Road maps make pretty good reading east of St. Louis-du-Ha!-Ha!
Alberta has its Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump, British Columbia its Spuzzum, Ontario its Bummers' Roost, Quebec its St. Louis-du-Ha!-Ha! and Saskatchewan its Eyebrow and Elbow, but no province boasts such a wealth of wacky place names as Newfoundland and Labrador. Only there will you find Bareneed, Come By Chance, Conception Bay, Cranky Point, Funk Island, Happy Adventure; Heart's Content, Heart's Delight, Heart's Desire, Little Heart's Ease…Ireland's Eye, Jerry's Nose, Joe Batt's Arm, Toogood Arm, Mount Misery, Naked Man Hill, Seldom Come By, Slambang Bay, Witless Bay - and Dildo.
No one knows exactly how Dildo got its name, but in Place Names of Atlantic Canada, historian William B. Hamilton says that Captain James Cook (1728-1779) and his assistant, Michael Lane, "had a keen sense of humour and were not above enshrining descriptive names that might offend the overly sensitive." Hamilton was thankful that modern campaigns to give Dildo a more respectable name failed, "and the colourful nomenclature of the 18th century stands on its own merits."
He had a similar reaction to attempts to change Nova Scotia's Malignant Cove to, wait for it, Milburn. The town took its name from the HMS Malignant, a British warship that sank in nearby waters in 1774. As Hamilton wrote, "Fortunately, history prevailed, and the original name was retained by popular usage."
Though not quite up to par with Newfoundland, Nova Scotia also has a fair share of weird place names. My favourites are Ecum Secum, Eureka, Mushaboom, Paradise, Pugwash, Tatamagouche, Dedication Lake, Folly Lake, Mistake Lake, Necum Teuch and Marshy Hope. Massacre Island, off Port Mouton in Queen's County, got its name from a legend that Mi'kmaq warriors slaughtered the survivors of a French ship that foundered there. The legend might just be true; every once in a while, someone finds human bones on the island. Goshen, Garden of Eden and Roman Valley are all clearly in the "Bible belt" of bluenose place names.
Prince Edward Island boasts Fortune Cove, Salutation Cove, Pisquid River, Blooming Point, Seacow Head, Old Ferry Spit, Point Prim, Sailor's Hope, Tea Hill, Tignish, Devil's Punchbowl Provincial Park-and good old Crapaud (which is French for toad, in case anyone asks.) Thanks to Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, the Island also has a Lake of Shining Waters. Nor should we forget Skinner's Pond, boyhood home of Stompin' Tom Connors. The name of Dunk River, which flows into Bedeque Bay, has nothing to do with anyone's getting dunked, and everything to do with George Montague Dunk, Earl of Halifax (1716-1771). The city of Halifax, named after the same man, might well have been called Dunkville or Dunkberg. Sunbury County, NB, also owes its name to Dunk, one of whose titles was Viscount Sunbury.
New Brunswick has a lake called Coronary, a cliff called Seven Days Work, and settlements called Five Fingers, Mechanic, Whooper Spring, Skedaddle Ridge, Peekaboo Corner, Pull and Be Damned Narrows (and Push and Be Damned Rapids), and Trousers Lake, with its Left Leg and Right Leg. It also has the craziest river and stream names in Canada: such waterways as the Aboujagane, Kouchibouguac, Magaguadavic and Shikatehawk owe their names to decisions by white pioneers to stick with aboriginal place names.
But back to Newfoundland. After two scientists at Nova Scotia's Bedford Institute of Oceanography helped discover an underwater mountain range in the Pacific Ocean, and happily named two of the peaks after themselves, I publicly griped that a mere writer like myself never got to see his name on any map. They responded by sending me a navigation chart that showed a remote part of the Newfoundland coast. They had crayoned a black circle around "Harry's Hole."