With Sir William Van Horne* 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 wrestling with mosquitoes and cold and heat and privations of many kinds; many Ñansen-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 Aboriginal Indians (the "naturals," Rev. Richard Hakluyt styled thein) as their moccasined feet threaded the way through pathless forests, or their marvellous canoes and their matchless snowshoes 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 following the thought-trails suggested by the question "Who gave the place-names of Canada,”and confine ourselves to the query: "Why was the name given ?"

Isaac Taylor says "there are only about 300 German grund-worter (root words) which, variously combined with the bestimmungs-worter (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 Sud

*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, having some 1,200 place names to his credit in the various regions he has explored.

bury we did a foolish thing seeing that it means Southborough and has been transplanted to Ontario and given a local habitation in the North country, contrary to all the regulations of Onomatology.* Mr. Sulte at the last meeting of the Society gave us samples of foolishly selected names, including, as he contends, the place-name of this city-Ottawa. Sir William Van Horne mentions Bergen as a singularly inappropriate place-name, being situated in the middle of a great plain of Manitoba, while the original Bergen is a seaport of Norway surrounded by high mountains. Every feature in the new place is the direct opposite of the old place-the one a mountain-begirt town, the other a plain-encompassed village; the one washed by the briny ocean-and if you want to know what that means read Robert Stevenson's tale of the " Merry Men"—the other without any water, fresh or salt, in it; the one a great entrepot for fish and fish products, the other scarcely seeing a fish from one year's end to another.

A few months ago the Royal Society of Canada affixed a tablet to the Province Building in Halifax to commemorate the connection of the Venetian merchant with our country. The plan adopted in this case has been a favorite for many years; only the tablets have taken the form of place-names derived from surname, christian name and title of persons who in some way or other have been associated with Canada. Our borrowings in this line have been extensive. Very few Lords of Plantations, Secretaries of War (when these were also Secretaries for the Colonies) and Secretaries and Under-Secretaries for the Colonies (since 1854) have escaped the searching place-name hunter called upon to baptize the new township or county or village with a name that will sufficently identify it. Of the 108 of these functionaries who have administered our affairs in the Imperial Government since 1768, I failed to find among our place-names, Castlereagh, Hicks-Beach, Chamberlain, Ball, Pirbright, Meade, Pauncefote and Bramston-8 out of 108.

Since Jacques Cartier's time Canada has had 300 kings and queens, governors, governors-general and lieutenant-gov

Thus

*Sometimes a great and important fact is embalmed in a placename applied in the reverse of the Geographical position. Sutherlandshire occupies a far North place on the map of the Island of Great Britain though it means the South land. The name was evi dently given by persons living north of Great Britain; probably the Norwegian settlers of the Orkney Islands gave it.

+Cabot is appropriately memorized in Cabot Straits--the water passage between Newfoundland and Cape Breton.

ernors, including my old friend Lt. Gov. McInnes of British Columbia and the latest appointed, Sir Oliver of Ontario. From them we have drawn the place-names of about 60 of our electoral districts and of several scores of our minor subdivisions.

Halifax, Osborne, Walpole, Pelham, Hardwicke, Granville, Newcastle, Rockingham, Carleton, Dundas, Shelburne, Grenville, Lansdowne, Liverpool, Eldon, Elgin, Canning, Goderich, Melville, Grey, Fox, Palmerston, Melbourne, Brougham, Wellington, Lyndhurst, Peel, Lytton, Stanley, Gladstone, Salisbury, Hartington, Russell, Bright, Clarendon, Beaconsfield, Spencer, Pembroke, Oxford, Bedford, Dunk, Sandwich, Mulgrave, Clarence, Somerset, Egmont, Aberdeen -these and several scores more are place-names of Canada given because those for whom they were named were Lords of the Admiralty, Colonial Secretaries, Premiers, Secretaries of War, Governors, or other high officials of the Empire. In connection with these names there is wide scope for historical reminiscence having a distinctively Canadian flavor.

In the same way and for the same reasons, the sovereigns of Great Britain and their sons and daughters are memorized in Canadian place-names. We have King's Counties and Queen's Counties and Georgetowns and Williamsburgs, and Louises and Albert Edwards and, (illustrative of the comparative youth, as well as of the abounding loyalty of the country,) we have 30 Victorias and Victoria Beaches, Peaks and Dales.

From French statesmen, governors, etc., we have borrowed our place-names of Jacques-Cartier, Roberval, Champlain, Montmagny, Coulonge, Lauzon, Frontenac, Vaudreuil, Longueuil, Beauharnois, LaTour, Chambly, Bonaventure, Montcalm, Marquette, Provencher, Laval, Iberville, Lévis, Lotbiniere, Richelieu, Charlevoix, Montmorency, Nicolet, Soulanges, Verchères-the mention of which names calls up the long succession of able men justly held in sweet remembrance by our French brothers.

I do not know how better to illustrate this feature of our place-naming than to take British Columbia and New Brunswick as examples, presenting each in the form of a monograph.

BRITISH COLUMBIA

FROM THE PLACE-NAME POINT OF VIEW.

When Columbus set sail from a Spanish Port on the 3rd August, 1492, with three vessels and one hundred and twenty men he believed that he would sight land if he sailed long enough; and that the land would be the Indies. The Old World path along which commerce plodded was that which crossed the land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean and thence by the Indian Ocean found its eldorado in the East. Hence, Venice, as the western terminal and distributing point, gained great wealth and aroused the jealousy of Spain and other nations of Western Europe. These sought the Indies by rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Columbus conceived the idea that as the earth was spheroidal in form he could abandon the shore-hugging way of the past and, boldly venturing on the wide, unknown ocean, sail on in a westerly course and reach the land of riches. When he found his way barred by an immense continent, he, Americus Vespucci and others sought along the coast for a passage that would take them to the western shores of the Pacific Ocean, on the east coast of which were the wealth and commodities of the Indies and Cathay, the gold and diamonds and precious stones that had given a magnificent sparkle to all the legends told to the wondering sons and daughters of Western Europe.

After them came other navigators who sought to pierce the continent, and in the hope of so doing ranged as Arctic explorers from the Straits of Belle Isle northward to Greenland, sometimes pushing the prows of their vessels into Hamilton Inlet and Ungava Bay; at others forcing their way into Hudson's Great Bay and all along through the ice-girt islands that now compose the Island Province of the Dominion, the new-born District of Franklin; or passing into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, pushed up the river, past Montreal, past Lachine, past Lakes Ontario, Huron, Superior, and on, still on, seeking the water courses that would carry their ships out into the Pacific and on their way to China and India; or poking their vessels' noses into every stream and river and gulf from the Bay of Fundy to the Gulf of Patagonia, thinking that in each