A series on West Kootenay/Boundary place names
We previously looked in this series at how East Arrow Park on Upper Arrow Lake was also called Redlands, the name of the store there.
A story by Mrs. P.A. McLean in the Arrow Lakes News of Dec. 7, 1967 elaborates on the subject: “There being a good deal of standing tamarack at the time, Mrs. Pennock wanted to call the place ‘Redlands’ after the town in California by that name, but as people had been getting their mail and groceries from Arrow Park for several years, it was decided to just add East to Arrow Park. The ‘Old Redlands Trading Association’ sign was the result of the argument.”
The first store was built as a co-op in 1912 and the Redlands Trading Association was incorporated the following year. A second Redland store was built at West Arrow Park in 1920. Billy Rogers ran both until he died in 1962.
PEND D’OREILLE, REVISITED
A recent installment in this series about Pend d’Oreille (the river, the lake, and the tribe) said the first recorded uses of the name were from 1854-55. But there are several earlier ones, beginning with a memoir by Nathanial Wyeth dated Feb. 4, 1839: “The lakes of the country are few and of little importance, except as beautiful objects. Pend’oreille lake, on the Flathead river, is about 30 miles from east to west, and from 4 to 8 miles wide …”
It was published that year in a document called the Territory of Oregon supplemental report.
Several Pend d’Oreille mentions also turn up in the memoir of Pierre-Jean De Smet, a Belgian Catholic priest, published in 1847. He wrote in a letter dated June 20, 1845: “In the beginning of February, I set out to visit our different settlements … I was compelled to go from the Bay of Pends-d’oreilles to the Horse Plain in a bark canoe of 250 miles.”
And elsewhere in the same book:
• “Lake Roothaan is situated in the Pend’d’oreille and Flat-Bow mountains and discharged itself by the Blackgown river into the Clark, 20 miles below the Kalispell Lake …”
• “I have given directions to the Indians of these different tribes, viz., the Flat-Heads, the Pends d’Oreilles, and the Couer d’Alenes …
• “On the 6th of November of the following year, the Rev. Father A. Hoecken came to me, accompanied by several Indians of the tribe of Pends d’Oreilles of the Bay, among whom I had determined two years before, to open a mission.”
Finally, an 1847 account in New Monthly Magazine contained the passage: “The next day they crossed the lake, and running down the Pend’ d’Oreille river, they reached their rendezvous by 8 in the evening. At this station they found an encampment of the Pend’ d’Oreille Indians preparing to hunt the buffalo.”
An 1890 report of the US Board on Geographic Names stated that the official American spelling was Pend Oreille, “Not Kulluspelm, Peaux d’Oreilles, Pend ‘Oreille, Pend’ D’Oreille, Pend d’Oreille, Pend O’Reille, PendsOreilles, Pondera, Ponderay, nor Pondera.”
BAY FARM, REVISITED
An earlier installment on the naming of Japanese-Canadian internment camps noted that Bay Farm, just south of Slocan, was named for David (1870-1922) and Annie Schuldies Bay.
But it failed to mention that their great-great-grandchildren are Trail natives Jason Bay and Lauren Bay-Regula, the retired Major League Baseball player and Canadian softball Olympian, respectively.
In 2006, a resident suggested Bay Avenue in Trail be renamed Jason Bay Avenue. City council thought it was a cute idea but it didn’t happen.
BEALBY POINT, REVISITED
Bealby Point, on the south shore of Kootenay Lake, just west of Nelson, was named after fruit rancher John Thomas Bealby (1858-1944). But though we know Bealby came to the West Kootenay in 1907 and bought land at his namesake point a few years later, it wasn’t clear when the name came into use. It was officially adopted in 1979 as Bealbys Point, although nobody calls it that.
We now know the name was around by the mid-1920s, thanks to a reference in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix of May 16, 1925, which mentioned a theft from the vault of Western Grocers in Nelson: “[T]he looted cash box has just been found at Bealby’s Point, three miles from Nelson.”
SOUTH SLOCAN,
RE-REVISITED
The earliest use of South Slocan has been pushed back a little further still. Where previously the first known reference was in The Vancouver Sun of Oct. 21, 1912, an item in the Vancouver Province of Sept. 23, 1912 has been discovered: “Mrs. James Macaulay will leave tonight for South Slocan …”
There’s still no indication why the name was changed from Slocan Junction. The two names were used interchangeably for many years.