Place Name Favourites

Above: A splendid sepia-toned postcard depicting Cobalt, Ont., circa 1910.

Image via vintagepostcards.ca.

The small Saskatchewan village of Silton, population 70, blipped onto my radar this week. Here’s a link to the CTV news story if you’re interested in the local developments there.

Glancing at the story, I thought the name Silton was familiar—a hunch no doubt stemming from my hockey history work elsewhere. It’s the birthplace of Chicago Black Hawks legend Harold “Mush” March (1908–2002).

For confirmation of this, there’s even a mention of the old NHLer in a “Fun Facts” section on Silton’s community’s website: “He made hockey history when he scored the first goal in the old Maple Leaf Gardens in 1931. He kept the puck and dropped it at the final game at the Gardens in 1999.”

How long had Silton village been a going concern when Mush March was born? About 25 years. Its name, according to author Bill Barry’s Geographic Names of Saskatchewan, traces to Old English language roots.

Silton (OE Scylfe + tûn, “farmstead by a shelf”), Dorset, England, had been the home of the pioneering Benjafield family. Charles Benjafield was the Silton postmaster until the office moved to the railhead in 1910.

So there’s some background on the name. It was Benjafield’s doing apparently.

Meanwhile, the current welcome sign approaching town on Highway 322 features the black-metallic image of steam train and the words “Village of Silton – Incorporated 1914.”

Let me know if you visit. It’s been about six years since I was in the area north of Regina.

Is the village of Gainsborough, Sask., named after a famous British painter?

Since coming across that explanation for the town’s name, I’ve been meaning to take a closer look to see if that’s in fact the case.

An entry in Alan Rayburn’s authoritative Place Names of Canada describes the naming of Saskatchewan’s Gainsborough as a tribute to the much-acclaimed 18th century English portrait painter Thomas Gainsborough.

Here’s a page-grab showing the full text of entry:

If true, it’s an intriguing allusion to a noted figure in art history.

The puzzle for me, though, is the shortage of evidence, outside the Rayburn book, backing up the Thomas Gainsborough angle. Most sources offer a more prosaic explanation for how Gainsborough got its name.

The accepted story, as repeated at Wikipedia, is that early settler J. J. Sadler simply named the village after Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, which had been Sadler’s former home back in England.

In that telling, Gainsborough, the Saskatchewan village, has no connection to Gainsborough, the famous painter.

However, I did go digging for something that might corroborate Rayburn’s version of the naming, and looked up “Gainsborough” in Geographic Names of Saskatchewan, a 2005 book by author Bill Barry.

According to Barry, when the CPR arrived at the prairie location in 1892, it wasn’t yet known as Gainsborough. It was then that J. J. Sadler “suggested the name of the new station to honour Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88), English portrait and landscape artist, perhaps most famous for ‘The Blue Boy’.”

That does lend credence to more colourful, painter-inspired, version of the village’s naming origin story. Barry’s book was likely Rayburn’s source for the entry in Place Names of Canada which came out in 2010 and where I first came across the Gainsborough/painter story.

I wouldn’t call this definitive just yet. But assuming Barry’s research is solid, it appears this village in Saskatchewan may in fact be named in tribute to an English painter who never set foot in Canada.

Bill Barry's book, published in 2005, may have been Alan Rayburn's source for the “Gainsborough” entry in Place Names of Canada.