Names + History

What Should We Call This Place Instead?

Since the current name has outlived its original purpose

Sunset Beach, Kits Point, English Bay and Burrard Inlet / photo by author

I live in the westernmost province of Canada, right up on the Pacific Ocean. It’s called British Columbia and as far as subnational territories go, it has to be one of the largest in the world.

(And as a matter of fact, it’s only in 18th place)

It’s called BC for short and half of the people live in and around the biggest city, Vancouver. Yeah, it is physically beautiful, it does rain a lot and the entry fee for living here is extortionate, while the professional hockey team, which was not long ago showing hopeful signs of being a contender, has now bottomed out entirely.

Outside of the city and its suburbs, the southern belt to the east between the US border and 300km north of it is relatively sparsely populated with smaller towns that developed around the extraction of various resources. North of that, the people are even thinner on the ground. There is a lot of open space and if outdoor adventures in the wilderness are your thing, then you’d be in the right place.

About five million people live in it and though it wasn’t always this way, today it is a fairly multicultural place and the larger urban areas tend to vote more liberally, while the rural areas tilt towards conservative.

Screenshot from www.googlemaps.com

Europeans, first the Spanish and Russians and then the British, were the first outsiders to arrive. But long before any of them arrived on the coast in the late 1700s and then overland in the early 1800s, the place was populated by indigenous people who have until and including now, had a rocky experience with exploration, “discovery”, imperialism and colonial governments and their policies, as well as the agents and authorities created to carry them out.

Every few years, someone starts making noise about changing the name of the place. I remember first hearing about this in the 1980s, when the population was about half of what it is now and it was just emerging from its slumber as a place on the edge of the world on the way to nowhere else in particular.

I remember hearing suggestions that Canadian Columbia might be more appropriate. But events of the intervening years have ensured that that well-meaning update has passed its sell by date.

British Columbia is a two part colonial name when you get right down to it and before it was called what it is today, it was known as New Caledonia, another colonial name. But there was a French territory in the Pacific already called that and the newly independent Gran Colombia in South America had the same name too, though with different spelling. So Queen Victoria, in her infinite wisdom, chose to name it after the main river in the area and put her imperial stamp on it. And then they named the capital city after her too, in case there was still any confusion.

See how that works? At the time, there were few who would have argued with the rationale. But in the meantime, both parts of the name have become increasingly contentious.

The first one is obvious. The British were the first Europeans to draw lines on the map where none had been before and in negotiations with the American government, extended the 49th parallel from Lake Superior to the Rocky Mountains across the vast prairie of North America to separate the also recently independent and westward expanding United States and British North America in 1818.

The line was later extended to the Pacific and British Columbia became an entity separate from what was called American Columbia, both named after the river and the American portion. Eventually, the area south of the 49th parallel became the Oregon Territory.

It all made perfect sense to somebody at the time.

The British were the first in the area to set up a colonial government west of the Rockies. It was run as two separate colonies; the Vancouver Island colony and the Mainland colony, until they were amalgamated in the 1850s. Within a few years, the British had lost interest in their North American territories nearly altogether and entered into negotiations with the six Eastern and Atlantic colonies to form a Confederation that would be called Canada.

Four of them joined together in 1867 and the far off western territory of BC joined the Canadian Confederation ahead of the very real American threat to annex the place and link it to Alaska, which it had acquired for a song from Russia. Some British Columbians actually had a say in the matter, but the promise of a transcontinental railroad to link them to Eastern Canada was enough to convince them that union with Canada in 1871 was the best way forward.

At that point it ceased, for all intents and purposes, to be British. Although Canada remained part of the British Empire with its (relatively) peaceful transition to statehood, in contrast with its rapidly expanding neighbour to the south, and still remains a part of the Commonwealth, it’s been over 150 years since BC was, strictly speaking, British.

Over those same 150 years, many other places in the world became British possessions and then gained their independence. As one of their first acts, newly minted countries typically dropped the “British” from their name, or changed their name altogether. British India, British Guyana and British East Africa spring to mind. They managed to move on, for better or worse. But here, we cling to the British past for some reason, without really giving it much thought.

The second part of the name is perhaps a bit less obvious, though no less contentious.

Columbia means “Land of Columbus”, in reference to the Genoese navigator who sailed for Spain in the late 1400s and who gets credit for both “discovering” the New World (though he had little idea where he was initially) and for being the initiator of the death and destruction that wreaked havoc on existing indigenous civilizations, in the unquenchable imperial quest for gold and converts to Christ.

None of the “exploration” and “discovery” of this place, or any of the Americas for that matter, could have happened without the knowledge and history of the indigenous inhabitants. Clearly, they have to be involved in any renaming. But they aren’t all the same either, so who speaks for them?

There are many Columbias out there. Columbus never knew of the existence of this one, and certainly never came here. The differently spelled nation of Colombia in South America is another, and he never actually set foot there either. There are cities and towns called Columbia or Columbus sprinkled all over the US. Additionally, the words “colony”, “colonial” and “colonization” come directly from the Spanish spelling of his name, “Colon”.

Naturally, there are those who would say leave it alone and respect the history of the place. But who’s history? Though the vast majority of people here speak English, British ethnicity makes up only 20% of the province’s population.

The main city is named after an English sea captain, and was only founded a century after he’d been in the area. The capital city is named after a monarch who presided over the expansion of an empire built on a racist worldview. Yet changing these is not going to be an easy sell.

The anti-woke clamour is strong in this place too.

Vancouver downtown, from Spanish Banks, which are named after… well, you get the point / Photo by author.

But there are plenty of place names in this country with indigenous origins. Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario are good examples of other provinces. The name of the national capital, Ottawa,is indigenous. Hell, the name Canada itself is Iroquois for Kanata, meaning village or settlement. The archipelago of islands off the north coast of BC was changed from the Queen Charlottes to Haida Gwaii in 2009 and no one seems bothered by any of that. And if New Zealand can add Aotearoa to its name, in acknowledgement of the pre-European history of the place, then why can’t we?

I have no idea what the place should be called next. Deciding on it will likely be a long, arduous and divisive process that no politician really wants to dirty their hands with. But if none of this is convincing enough, we’ll end here with a quick peek at the flag of the place that probably wouldn’t win any branding or design contests in 2026. We don’t need to look too closely at this mishmash of symbols and colours to realize that, while it probably meant something to its designer then, it doesn’t really tell the current story of the place all that well anymore.

Or maybe it’s lack of clarity actually does.

www.en.wikipedia.org