Talk:Bella Coola, British Columbia

HBC Post's name and also re Morris Moss

I didn't put Moss in hte article because you can see he's still a redlink; his role in supplying the Chilcotin War is worth having in here, as well as his role among hte Nuxalk (which it would be good to hear a Nuxalk account of btw). Got no idea what his store was called, or wehtehr it was in competition with the HBC post or what; And re the HBC post, did it have a name as such - I know it wasn't "Fort Bella Coola" but was it "North Bentinck Post" or such? Reason is there is a Category:Hudson's Bay Company forts, wwhich despite its title includes (or should) "posts" as well as "forts".Skookum1 (talk) 16:12, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Bella Coola Valley - article or redirect?

Hagensborg has a separate article, it may be that Stuie, Firvale, Saloompt also need them, Tallheo already has one....this should probably be a region article and associated category Bella Coola Valley, the alternative is to redirect that here and make subsections for each of the sub-communities; thing is the IRs in the area and other features, rivers etc would fit in the category/region article while not in the town article (especially if this ever becomes incorporated, which it may).Skookum1 (talk) 13:12, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Bella Coola which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 01:44, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Nusatsum, Saloompt, Lower Bella Coola.....

I just created stubs for Firvale and Stuie; I found no BC Names listing for Saloompt and for Nusatsum there is only the Nusatsum River and Nusatsum Mountain see here. I'm guessing that Nusatsum is where the Nusatsum River meets the Bella Coola, at least, but need a cite in order to make a stub; Saloompt I've heard that name before...maybe it's on http://www.nuxalk.net?Skookum1 (talk) 05:58, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Nope, not there so far as I can tell so far; but I did find in BC Names "Salloomt" River and Mountain and so am guessing as with Nusatsum that the community is at that river's confluence with the Bella Coola. I'll advise BC Names/GeoBC of these two communities; "Lower Bella Coola" I'm not sure what that refers to - the IR?Skookum1 (talk) 06:22, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Saloompt is the area of the community located on the North side of the Bella Coola River, near and around the Saloompt River ("Saloomt Road" on Google Maps). Nusatsum is the area composed of the Smith & Gibbs Subdivisions in the same area as Saloompt, but on the south side of the river ("Douglas Drive" and environs on Google Maps). Lower Bella Coola is the agricultural area particularly surrounding Grant Road. Hagensborg used to be called "Bella Coola". Hence, Lower Bella Coola was downstream. Then, once Hagen Christansen set up his store upriver, and that area become known as "Hagensborg", the name Bella Coola really did come to mean the whole Valley, though with the post office and trading post at the rivermouth, that ("even-lower-Bella-Coola" if you will) became known as "Bella Coola proper" or "the townsite". The one clear remnant of this is the community events hall (theatre, bingos, all sorts of stuff) that is called "LoBelCo Hall", and is located on the Fairgrounds. Sorry I don't have links for this stuff, but I will dig into my grandfather's book (http://www.amazon.ca/Bella-Coola-romantic-Cliff-Kopas/dp/189438444X/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1398689019&sr=8-8&keywords=Bella+Coola) to give some page number references. AshleyMorton (talk) 12:44, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

