British Naval Officers Are All Over Our Maps

Up until recent years, Penelakut Island, east of Chemainus and midway between Saltair and Ladysmith, was known as Kuper Island. It was originally named, as were 100s of other B.C. geographical place names, after a British naval officer.

In this case that officer was Admiral Sir August Leopold Kuper, Knight Grand Cross of the Bath (GCB) of the Royal Navy. Illustrious, indeed, but no more.

Today, it’s easy to criticize the British naval cartographers from Captain Vancouver on for having supplanted geographical names that had long been used by the Indigenous peoples of the coast. Most of these topographical features took their cues from a specific feature’s physicality.

Not so their British usurpers which range from royalty to peers to politicians to actresses to family members and friends, even race horses. Anything, it seems, to fill the charts of B.C.’s lengthy and indented coastline.

We’re talking 1000s of features and 1000s of names. (Try it sometime.)

And they didn’t do this while sitting behind a desk. They actually sailed and charted, often at personal risk, every foot of the coastline they drew on paper. Professional mariners and recreational boaters today entrust their lives to Admiralty charts that are known to be as accurate in the age of satellite navigation as when they were drawn in that age of wooden ships and iron men.

So, when reading about Penelakut/Kuper Island, it struck me to look at some of the names on our maps that we take at face value without giving any thought as to their origins. In other words, the stories behind the who and the why.

You’ll learn more about them in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO: This British naval officer probably named more coastal geographical features in British Columbia than anyone. Who was he? —Wikipedia