The root of Revelstoke spellings

This article first appeared in print in Revelstoke Mountaineer Magazine and is published online here for the first time.

The all-caps on the City of Revelstoke signs don’t give hints about the bi-capitalization of many local Scottish-origin place names. Google Maps has spelled the name of our main street wrong: Mackenzie, not MacKenzie, as they have it. Because the same few Revelstoke place names are so often randomly spelled, figuring out the correct spelling becomes a challenge. We rounded up the most commonly misspelled place names in Revelstoke and compiled it into a handy spelling guide. Thanks to Cathy English at the Revelstoke Museum & Archives for her assistance.

Mackenzie Avenue and Mount Mackenzie

Both are named after the Right Honorable Alexander Mackenzie, Canada’s second Prime Minister. Connecting Canada via a transcontinental railway was one of his major projects while in office.

Right Honorable Alexander Mackenzie

Rogers Pass

Roger is not a ski legend for whom the mountain pass was named after, so it’s not ‘Roger’s Pass.’ A. B. Rogers is the surveyor who, while working for the Canadian Pacific Railway, discovered and surveyed the railway’s route through the pass in 1882. Did you know there is another Rogers Pass in Montana, also named after Rogers for doing the same thing there while working for the Great Northern Railway? Neither place names require an apostrophe.

Craigellachie

This one’s just hard to spell. According to GeoBC, Craigellachie is the name of a high rock in the valley of the Spey, in Morayshire, Scotland. In the days of the clansmen, a sentinel kept watch here against all enemies; the lighting of a beaconfire summoned the Clan Grant to battle. The battle cry of the Grants was “Stand fast, Craigellachie.” The story goes that after the Canadian Pacific Railway ran out of money to build the railway, CPR representative George Stephen travelled to London trying to secure a loan. When he found it, he telegraphed the Grants’ battle cry back to CPR President Donald Smith, a sign that the railway project was back on track.

Illecillewaet River and Glacier

Another hard one. This is a Sinixt name meaning big water. It is pronounced sill-wha-eet-kwe in that language, and the common spelling is an Anglicized form of the word.

Downie Street and Downie Creek

It’s not actually that hard to spell, but the creek and the street are named after two different people. The street is named after CPR Trainmaster at Revelstoke, Thomas Downie, who was killed in an avalanche in 1904 east of the Illecillewaet Canyon. The creek was named after a different Downie. William Downie (1819-1893) was a native of Ayrshire who was raised in the Maritimes. After joining the Gold Rush in California, then serving as a major in the Union Army in the American Civil War, he led an unsuccessful expedition up the Columbia River in 1885.

Mount Macpherson

Lowercase P. The local biking, touring and Nordic skiing hotspot is named after Sir David Macpherson (1818–1896). He served as Canada’s Minister of Interior from 1883–85, during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The mountain name was adopted in 1887, one of several new geographic names to honour “persons intimately connected with the inception and execution of the great national highway [railway].”

Sir David Macpherson

Williamson’s Lake

This one is possessive, with an apostrophe. This lake is named after Albert Williamson, a pioneer who had a family farm in the area (see the Williamson farmhouse and family in the main image above.) I checked with Cathy English and she confirmed it is possessive, despite the fact that the street sign on Airport Way has it as Williamsons and the sign across the street has it as Williamson. (See the image below.)

Williamson’s Lake is named after pioneer Albert Williamson. Photo: Aaron Orlando/Revelstoke Mountaineer

Greeley or Greely?

No definitive answer on this one. An old railway magazine article claimed the Greeley area, which is just east of Revelstoke and is slated for development into the Revelstoke Adventure Park, is named after Horace Greeley, a U.S. newspaper editor and politician, who is credited with coining the phrase, “Go West, young man.” However, Cathy English told me that source doesn’t pass muster, so feel free to spell it however you like for now.

If you’ve got any leads on this one, or any other local place name, please let us know.

As a footnote, I challenge you to think about your cultural stereotypes around spelling. Too often we shame and ridicule when we see misspelled words, a learned response that’s intertwined with internalized emotions. There are lots of reasons words are misspelled — typos, lack of knowing the correct spelling, specific learning challenges, inattention, differing values around the need for correct spelling, etc. In the end, an incorrectly spelled word isn’t really a big deal.