivers owing into Hudson Bay, most of the
permanent settlements were founded by the HBC. Virtually all
promoted a particular vision of history and conated corporate
and national identities in their names. Oxford House and York
Factory incorporated transferred toponyms, Churchill and the
nearby Fort Prince of Wales suggested imperial designs, while
Norway House simply recalled the ethnic origin of the Nor-
wegians brought in to construct a road there in the early 1800s
(Buchner 2000, 195). The Northwest Company, headquartered
in Montreal, also penetrated into the region, leaving evidence
of its Quebec roots in some of the forts it established in con-
nection with the fur trade. Dauphin, Qu’Appelle, Fond du Lac,
and Souris were all products of the company’s French Canadian
heritage, though its posts established by Anglophone employees
were given British or Aboriginal names: Fort Chipewyan, Pem-
bina, and Fort Gibraltar.
When the railway companies laid track across the prairies
they located station halts at six to ten mile intervals. Thus, thou-
sands of places were created along railway lines, most of which
were named by railway executives and employees. Most of the
former, and many of the latter, were drawn from an Anglo-Cana-
dian elite thoroughly imbued with British imperial values. The
names of major points along the lines reected this. For example,
Virden in western Manitoba was initially named Gopher Creek
but was renamed Manchester after the Duke of Manchester, a
Canadian Pacic Railway (CPR) director. When it was found
that another Manitoba community was already named Manches-
ter the name was switched to Virden after the name of the duke’s
county seat (Buchner 2000, 282.) Similarly, Cherry Creek was
re-named by the CPR in honour of Adolph Boissevain who had
introduced CPR shares to the European market in the railway’s
early years (Buchner 2000, 83). In later years, other large corpo-
rations also played roles. Early hydro-electric generating plants
built by Winnipeg Hydro and Manitoba Hydro along the Win-
nipeg River mostly carried non-Aboriginal names. In the 1960s,
as generating stations were built further north, and corporate at-
titudes towards the Aboriginal presence began to change, names
of Aboriginal origin were adopted or appropriated.
In areas occupied by waves of European immigrants, Ab-
original toponyms, like the people who created them, generally
were soon marginalized or eliminated. If settlers were already
established, names of physical features and other landmarks
were obtained from them and also became enshrined on topo-
graphic maps. Later, as embryonic settler communities grew,
they were named by government-appointed postmasters who
chose to celebrate their homeland places, British national heroes
or honour early, mostly Anglophone, pioneer families.
The names of resource towns in the North tended to reect
the disconnection between the corporations that founded them
and the Aboriginal peoples who occupied the area prior to the
exploitation of the area’s mineral resources. Thompson, Urani-
um City, Fort McMurray, and Lynn Lake are typical examples.
One hydro dam near Norway House was named Jenpeg, a name
often assumed to be of Aboriginal origin but was in fact an ac-
ronym of the names of two women in the Manitoba Hydro of-
ce in Winnipeg: Jennifer and Peggy (Buchner 2000, 123). The
oddly named Flin Flon, Manitoba was named after Josiah Flint-
abbatey Flonatin––a ctional character in the novel, The Sunless
City––by the prospector who discovered the deposit that fueled
the town’s growth (Buchner 2000, 82).
In areas where settlement preceded the arrival of the railway,
churches exercised a crucial role. In French and Métis communi-
ties across the West a high proportion of place names celebrate
Roman Catholic saints, members of the church hierarchy, or ma-
jor donors to church building funds. In Manitoba, Ste. Agathe,
St. Jean Baptiste, St. Pierre, and Ste. François Xavier all com-
memorated Catholic saints. St. Malo was named in honour of a
Mr. Malo who was a major contributor to the settlement’s church
building fund and Fannystelle was named after Fanny Rives, a
woman who worked among the poor of Paris (Rudnyc’kyj 1970,
67). Further west, Catholic inuence and French and Métis pres-
ence was evident at such places as Gravelbourg, Batoche, St.
