The Chronicles

It’s almost amazing that the Dominion Building ever survived as one of Vancouver’s most iconic heritage landmarks.

If you go by the old newspaper stories and their accounts of the tragedies behind its genesis, the Dominion Trust Co., you’d almost think it was cursed!

Like dominoes, they keep falling—traditional geographical, so-called place names, long rooted on our maps which have come to be challenged by today’s moral and ideological standards. 

Places and topographical features which were named to honour pioneers who played pivotal roles in BC history but who now find themselves under the glass for their beliefs, in particular their publicly expressed or demonstrated stands on racial issues. Sometimes, too, and more and more often lately, not for reasons of moral judgment but to belatedly acknowledge First Nations precedents. 

Until I embraced the digital age and all that it offers, including finger-touch research capabilities, my most thumbed reference books were the Oxford Dictionary, the B.C. Department of Mines’ Annual Reports, the British Columbia Gazetteer and Capt. John T. Walbran’s British Columbia Coast Names, 1592-1906.