Monkey Number 1 Says

UH - OK:

By George! There's talk of renaming Georgia Strait the Salish Sea.

George Harris, a representative of the Chemainus First Nations, this week put the idea to B.C. Aboriginal Relations Minister Mike de Jong, who thinks it's an idea worth exploring.

"Quite honestly I like the sound of it," de Jong said following a meeting of the First Nations Summit, where Harris raised the idea. "It is descriptive of the geographic location of the body of water, and I also think it recognizes the history of our province extends further than 150 years."

While the 240-kilometre-long body of water between Vancouver Island and the mainland has long been called Georgia Strait, this would hardly be the first time it gets a name change.

Before Capt. George Vancouver came along in 1792 and called it the Gulf of Georgia to commemorate King George III, it was referred as the Gran Canal de Nuestra Senora del Rosario la Marinera by Spanish explorers. Then in 1858 Captain G.H. Richards called it a strait on his charts.

Referring to Georgia Strait at the Salish Sea is already happening in artistic circles.

Singer-songwriter Holly Arntzen has organized a festival at Fort Rodd Hill using the name, and a group of Gulf Islands artists renamed the waters around them the Salish Sea in a community mapping project that saw artistic maps depicting values and features of the area they lived in.

The diving and whale researching communities have also at times referred to the Salish Sea when talking about the area.

However, geographical name changes are complex, "and politicians who tend to wish to rename things in the past have landed themselves into hot water," noted Peter Keller, Dean of Social Sciences at the University of Victoria.

He noted the community uproar that emerged when former prime minister Jean Chretien wanted to rename Mount Logan after fellow former prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

"The community said 'Hold on. There is a good reason we named it Mount Logan.' "

Nonetheless, Keller said there is also a strong trend to revert locations to their traditional name, as happened in 1987 when Frobisher Bay was renamed Iqaluit in the territory of Nunavut. But it took three years after the community to vote on the change for it to officially happen, indicating how laborious the process can be.

"During the era of colonization we assumed the right to name features that already had traditional names associated with them," said Keller.

Change, however, is never easy, he added.

Canada has a toponymy committee - the Geographical Names Board of Canada - which has a mandate to review all geographic names. There is also a provincial authority that weighs in on the process.