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

Image via vintagepostcards.ca.

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.

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.

Looking through the compressed backstories of Alberta’s sites and spaces was a worthwhile reminder of how this kind of volume can be assembled by a dedicated researcher into a very readable package.

With photos on every page—yes, every page—and bright, all-caps headings for each entry, reading the 400-plus pages presented here doesn’t feel like a chore.

In her Introduction, Aubrey shares a nugget of provincial place-naming lore that spurred a renaissance in toponymic studies in her part of Canada.

As the story goes, American general Dwight D. Eisenhower visited Canada in 1946 and Prime Minister MacKenzie King, in honour of the visit, directed the Geographic Board of Canada to rename Castle Mountain, located in Alberta, to “Mount Eisenhower.”

Apparently, a lot of Albertans took umbrage at the move.

Although the renaming was duly undertaken, “the heavy-handed action of the federal government caused Alberta to take a closer look at how features were named in Alberta.”

Turning to the “Castle Mountain” entry on page 98 we learn how things eventually turned out: “Because of strong public opinion, the name was officially changed back to Castle Mountain in 1979.”

When books about place names appear on the scene, they typically don’t get a ton of fanfare in mainstream outlets. Still, Alan Kellogg of the Edmonton Journal took note of Concise Place Names in his Sunday column on February 18, 2007.

To Alan, the book was “undoubtedly the niftiest Alberta reference book of the year” and “a fine addition to any family’s coffee table, car pocket or library.”

And if you’re like me, you may appreciate the pull quote the Journal featured above the fold: “New book makes us all toponymists, folks who study place names and rediscover a slice of the past.” Newspapers may be ephemeral, but that’s gold right there.

As for “Concise” in the title, a bit of background.

Aubrey’s edition is a kind of distilled iteration of its forerunner, the four-volume Place Names of Alberta series that appeared from the University of Calgary Press in the 90s. Aubrey, who retired as head of the Alberta Geographical Names Program several years ago, co-wrote and was actively involved in that quartet of interesting books.

Devotees of factual rigour will welcome the pages early on in the book titled “Miscellaneous explanatory notes” and “Brief history of geographical naming in Canada and Alberta”. Both are rewarding. There’s a lot of good stuff here.

Altogether, it’s hard to argue with the Aubrey’s view that the “fascination with place names is perhaps more pronounced in Alberta than in other provinces and is shown by the number of books written on the subject.”

With the perspective that 20 years brings, I’ll venture to say that Concise Place Names of Alberta merits a standout spot in any collection of those works.