Christmas is everywhere—even on our maps
It should come as no surprise that the yuletide spirit has influenced our mapmakers. In British Columbia it can be found, in variations, at least 18 times.—clipart-library.com
The Cassiar and Lillooet regions have their Christmas creeks, Christmas and Tiny Tim lakes, and Revelstoke its Christmas Island. Up-coast, we have Yule Lake and Rock. Also scattered about the province are nine Noels, although few if any of these have any connection to the holiday as Noel is also a surname.
On Vancouver Island there’s Christmas Point on the west side of the Malahat’s Finlayson Arm, and Victoria’s Christmas Hill. And that’s pretty much it, B.C. mapmakers, alas, not having been moved by the festive season as have their counterparts in other provinces.
Mind you, we did come close at least once: St. Nicholas Peak.
So-named by a surveyor around the turn of the last century because its profile reminded him of that jolly gentleman, it’s 25 miles north of Kicking Horse Pass—just over the B.C.-Alberta border. Our loss is the wild rose province’s gain.
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Three Canadian geographic ‘Christmases’ owe their origins to fallen servicemen of both world wars.
On a happier note, New Brunswick beats all other provinces with its December-flavoured mountain peaks: North Pole, St. Nicholas and Mounts Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Blitzen, Donner, Comet and Cupid. But there's no Mount Rudolph—the government agency responsible for such matters having ruled the Red-Nosed Reindeer to be too commercial!
To get back to Vancouver Island’s very own Christmas Hill and Christmas Point: Alan Rayburn who for years wrote a column on place names for Canadian Geographic magazine, stated that “none of the stories associated with them has been collected for the official records”. The key word here is official, for the late B.C. journalist Gwen Cash told the story behind the naming of Christmas Hill more than 50 years ago.
(Christmas Hill, by the way, has a tragic link with Nanaimo's Chase River. It was on this scenic hilltop that Hudson's Bay Co. shepherd Peter Brown was killed in 1852, and beside this river that one of his murderers was captured, hence its name.)
What’s left undeveloped of Victoria’s Christmas Hill is now part of the Swan Lake Christmas Hill Nature Sanctuary. —www.swanlakeb.bc.ca
Until quite recently this low-browed hill with its grassy, Garry Oak slopes and commanding views withstood encroaching development. As late as the 1960s, it was unspoiled.
It was here, the story goes, that history was made soon after the arrival of the Hudson’s Bay Co. and the first Vancouver Island colonists. One early Christmas Eve, Mrs. Cash wrote, “the colonists, busy in their homes, prepared for the Birthday on the morrow. Indians [sic], unmindful of Christian ways, drew up their canoes and camped where now stand the Parliament Buildings.
The view from Victoria’s James Bay shows the Inner Harbour, looking north from what’s now the B.C. Parliament Buildings. The Songhees village was immediately to the left on the opposite shore. —Author’s Collection.
Suddenly at sunset, a great bird, horrific as a Haida raven, swooped out of the west. down, down it planed on steady pinions to snatch the tiny Indian baby playing on the beach and soared away into the air with him.
“Distracted with grief, his young mother ran up and down the shore calling on her tribe for help. All night they searched for the child to no avail. With the story of the Blessed Babe both whose birthday they were to celebrate on the morrow much in their minds, settlers and fur traders joined in. With lighted torches in their hands, they pushed through the thick, frost-rimmed woods and when dawn came found him safe and sound, a bronze baby, playing among the fallen bronze leaves on the summit now known as Christmas Hill.”
That's Owen Cash's story. Is it true? Certainly, it isn't “official.” So how did it find its way onto the maps?
The Montague Bridgman china shop in Victoria, 1930-2000. was internationally renowned. —history-in-your-hands.com
We have both the British admiralty and the late Montague Bridgman to thank. The former naval officer and noted Victoria merchant owned property on the northeastern summit of what the HBCo. had bluntly christened Lake Hill. In 1937, when building his home, Bridgman wanted to give his estate a name with some flair and turned to old charts.
There it was, courtesy of the Admiralty surveyors of almost a century before: Christmas Hill, where, according to Gwen Cash, a “small brown baby was found miraculously safe and well after a night of anxious terror on Christmas morning”.
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Christmas cards started out, not as we know them today, a rectangle folded in half and mailed in an envelope, but as postcards. Meaning that you shared your yuletide sentiments with whoever saw or handled your card in its delivery to your mailbox. Probably a fraction cheaper to buy and to send, too.
Many of them are elaborately designed, some even qualifying as high art, although not all of them come across, today, as being very, well, Christmassy. The rich colours and black background of the first card just don’t seem right for the occasion; only the ribbon identifying it as a Christmas card.
—All images from the Author’s Collection
The emerald green and the horseshoe, above, make me think of St. Patrick’s Day, not Christmas. Besides, isn’t an upside down horseshoe bad luck?
(Above) Now we’re getting somewhere with a sort of Dickensian holly and snow scene. The best printers were German, by the way, but the start of the First World War put an end to that.
These two cards obviously are the work of the same artist.
No date on this one as someone has removed to the stamp, but it appears to be pre- World War One. Addressed to Miss C. Rooke, 89 Crown Rd., Twickenham, Middlesex [England], it reads: “Wishing you a merry christmas and a bright new year. From Willie with love.”
Finally, not all that attractive, but the sentiment’s there!
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Well, 2024 has been another long year, one, sadly, filled with war and all its horrors in other parts of the world. One more reason for us to savour the best of the holiday season with family and friends. Most of us in Canada are blessed, and we owe it to those who built this land we call our own.
