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Le coeur éclaté (Burst Heart)

A New Idea in Québec Place Names did not Catch on in the Rest of Canada.

THE MOST IMAGINATIVE ACT of place-naming in Canadian history happened in Québec 12 years ago, causing delight but also deep anger. Consider an island newly christened Le Coeur Éclaté. It sounds as stark in English: Burst Heart Island. An odd, arresting label for an unpopulated islet in northern Quebec, this place name is surprising because it celebrates a living Québécois writer. Le Coeur Éclaté is the title of a 1993 novel by Quebec's most famous modern playwright, Michel Tremblay.

Think of it. A Canadian place has been named to honour an artist, not a caribou, not a salmon, and not by adapting an aboriginal phrase that means "many waters meet here." We possess such place names aplenty, and historical habit bids us keep them. But this is a new, man-made island. Surely every spot on our map need not recall the dead? Let the living soul of our country, our artists, be glorified in new place names! Let's face it, when Canadians and most peoples of the world start tagging their landscape, the customary recipients of toponymic fame are the usual suspects, our deceased political "betters." Believe me, after studying the world's place names for a decade, I can tell you this was a revolutionary gesture by members of la Commission de toponymie, Quebec's geographic names board in 1997.

The commissioners decided to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the province's controversial Bill 101, the Charter of the French Language, by naming 101 islands in the Caniapiscau Reservoir after various terms, titles of novels and characters in more recent Quebec literature. What a great idea!

 

This Caniapiscau Reservoir lake, a vast sheet of water covering more than 4,000 square kilometers, was created by the diversion of natural waterways in building the James Bay hydro-electric project. It is about 400 kilometres south-southwest of Kuujjuaq, formerly Fort Chimo, at the southern end of Ungava Bay. The commissioners sought to create a "geographic poem," where each island in this newborn archipelago would bear a resonant name drawn from the title of a story, a poem, or a book by Quebec authors important now and since the postwar period.

Startling, exotic, and beautiful are many of these new place names. Strange strands to wander include the footprintless beaches of Le Nid du Silence (nest of silence). It is taken from a 1992 poem by chansonnier Gilles Vigneault, beloved for his song “Mon Pays.” Montréal theatre director and playwright Jean-Claude Germain has a misty hummock named after his play “L'École des Rêves” (school of dreams). Another evocative island is Le Chuchotis des Rives (the soft whisper of shores), from a 1994 poem by Jacques Ouellet. Acadian author Antonine Maillet sees her 1990 novel L'Oursiade (the bear saga) as the name of an island. The whole archipelago has the official name of Le Jardin au Bout du Monde (garden at the end of the world), from a 1975 short story by Gabrielle Roy.

One of the little islands of the Caniapiscau Reservoir is called Le parapluie de ma tante ‘my aunt’s umbrella’, the name of the first chapter in a novel by québécois author François Barcelo entitled Moi, les parapluies.

 

Meaning of Caniapiscau

The reservoir and the river were named after Lake Caniapiscau. According to Father Joseph-Étienne Guinard, the term kaniapiskau or better kaneapiskak means in Montagnais/Cree: rocky point of land. Father Louis-Philippe Vaillancourt in his French-Cree dictionary, gives ‘rocky point’ as: k ¯an¯a-é¯apisk ¯ach. Explorer Albert Peter Low (1895) found “a high rocky headland jutting into Caniapiscau Lake.” The Inuit call the river Adlait Kuunga ‘Indian River’.

The land around the Caniapiscau Reservoir is taiga or boreal forest. It is in the zone of discontinuous permafrost and is accessible by air and by a gravel road from James Bay, la Route Transtaïga.

When these new Québec literary and artistic names were first applied, local Quebec Cree and Inuit leaders were furious at the provincial government. Native land was flooded to create the reservoir, they pointed out. And the Charter of the French Language, which made la belle langue the only official speech of Quebec, did nothing to assuage First Peoples’ worries about the survival of native tongues. Their leaders said these were not new islands, but the tops of flooded hills that had aboriginal designations. It did seem provocative to foist the names of Québécois writers on places that have no connection with their works. More than a decade ago, the commission said it would re-examine the plan and possibly replace some of the literary titles with older Cree place names. On the other hand, it might be time for aboriginal peoples to understand they now share Canada with peoples other than themselves. Canada is NOT theirs to the exclusion of all other humans. As our land is shared, so we ought to share the names we give it.

English Canada: What? Celebrate Living Writers? You Nuts?

English Canada has no places named after Canadian writers, artists or their works. Oh, we have Flin Flon in Manitoba, named after Professor Flonatin (nicknamed Flin Flon), who uncovers an underground city of gold in a 1905 British novel, The Sunless City. We have Cape Gargantua, Ont., named after one of Rabelais' giants. We have Bracebridge and Gravenhurst in Ontario, borrowed from Washington Irving's American short stories. But someday, riffling through an atlas of Canada, wouldn’t it be startling and gratifying for discerning supporters of the Canadian arts to see place names like those on the list below?

The Stone Angel Mountains

Who Has Seen the Wind Coulee

The Alice Munro Shortcut

Vinyl Café Bog of Sentimental Treacle

Linden MacIntyre Uppitty Lands

The Globe & Mail Book Review Slough of Despond.

The Glenn Gould Midlands (Mittenlands?)

 

An earlier shorter version of this now revised column first appeared in Canadian Geographic magazine Nov/Dec 1997.