North America Travel 2009

A list of Canadian place-names I find kind of amusing or at least vaguely interesting

Sunday 11 October 2009

Before I got on the first train of my trans-Canadian railway odyssey at Vancouver, a man at the station gave me a map of the route, which was published by the Canadian National (CN) Railway c. 1967. Glancing at it on and off, I was able to discern a couple of categories of place-names shown on the map: those which sounded funny, because of either the words or the sounds used; and those which are strongly reminiscent of one ‘old country’ or the other. Here are some of those which caught my eye

Funny Words and Sounds

  • Antigodish, NS
  • Barrie, ON
  • Bartibog, NB
  • Chilliwack, BC
  • Cranberry Portage, MB
  • Flin Flon, MB
  • Forget, QC (presumably really pronounced ‘forjé’)
  • Hope, BC
  • Knob Lake, NL
  • L’Épiphanie, QC
  • Medicine Hat, AB
  • Moose Jaw, SK
  • Nipissing, ON
  • Sexsmith, BC

Reminiscent placenames

  • Aberdeen, SK
  • Aylesbury, SK
  • Bangor, SK
  • Bridgewater, NS
  • Chatham, NB
  • Chatham, ON
  • Chester, NS
  • Dartmouth, NS
  • Gloucester Junction, NB
  • Halifax, NS
  • Kensington, PE
  • Lancaster, QC
  • Liverpool, NS
  • London, ON
  • Maidstone, SK
  • New Carlisle, QC
  • New Glasgow, NS
  • Newcastle, NB
  • Norwich, ON
  • Oxford, NS
  • Paris, ON
  • Scarboro, Pickering, Whitby, Oshaw … Brighton; ON (adjacent along the railway line east of Toronto)
  • Windsor, NS
  • Windsor, ON
  • Woking, BC
  • Woodstock, NB
  • Woodstock, ON
  • Yarmouth, NS

 

Comments

  1. Bridget

    16 October 2009, 2.09 pm #

    what about BIGGAR

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