Laurent, Prud’homme and Bonne-Madon in Saskatchewan and
at St. Albert, Morinville, Girouxville, Lac la Biche and Grande
Cache in Alberta (Russell 1980; Anderson 2013). Among Men-
nonite communities in Manitoba and Saskatchewan the pacic
and bucolic values of their churches prevailed, expressed in
names of settlements such as Waldheim [forest home], Hoch-
feld [high eld], Schönfeld [good eld], and Gnadenthal [grace
valley] (Russell 1980; Epp 1974). Jewish settlers also named
some of their settlements after religious leaders. Hirsch, Sas-
katchewan, celebrated Baron Maurice de Hirsch, the founder of
the Jewish Colonization Association (Russell 1973, 140). The
nearby railway halt of Narcisse was named after Narcisse Levin,
sometime President of the same association (Buchner 2000, 23),
John C. Lehr and Brian McGregor
ISSN 1911-5814
81Prairie Perspectives: Geographical Essays 2016, 18: 78–84
The politics of toponymy
whereas Bender Hamlet in Manitoba’s Interlake district was
named after Jacob Bender who organized that colony in 1903.
Naming places on the prairies has been predominately an in-
stitutional process that continues today. In Manitoba, thousands
of not yet ofcially-named lakes and physical features are be-
ing assigned names by the Provincial Geographical Branch that
honour those men and women who gave their lives in the service
of their country. For example, Kennedy Point on Crow Lake
was named in 1995 after WWII casualty Flying Ofcer James
C. Kennedy of 424 Wellington Squadron, while Lindal Lake,
named in 1972, commemorates Lieutenant Harold E. Lindal of
Winnipeg who was killed while serving with the Essex Scottish
Regiment during the same war.
Individuals without institutional power played a less signi-
cant role in naming prairie places. Often those who did occu-
pied an ofcial position as a local postmaster or postmistress
and were in a position to name their post ofce, from which
the locality eventually took its name. There were exceptions, of
course, when no one person named a place. The community of
Ardill in Saskatchewan gained its name from a Cockney immi-
grant complaining that the road from the river to the settlement
was a “damned ‘ard ‘ill” [hard hill] for his team to climb (Russell
1973, 11). Hoodoo, also in Saskatchewan, allegedly gained its
name from an elderly French woman who never learned English
and her rendition of “How do you do,” came out as “Hoodoo.”
This captured the imagination of the community and everyone
began using Hoodoo as a salutation. The school, post ofce and
the church and, nally, the settlement were all named Hoodoo
(Russell 1973, 143). When Indiana settlers, known as Hoo-
siers, settled south of Scott, Saskatchewan, their district became
known colloquially as Hoosier Valley. In 1913, the Grand Trunk
Pacic line arrived and proposed to name their station, around
which a settlement was sure to form, “Fee” in accordance with
its alphabetical naming practice. The Indiana settlers proposed
Hoosier Valley but the railway settled on Hoosier (Russell 1973,
143). The district of Onefour in southern Alberta was so named
by local settlers after its location, which they thought was in
Township 1 Range 4, but actually lay in Township 2 Range 4.
When the discrepancy was realized they elected to keep the orig-
inal name (Karamitsanis 1991, 90).
Naming municipalities
Across the prairies local governance of rural areas is in the hands
of rural municipalities (RMs).1 Their names variously reveal the
dominance of the Anglophone elite and the inuence of the Ro-
man Catholic Church in Métis and French communities. Less
often, the presence of large numbers of settlers from specic
ethnic groups is reected in RM toponomy.
Rural municipalities were created at different times in the
three Prairie provinces. The rst RM was created in Manitoba in
1873 but it was not until 1909 that Saskatchewan organized its
rst. Alberta did not see RMs organized until it passed the Rural
Municipality Act in 1912 (Hanson 1956, 24–25; Goldsborough
2008, 5). Whereas in Manitoba RMs were generally organized
before the geographically smaller school districts, in Saskatch-
ewan and Alberta organization of school districts often preceded
the organization of local government at the level of the RM. This
was to have an effect on the naming process.