K thanks. As you can see in Category:Bella Coola Valley I've been populating/creating the area's articles; I was aware of the Bella Coola P.O. having been at Hagensborg. Is there a local name for Bella Coola IR No. 1 other than that; I created that but info on services, pop etc needed, same as with other communities/localities in the Valley; any idea why Atnarko was originally named Anaham? Some association with the Chilcotin and/or Tsilhqot'in. BTW a while back Bella Coola Heli-Skiing, I think the name was, had a COI/SPAM article here, listed under ski resorts and areas; there wasn't a Category:Heli-skiing companies in British Columbia category yet, now there are a half-dozen/several articles and it could be re-created; it was me who AFD'd it.....all such articles, skiing and other kinds of tourism, need to be watched for spammery and peacock language and such; some tourism articles should maybe be migrated to wikivoyage, that's occurred to me at times, too. Anyways anything in your grandfather's book that could add to any articles in the cluster/Valley/region now please indulge; it's input from people actually from these areas or with a connection to them that's needed to improve content. I created the Bella Coola Valley article (and cat) on the basis of the tourism association's name/webpage as the main cite; there's no actual particular BC Names citation for the Valley as such; yes I understand what it says in the lede here; the thing is the cite gives the townsite - LoBelCo, nice nickname - as the lat-long and placename; would you consider, for instance, Hagensborg and Stuie and Firvale to be {{Neighbourhoods of Bella Coola}} in functional terms; not saying that template should exist, just asking by way of comparison/content. I'll be expanding the Tallheo/Talyu article at some point, with the material from nuxalk.net and more, and for Kimsquit and Kwatna when I get a chance; there's 19th Century listings of all Nuxalk villages, I was going to try and map them....at some point.Skookum1 (talk) 13:54, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Whoosh! Bunch of questions. Okay, basic idea - "Neighbourhoods of Bella Coola" - Yes! That's how it works. A bit goofy to have a rural place understood like this, but that's how it works - partly because it's so far away from anywhere else, and because there are no formal municipalities, the regional identity is stronger than the micro-regional. I think that there are islands like this - there are community names, but it's much more appropriate to talk about the entire island, rather than to manufacture relevance for discrete communities. Bowen Island, for example, has Snug Cove, but people don't talk about having a relative who lives in Snug Cove. There is no better name for Bella Coola #1. Locally, colloquially, it's just "the Reserve", as in so many towns. I think it's not a silly idea to have the article, but it should not be targetted for much work, because it is not a community definition - there are many Nuxalk who live off-Reserve, and the Nuxalk maintain their claim to the entire surrounding area (like so much of the BC coast, they never signed away land under a treaty, so they would never refer to the Reserve, specifically, as "Nuxalk territory", because it's such a small subset of the territory.) In fact, Bella Coola is relatively integrated, with many services *not* duplicated (United Church on Reserve, hospital off reserve, good basketball court on reserve, grocery stores off reserve). Therefore, making a big deal of the geographical distinction would actually run the risk of fostering a division that doesn't exist at the moment.

I don't know for sure why Atnarko was originally called "Anaham", but I can guess. Chief Anaham moved a fair bit, and there was some traditional fishing territory that was a kind of shared trading space between the Chilcotin and Nuxalk at the uppermost reaches of the Valley. Therefore, it definitely makes sense that Chief Anaham might have been in the neighbourhood (likely for a few weeks in the summer) when some settler was setting up the post office. Dude left his name all over the place. There are still some Chilcotin who come down for fishing weeks or weekends in the summers.

Thanks for all the work. I did a bunch of early writing on this 7-8 years ago, but haven't actually lived there full time since 1999 (first 20 years of my life), so it's great to see it being fleshed out. AshleyMorton (talk) 14:24, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I know about the sovereignty thing; most BC First Nations have that position, including the St'at'imc and the Tsilhqot'in; that their own usages are in fact official usages, and their statements as much a reliable government-type source as any other, isn't well understood or accepted by a lot of Wikipedians in title discussions, or as to whether the placename is the PRIMARYTOPIC or the old name for the Nuxalk is....or as some quibbled, is the primary topic the heli-skiing company or the river or the valley? I'm from a place that's very similar (Seton Portage-Shalalth, which have maybe ten neighbourhoods between them, and Lillooet where "Greater Lillooet" is meant in the same breath as the District of Lillooet is used, and where three of the main bands have reserves surrounding "city limits" and there's non-native communities beyond them; all "Lillooet", but not DoL. Hazelton, New Hazelton and Old Hazelton/Gitanmaax have the same issue; all are "Hazelton" or "the Hazeltons". East Lillooet and Hop Farm were part of "Lillooet" long before the DoL came or the Village of Lillooet that preceded it came into existence, or was expanded to include them; some places like Lytton there's also a Camchin (Kumsheen) article; for D'Arcy there's N'quatqua/Nequatque; both really the same places; but not quite; I'm guessing Nazko and Dog Creek and Alkali Lake all fall in the same type of equation; this is lost on people who have no concept of such places, or how they fit together and how notable they are in an empty landscape (some of the RMs dumped on towns like Bella Coola and Bella Bella and Atlin for only having a few hundred people in them, i.e. as if that had anythign to do with PRIMARYTOPIC. That the Nuxalk, Heiltsuk, and Aa Tlein kwaan of the Inland Tlingit all use the names Bella Coola, Bella Bella, and Atlin to refer to the place rather than to themselves, is also lost on these people.....and ignored, contrary to MOS:IDENTITY and the Self-identification passages in TITLE and WP:NCET. All crazy weird guideline stuff that shouldn't get in the way of creating content, but it does......I'll get at making a few more peaks in the area, and the South Bentinck Arm, Taleomy River, and Tallheo Hot Springs articles in the next hours....maybe.Skookum1 (talk) 14:52, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

