By J.D. Jeffery
Museum Curator
As it was mentioned last month we are under construction and the new vault is almost complete. Life is getting back to normal so our May schedule is as follows: May 13th Work Bee; May 21st Monthly Meeting with our guest speaker talking about their African Safari; and May 24th Movie Night at the Museum featuring the African Queen.
On May 13th, starting at 10 a.m., we scheduled a Cleaning Bee and volunteers came out and spent an hour or two getting to know the museum and some of the volunteers. My first introduction to the museum was helping during a Cleaning Bee; it was a fun way to glimpse behind the scenes.
Through winter, I got to talk to people in the area and a common topic of conversation was where local landmark names come from. I decided to share some of the information in upcoming articles. I know some of this information you will already know, but I hope there will be a few that are new as well.
Windermere Lake: David Thompson called it Kootenae Lake in 1807. It later became known as Morigeau Lake and Lower Columbia Lake. Gilbert Malcolm Sproat surveyed the town site of Windermere in 1883 and claimed the land in his friends name John Jane then renamed the lake Lake Windermere. In a letter from Mr. Sproat to B.G. Hamilton, I called it that from some fancied resemblance to the name of that lake in England though the two are not really alike.
Hamilton added a note at the bottom of the same letter before filing it: The name later reverted to Lower Columbia but through the untiring and unceasing efforts of R. Randolph Bruce, it was finally changed back to Lake Windermere.
Athalmer: Originally called Salmon Beds because of the salmon that spawned there after coming up the Columbia River from the Pacific Ocean. In 1888 the local politician, Honorable Frederick Whitworth Aylmer, laid out the town site and renamed it Athalmer; Athol meaning noble and mere meaning lake.
Learn more about the museum by visiting www.windermerevalleymuseum.ca.
