Vol. 18 No. 11  December 1988/January 1989 Safety - Priority #1   What's in a Name "Redaer" Omer Lavallee Corporate Historian     Emeritus   Canadian Pacific's original Montreal-based syndicate officially comprised five men:  George Stephen, James J. Hill, Duncan McIntyre, Richard B. Angus, and John Stewart Kennedy. Donald A. Smith and Norman Kittson were unofficial silent partners with significant financial interest.     At a recent gathering with some confreres, the topic of conversation turned to the origins of names of railway operating points of the past and present, some of them strange-sounding.   A good example was ENLAUGRA, now abandoned, the junction between the Drummondville and Newport subdivisions near Sutton, Quebec. This name was made up of the first letters of the given names of the three daughters of Alfred Price, a former CPR General Manager, ENid, LAUra, and GRAce.   The devising of names for "operating points" was a necessity as a result of the use of the train order system. Under this system names were necessary to designate sidings, junctions, and water tanks as a less cumbersome alternative to designation by mileage.   Names of local employees and officers were freely used for this purpose, often spelled in reverse. This was the case with NAVILUS (on the Nipigon subdivision near Thunder Bay) and DRANOEL (the former junction between the Peterborough and Lindsay subdivisions).   Another was MAHARG, a siding just east of Calgary on the Brooks subdivision, which - obviously - is GRAHAM spelled backwards. It was with some surprise that I subsequently discovered that it didn't honour anyone named Graham at all. It was named after a CPR superintendent named C.S. Maharg, an adapted form of the old Scottish name MacHarg.   Other such "manufactured" names include LAMAN, Quebec, where the LAchute and MANiwaki subdivisions used to connect, and MANDO, west of Rigaud, Quebec, where the Pointe Fortune branch used to leave the M&O subdivision. The initials M&O stood for the Montreal & Ottawa Railway under whose charter the subdivision was built.   Sometimes we meet with combinations of names. Trying to solve the origin of the name UHTHOFF (Ontario) on the Port McNicoll subdivision some years ago, I found that it was named after one of the London bankers of the parallel Midland Railway (now Canadian National). He was in partnership (Fesser, Uhthoff & Co.) with another banker who gave his name to FESSERTON on the same line.   Another such pair is SEWARD and WEBB on the Maple Creek subdivision, named after William Seward Webb, a U.S. railway magnate, Vanderbuilt in-law, and friend of Van Horne's, who visited this area in the 1890s.   More obvious were the stations BADEN, POWELL, and MAFEKING, on the CN in Manitoba, between Swan River and Hudson Bay. They were named after Baron Baden-Powell, the hero of the defense of Mafeking in the South African War who was also the founder of the Boy Scout movement.   Similarly KITCHENER, SIRDAR, and ATBARA, on the CPR's Moyie subdivision in British Columbia, commemorate Lord Kitchener, a British military leader who was appointed Sirdar (military commander) of the Egyptian Army in 1892 under the British mandate, with headquarters at Atbara on the Nile.   Another junction with a military name was PETAIN, British Columbia, at the junction of the Cascade and the Coquihalla subdivisions. It was named after the French army hero of the First World War Battle of Verdun.   However, after Marshal Petain in his later years headed the German puppet Vichy government following the fall of France in 1940, PETAIN was renamed ODLUM after the commander of the 2nd Canadian Division in the Second World War.   In the early years of this century, there was a siding named KUROKI on the Moosehead subdivision in Maine, after Baron Itei Kuroki, a hero of the Russo-Japanese War.   The stations at MARKSTAY, ROMFORD, and CHELMSFORD, Ontario, in the Sudbury area were named by the early contractor James Worthington after towns in his native Essex, England. The place of origin of the first-named spells it "Marys Tey".   Sometimes, the inhabitants of communities are not aware of the origins of their names. On a visit to the U.S. about 20 years ago, I took photos of the Great Northern stations at Stephen and Angus, Minnesota, named, respectively after Canadian Pacific's first president and one of its early directors, who were also involved in railways in that area.   There were some school age children around the station at Stephen and upon asking them if they knew who their town was named for, they assured me that it was after some early and popular politician!   This CP Rail News article is copyright 1989 by the Canadian Pacific Railway and is reprinted here with their permission. All photographs, logos, and trademarks are the property of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company.