category question

Does Bella Coola's total population justify it being in Category:Places in British Columbia with Aboriginal majority populations? And do you have a way to handle the Bella Coola Valley article separately from the main Bella Coola, British Columbia one; I just noted you had commented on the RM "I wish I'd seen this', yes I wish you had too......as far as citations go per discrete articles, BC Names cites have separate listings for all (though nothing for Saloompt (sp?) and Nusatsum yet), even though they're really one community; I've lived a short while in the Slocan, it's much the same there, at least from Slocan City south through Winlaw and Slocan Park and Playmor Junction and Passmore etc.; - a "linear community"...difficult to speak of or write about separately, and functioning as a cohesive whole identity-wise. Mark Sweeten Wade's The Cariboo Road describes the collection of roadhouses and ranches from Ashcroft on up like that, a community strung out across a vast difference, a string of neighbourhoods with a common identity.....this is lost on people who do not know such places or live in such conditions/isolation.....you and I know it's reality, others will tell us that it is original research...without ever reading something like Wade, or maybe like your grandfather's book, which me being in Thailand I'm unlikely to get a chance to have a look at. Write/cite away....Skookum1 (talk) 15:01, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Okay, you say lots of stuff, and I'm having a bit of trouble keeping up with it all. Still, I'll try, though it may not all end up under the right headings!

First - If you want to do some math, you can take the Stats Can results for CCRD areas C+D+E and Bella Coola 1, and you will get the exact numbers (well within the StatsCan +/- 5 rounding stuff) for the valley. That should be able to answer your questions about the aboriginal majority.

Second - I noticed a comment in your edit summary about Lower Bella Coola being the same thing as the townsite. Not quite. Here is the run from west to east up the valley: (Government Wharf) - (Non-reserve townsite) - (Reserve, townsite section) - (Reserve, Four Mile section) - (Lower Bella Coola) - (Hagensborg) - (Nusatsum/Saloompt) - (Firvale) - (Stuie) - (Atnarko). Back when Lower Bella Coola got its name, the "townsite" was half just the Hudson Bay post property, and half reserve. So "Bella Coola" was the Norwegian (and others) settlements upvalley. Within that subset, there was "Bella Coola" and "Lower Bella Coola" (though both were upstream of the HBC post and the reserve). Then two things happened: "Bella Coola" got nicknamed "Hagensborg", and the HBC sold/vacated its land, generating a bunch of non-aboriginal (or at least non-Reserve) settlement at the river mouth - and it was laid out as a proper townsite. It got the signs that say "Bella Coola". This creates the silly situation of "Lower Bella Coola" actually being upriver of "Bella Coola proper". (Also worth noting that the river creates new land all the time - you can see boats "tied up" on mossy grass-covered silt meadows that were floating only 50 years ago. Hence the "townsite" is now further inland than it was during the period we're discussing).

