Place Names of Alberta, Vol. 2: Southern Alberta

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

The second of a four-volume set, this book updates and expands the
documentation of Alberta’s place names, covering southern Alberta from
Drumheller to the American border and west to the foothills. As did Vol.
1, it contains a brief introduction to the history of toponymy in the
study area, a selection of photographs, and a substantial bibliography.
Each of the alphabetically arranged entries has a brief description
about the name origin and four location references: a National
Topographic Grid System reference, a legal land description, longitude
and latitude, and distance to the nearest population centre.

Because this part of Alberta has been more densely populated than the
mountain areas, places are more often named after population centres
than on the basis of physical features. There is also more recorded
human history for this area, so the descriptions are more extensive.

An improvement over Vol. 1 is the provision of extensive
cross-references from former to current place names. There are, however,
still omissions. For example, in the description of the locality of
Farrow, Glenview and Randle are noted as former names, but no
cross-references to current names are provided. This is a disadvantage,
particularly to genealogists, who are likely to have only an old name.

As was the case with the previous volume, no criteria for inclusion and
exclusion are supplied. The reader is left guessing about names that are
excluded. For example, with the exception of Fish Creek Provincial Park,
parks in Calgary are not listed; nor in Fish Creek Provincial Park are
named features such as Sikane Lake listed. Even the place shown on the
cover photo—“Vision Quest in the Red Deer River Badlands”— is
not an entry in the book.

This series is a useful addition to most reference collections. Vol. 1
covered mountain parks and foothills, while Vol. 3 and 4 will cover
central and northern Alberta, respectively.