EDITORIAL – Much to be thankful for on Canada Day, including our name

An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.

‘I READ IN ONE NEWSPAPER not less than a dozen attempts to derive a new name,” Thomas Darcy McGee, one of the fathers of confederation, noted in a speech in 1865.

“Now I ask any honorable member of this House how he would feel if he woke up some fine morning and found himself instead of a Canadian, a Tuponian or a Hochelagander.”

If you don’t know what a Tuponian is, it would have been a citizen of Tuponia, an acronym for The United Provinces of North America. It was seriously considered for the name of our country.

So were Hochelaga, Norland (and of the North), Colonia (wouldn’t go down well these days), Norland, Britannia, Victorialand and, get this — Efisga. Short for England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany and Aboriginal lands.

Two years after McGee’s speech, the British North America Act (now the Constitution Act) was signed, and we became a nation, with the name supported by McGee: Canada. As most Canadians know, legend has it that Canada is derived from the Iroquois word Kanata for a village that in 1535 was located near present-day Quebec City.

I’m not aware that anyone made an impassioned speech to name our city Kamloops, a derivation of the indigenous term for “Meeting of the waters,” or “where the rivers meet,” (Tkemlups) but it was a good choice. Previous names were Thompson’s River Post, Fort Cumcloups.

When Robert Service worked at a bank here, he described the land as “weirdly desolate and weirdly morose.”

Oh, well, we like the place. We like our country too. A lot of good things have happened here. Today is Canada Day, and we’ll join Canadians across the country to give praise and thanks to the place we call home.

Canada Day wouldn’t be Canada Day without a Canada joke, so I’ll leave you with one I actually turned up in my office just yesterday as I was sorting out some papers. I must have enjoyed the original telling of it because I saved it 20 years ago. It seems amusingly appropriate for current times:

On the sixth day God turned to Archangel Gabriel and said, “Today I am going to create a land called Canada. It shall have tall, majestic mountains full of mountain goats and eagles, sparkling lakes bountiful with fish, forests full of elk and moose, high cliffs overlooking sandy beaches with an abundance of sea life, and rivers stocked with salmon. I shall make the land rich in oil and forests so as to make the inhabitants prosper, I shall call these inhabitants Canadians, and they shall be known as the most polite, friendly people on the earth.”

“But, Lord,” asked Gabriel, “don’t you think you,re being too generous to these Canadians?” “Not really,” replied God. “Just wait and see the neighbours I am going to give them.”

Happy Canada Day.

Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.