There’s a different name for everything
The chance to take a “road trip” on behalf of my employer doesn’t happen often. Today was a lovely day for a few hours of driving, and I left before dawn for Shawinigan. We have a small school up there and my goal was to provide some in-service. No stress, just drive up, talk, drive to another school, talk, go home. A break in a very routine existence.
I’m not used to watching sunrise in the rearview mirror. Interesting way to begin a new day. The roads are still clear and the autumn colours are fading fast, particularly with the winds we’ve had lately. Apparently a hurricane is headed towards the Maritimes and we’ll probably catch the draft from that.
My afternoon was spent in Trois-Rivières (Three Rivers for the monolinguals). Odd name for a town that has one river joining another; turns out that a couple of islands in the stream left the early explorers dazed and confused. The name was given in 1599 by Sieur Du Pont, who lacked the insight we now have with satellite photography.
Toponomy is one of those fields that can provide hours of amusement. After all, it takes a great deal of imagination to name everything around you, particularly when every town has the same Big Mac / Wally’s / Cannie Tire strip mall to provide local colour. If you haven’t taken a trip to the public library to research the place names where you live, you now have a reason to get out of bed tomorrow morning.
