Jim McDowell’s The Story of Sidney Island's Three Names traces the cartographic, linguistic, and political evolution of a prominent landform in the southern Gulf Islands by examining the layered origins of its designations. The text illustrates how corporate traders and imperial hydrographers progressively superimposed colonial designations—first as "Sallas Island" under the Hudson's Bay Company and subsequently as "Sidney Island" via British Admiralty surveys—directly over the ancestral W̱SÁNEĆ (Saanich) territory and ancient harvesting shores of SḰŦÁMEN (Sktamaen). McDowell details the changing logistics of island access and resource extraction, showing how an Indigenous marine domain defined by reef net fisheries and seasonal harvesting was re-engineered through colonial property surveys to facilitate settler pre-emptions, steam navigation in Haro Strait, and industrial brick-making operations at Sidney Spit. Ultimately, this toponymic chronicle demonstrates how successive colonial renamings functioned as deliberate instruments of spatial control across the Salish Sea, superimposing imperial administrative authority onto an enduring Indigenous archipelago.

British Columbia Gulf Islands, Discoveries in geography, Gulf Islands (B.C.), Gulf Islands (B.C.) Discovery and exploration, Gulf Islands (B.C.) History, Gulf, Îles (C.-B.), Gulf, Îles (C.-B.) Découverte et exploration, Gulf, Îles (C.-B.) Histoire, Haro Strait (B.C.) Discovery and explorations, History, Maps, Names, Geographical, Names, Geograp

"Sktamaen, pre-1840, Sallas, 1847, Sidney, 1850"--Cover

"Sktamaen, pre-1840, Sallas, 1847, Sidney, 1850"--Cover