Third - this is all before we start discussing the north-of-the-river on-reserve settlement that was the primary Nuxalk community post-smallpox, but pre-1900 (and in the early part of the 20th century). They abandoned it in the 30s due to flooding (including floating their church across the river [1]) However, the Nuxalk Nation is starting to run out of easily-developable land on reserve, so some are actually floating the idea of rebuilding a bridge and resettling over there. But that's for another day AshleyMorton (talk) 17:09, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Feel free to break up my posts and bullet them for individual questions; I do write in stream of consciousness, everything-comes-to-mind-at-once but take it as a sign of interest/eagnerness and "wanting to know". The problem with all these smalltown articles is citations, and the resistance of some to local input as authentic/reliable.....but we do what we can. If you feel in the long run that Bella Coola Valley should be merged with Bella Coola, British Columbia, presumably as Bella Coola once we take another run at getting this undabbed like other unique town names in BC/Canada, we'll figure that out in the long run; my longer thing above about Hazelton, Lillooet etc applies in various places in BC; citation/guideline "rules" don't easily encompass the situation; same as with Pioneer/Bradian/Bralorne/Ogden/Brexton and Gold Bridge/Haylmore/SouthFork and more "clusters" like that from where I'm from (Bridge River Country). Explaining and citing that to satisfy patrollers, well 'taint easy sometimes....and the conceptual nature of the communities-within-mountain-fastness doesn't translate well either....Skookum1 (talk) 17:21, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Cool - Also - no issue with you reformatting my posts - thanks. Regarding merging Bella Coola Valley and Bella Coola, I think that they might be better merged, but they could also be coherent if the "...Valley" one were about the geography, with cultural notes only in the way that the Valley's geography has intersected with society (for example, the CPR survey, and the difficulty of building a road out of the Valley), while the main article spoke about the community. I can see arguments both ways. AshleyMorton (talk) 17:40, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

provincial electoral district

I've added a tad about Cariboo-Chilcotin (provincial electoral district); I'll see if I can find the article I read about this gerrymander, maybe in [The Tyee I think; not sure which communities were added to Cariboo-Chilcotin (or was it Cariboo North?); the government's electoral district map for the riding doesn't show specific locations in the Bella Coola Valley.Skookum1 (talk) 06:02, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Noohalk Mountain - read the BC Names cite

FYI, AshleyMorton, seems that this mountain got its name via one Cliff Kopas.... and on another note, this entry in the Bivouac Mountain is a made-up name, like too many there (long story, I used to volunteer "there"), is there a local name for this mountain? It's not in BC Names, and had me scratching my head until I noticed that little "geographic" tag on name status, which is the siteowner's way of saying "unofficial, but I made it up and want to pretend it's valid".....Skookum1 (talk) 17:55, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, dunno. What I really need to do is get my mom on here - used to run the local museum, started the Central Coast Archives. I'll ask her next time I talk to her.AshleyMorton (talk) 01:51, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Reference to oral history

I saw a quick little back-and-forth between User:Muskwatch and User:Air.light about oral history, including glaciation, cave bears and other wonderful things. The paragraph as it's written is basically correct - Boas and McIlwraith do record much oral history, and some of it includes stories like that. While it is probably relevant to have more explicit sources, I can confirm the basic accuracy of the statement, and having a brief call-out of local oral history adds value, in my opinion. I'm sure it could be improved (most stuff on Wikipedia could be), but it's not really contentious that such oral history exists. AshleyMorton (talk) 14:53, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Content being sourced and verifiable is a core content policy of Wikipedia. Please help to improve things in this aspect by providing information that is properly sourced. If it's true it shouldn't be too difficult to find a suitable source. Please take a good look at WP:VERIFY and WP:IRS. Air.light (talk) 02:33, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Name

What the heck is this supposed to mean ? "Bella Coola is a corruption of the word for someone from Bella Coola ..." Replace any word in the dictionary for this, it's a tautology. And redundant. And makes no sense. May as well remove it. 116.231.74.164 (talk) 03:00, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

It's what the source says. Perhaps we could word it a little better. Air.light (talk) 03:38, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Nuxalk names

I decided to insert this question in the talk section. How do I go about adding Nuxalk names to articles? What is the minimum that can be done in terms of publishing these names that would allow me to cite something? I want to add Nuxalk names to some of the mountains in the valley, but am also not able to publish any of my sources because they encompass the entire territory and include disputed areas where the nation doesn't want to make all information public. In particular I'm thinking of hte Nuxalk names and spellings of all mountains and creeks within the valley proper.