There are presently 116 RMs in Manitoba. The great major-
ity of their names are transferred toponyms from Anglophone
eastern Canada or Britain or, if not, they bear the names of
the British or Anglo-Canadian elite. Nine municipalities have
French or French Roman Catholic names, three have Icelandic
names: Bifrost, Gimli, and Siglunes. Surprisingly, seven RMs
have names of Aboriginal origin: Miniota [plenty of water],
Minnitonas [home of the little god], Saskatchewan [swift ow-
ing river], Odanah [large camp], Pembina [summer berries],
while Pipestone and Brokenhead are both translations of Ab-
original place names (Rudnyc’kyj 1970; Buchner 2000). Since
Aboriginal peoples in western Canada were almost entirely dis-
enfranchised until the 1950s, these Aboriginal toponyms suggest
appropriation by incoming settlers rather than any Aboriginal
political inuence.
There are 296 existing and 21 former RMs in Saskatchewan.
As in Manitoba the vast majority of these have names of British
origin. Echoes of the original peoples survive directly in mu-
nicipality names such as Piapot [an Aboriginal leader], Meota
[a good place to camp], Nipawin [a place where one stands or
viewpoint], and indirectly in translations into English as with
Cut Knife and Indian Head municipalities. The RM of Mankota,
whose name is of Aboriginal origin, is actually a transferred top-
onym from Minnesota. American settlers decided on the name
in honour of their former residence in the United States (Russell
1980, 186). There are ten RMs of French origin, including Au-
vergne, Rocanville, Val Marie, Monet, and Coteau, although the
Anglophone name Frenchman Butte RM recalls only the pres-
ence of early French travelers. Although German and Ukrainian
immigrants made up a signicant proportion of Saskatchewan
settlers prior to 1914, there is only one municipality with a Ger-
man name, Blucher, and none with a Ukrainian name. Even after
some 20 years of settlement allophone immigrants carried little
inuence beyond the immediate connes of their communities.
Although there are presently only 64 municipal districts or
counties (both analogous to the RMs of Saskatchewan and Man-
itoba) in Alberta, at one time or another there have been some
252 differently named local government entities in the province.
Their toponymy demonstrates the hegemonic power of Anglo-
Saxon culture in local governance. Most were either descriptive
(e.g. Beaver Dam, Prairie Creek), transferred toponyms from
Great Britain (e.g. Argyle, Dublin), or honoric appellations of
imperial heroes (e.g. Haig, Kitchener). Although large tracts of
the province were settled by people from central and eastern Eu-
rope, only four municipal districts carried Ukrainian names: So-
bor, Ukraina, Wasel, and Wostok. All four were later subsumed
by larger municipal districts.
John C. Lehr and Brian McGregor
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82Prairie Perspectives: Geographical Essays 2016, 18: 78–84
The politics of toponymy
Naming school districts
School districts were, and in some areas still are, important ele-
ments in prairie toponymy. Over 11,500 were established in what
are now the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.
School districts were smaller in area and more numerous than
rural municipalities, rivalling only settled places––hamlets, vil-
lages, and towns––in sheer numbers of prairie toponyms. They
provide insights into the attitudes and values of the ordinary
newcomers who settled the West and the often complex power
relationships that prevailed at the time of their organization.
Soon after the settlement of an area by Europeans schools
were established and were assigned a number and name. The
school’s number was assigned by the provincial or territori-
al government but the name was chosen by members of each
school board, who were drawn from the immediate locality.
School names generally reected the world view and values of
the settlers in each district. In contrast to towns, which were typ-
ically named by the social and business elite, and rural munici-
palities that were mainly named by regionally inuential elected
ofcials, school districts were named by boards that drew their
elected members from the common people in the community.
