As signifiers of historical claims to the right of possession, geographic place names have considerable symbolic importance.
Here on Bowen Island, the name Mannion’s Bay signified that Irish-born, Gastown saloon-keeper Joseph Mannion had acquired title in the 1870s to 160 acres bordering Terminal Creek and the bay that it flowed into.
By the mid-1880s Mannion was manufacturing bricks from the blue clay of Terminal Creek, and in 1888 he moved his family from Vancouver to a large house on the bay, selling the property and returning to the city a decade later.
Captain John Cates, the purchaser, then converted Mannion’s house to a hotel and the bay became known as Hotel Bay.
By the 1920s, after the Union Steamship Company had acquired Cate’s holdings, it had become known as Deep Bay.
Skipping ahead a half-century, the 70-member Bowen Island Historians (now known as the Bowen Island Museum and Archives), submitted a petition in 1979 to the secretary of the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographic Names requesting that the official name become Mannion Bay.
D.R. Peason, who was the B.C. representative of the committee, as well as director of surveys and mapping of the BC Ministry of the Environment, replied that the principle was to recognize names in local usage.
He also noted that the name originally approved was Lodge Cove, but that the name Deep Cove had appeared on a British admiralty chart as early as 1868. It therefore had been in use for well over 100 years.
Despite the fact that the name Mannion Bay enjoys little or no current usage, however, Pearson stated that if the people currently living around the bay supported the petition, this would give it further strength and a broader base of public support.
When the Historians secretary replied, in turn that 90 per cent of the people who had signed the petition owned property at the Bay, Pearson rather reluctantly agreed to proceed with the change.
Writing on Oct. 24, 1979, he noted that the name Deep Bay “has appeared on countless maps, documents and publications circulated, deposited and used far and wide,” but he would nevertheless bow to local wishes and process the name change for official adoption.
The name Mannion Bay would “appear in future editions of the Gazetteer of geographical names and will be available for use on maps of appropriate scale.”
Notice to that effect was submitted to the Undercurrent on Jan. 29, 1980.
The name Mannion Bay does now appear on official navigation charts but, judging from the maps currently circulating on the island, Pearson was right when he predicted that “it will be many years before Mannion Bay appears widely in print and probably decades before it completely replaces Deep Bay in regular use.”
Jack Little is a BIMA board member.