Consequently, school districts reect the world view of ordinary
settlers: board members chose names after their own national
heroes, places of origin in Europe and North America, or to cel-
ebrate qualities held in high esteem in their culture. A consider-
ation of school district names thus offers further insights into the
emotions and politics behind the creation of prairie toponymy.
Most frequently school boards chose names that described
their district’s topography, natural history, or agricultural quali-
ties. Many of the latter type were unashamedly boosterist, ex-
tolling the agricultural potential of the district as in Eldorado,
Goodsoil, and Richland in Saskatchewan. Manitoba also had
an Eldorado, a Richland, and a Utopia, while Alberta, in addi-
tion to its own Eldorado, boasted a Fertile, a Peerless, and a
Cornucopia. Often names brimmed with optimism, as with Su-
perb, Saskatchewan, Up-to-Date, Alberta, and Beautiful Valley,
Manitoba, reecting the hopes of embryonic communities who
saw their own districts as the best in the West and, presumably,
thought the right name would enhance their appeal to further
immigrants. On occasion, a tinge of realism crept in when less
than enthusiastic emotions were incorporated into school district
names. Even though vastly outnumbered by the positive, school
names such as Skull Creek, Vindictive, and Dismal in Alberta,
Hardscrabble, Survivance, and Rock Bottom in Saskatchewan,
and Badthroat and Dry River in Manitoba, obviously were not
selected with a positive image in mind. Topographic descriptors
varied widely but embraced both native ora and fauna, with 25
references to buffalo (e.g. Buffalo Park, Buffalo Plain and Buf-
falo Hill) and one, more taxonomically correct, to Bison. There
were 37 referring to beaver, as in Beaver Hills, Beaver Creek,
and Beaver Heights.
The founders of new communities have long transferred
the place names of their former regions to the areas they were
pioneering. When selecting names for their prairie school dis-
tricts, thoughts clearly turned to hometowns and homelands, and
a score of newly minted school districts were assigned names
that recalled the place of origin of most boards members or the
place of origin of the most inuential among them. In districts
settled by Anglophones there were many school districts named
after homeland places, including Marlborough, Beeston, York,
Devonshire, Bristol, and Stratford. Ukrainians commemorated
scores of places in their home country: Buczasz, a village in
Galicia; Czernowitz, the capital of Bukovyna; Bridok, a Bu-
kovynian village that provided many immigrants to Canada; and
many other towns, districts, and rivers in Ukraine. Other Euro-
peans shared the desire to transfer toponyms. There were Venice
School Districts founded by Italian settlers in both Alberta and
Saskatchewan while a Reykjavik School District served an Ice-
landic community in Saskatchewan.
Immigrants from western Ukraine named many of their
schools after their national heroes and places in the old world
with nationalistic connotations. Ukraine, which was then a geo-
graphical concept and not yet a nation state, had a school district
named for it in each prairie province, although the spelling var-
ied. Manitoba and Saskatchewan had Oukraina school districts
while Alberta had Ukraina. The Zaparoze Sich, island fortress of
the Cossacks, occupies a prominent place in Ukrainian history
and national mythology. Not surprisingly there was a Zaparoze
school district in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, and
a Sich School District in Saskatchewan. Other school district
names in Ukrainian districts were simply descriptive. Alberta’s
Chornohora translates as black mountain, Krazne as beautiful,
Kraznahora, as beautiful mountain, Myrnam as our peace, and
Dickiebush as wild bush. The latter name is an interesting hy-
bridization of the Ukrainian word for wild and the Canadian-
English word “bush.” Several school districts were named Zorra
or Zoriya or different renditions of the Ukrainian word for star
(Baergen 2005).
During the time that western Canada was being settled by
Europeans, Britain was involved in two major conicts: the
Boer War in South Africa (1899–1902) and the Great War in
Europe (1914–1918). As the “mother country,” Great Britain,
along with many Anglophone Canadians, expected communi-
ties to demonstrate support for wartime policies and celebrate
military victories. Thus, Victory and Mafeking School Districts
commemorated battles won against the Boers in 1901 and 1902
respectively. Years later, the outbreak of war between Great Brit-
ain and its allies and the Central Powers in August 1914 not only
terminated immigration into Canada but had a signicant effect
on the nation’s toponymy. Allophone communities, especially
those whose homeland governments sided with Germany, Aus-
tria-Hungary, and other members of the Central Powers, were
naturally anxious to display their patriotism and demonstrate
their commitment to British-Canadian values. In Manitoba, Bu-
kovina School District became Lord Roberts, Svoboda became
Beckett, Slowo became Strand, and Wisla became Prince of
Wales (Perfect 1978; Province of Manitoba, School Formation
Files). New school districts were less likely to reveal the ethnic
origins of their founding communities and, in their choice of
name, as likely as not celebrated an allied victory, an allied gen-
eral, or an allied statesman. Each prairie province had a Foch, a
John C. Lehr and Brian McGregor
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83Prairie Perspectives: Geographical Essays 2016, 18: 78–84
The politics of toponymy
Haig, and a Mons school district. Saskatchewan had Vimy and
Vimy Ridge school districts, Alberta had a Vimy Hill, and Mani-
toba a Vimy Ridge—all created in 1917 and 1918 to celebrate
a decisive victory won by the Canadian Corps over the German
Sixth Army in France. Even some already-established school
districts changed their names to reect their patriotic feelings.
New Berlin changed to Verdun, Prussia to Leader, and Mun-
ster was renamed Cavell, after Edith Cavell, the British nurse
shot for helping British prisoners escape from German-occupied
Belgium. Some schools were renamed to express patriotic sen-
timents or dissociate the community from sympathies for the
Central Powers.
Conclusion
When the western interior was being settled by Europeans,
naming a place was a political and cultural act embodying the
mood and aspirations of embryonic communities, revealing
their ethnic composition, geographic origins, their connec-
tions to the past, and hopes for the future. For the most part,
Aboriginal communities were marginalized and condemned to
toponymic silence. When their toponymy survived in areas of
European settlement it was frequently in an appropriated, trans-
lated or mangled form.
Corporate power was manifested in the naming of the
prairies. Railway companies, and before them, the fur-trading
companies created and named places. Although there were ex-
ceptions, corporations tended to honour their executives, stock-
holders, and the heroes and places of their Britannic culture
when it came to bestowing names. Naming lower-order places
such as RMs and school districts allowed for a greater degree of
local input although, as the rash of school district name changes
during the First World War showed, local sentiment was not im-
mune from the greater cultural and political currents sweeping
the globe. School districts in Alberta and Saskatchewan were
also formed before rural municipalities or districts. As they
were always geographically far smaller, a single ethnicity was
far more likely to predominate and, more importantly, wield
local political power, enabling small communities to inscribe
their identity into the prairie landscape. The size of administra-
tive areas also affected naming. Large areas were more likely
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effective voice at the time when names were initially assigned.
Although attitudes towards allophone peoples began to change
with the advent of multiculturalism in the 1960s, the time for
naming RMs had then long passed.
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Notes
1 This study drew on different sources for information about rural municipalities
and school districts in each province. Information on Manitoba RMs was drawn
from Goldsborough (2008), Hanson (1956) provided information on Albert’s ru-
ral districts, and information on Saskatchewan RMs came from Adamson (2014)
and the Canada Revenue Agency (2016). Information on school districts was ob-
tained from Perfect (1978) and the Records of School Formation at the Archives
of Manitoba. Saskatchewan data was gleaned principally from the Saskatchewan
One Room School Project (2013), and Alberta data was taken from Baergen
(2005) and the online School District Catalogue at the Glenbow Museum.
