One problem is the association of the name Powell with residential schools, and its history and trauma for indigenous people. This deserves recognition, & appreciation. The effects of that trauma are clearly present; including amoung others, mental health challenges & addictions.
The other problem; Powell represents identity for many people here. Questioning identity amounts to a personal threat for many who were unprepared for it. A natural reaction has been defensive and little has happened that hasn’t essentially only bolstered defensiveness. This needs recognition too, and appreciation.
Many people also want to do something about what is relatively new knowledge for many about what happened to indigenous people. Reconciliation? Change the name? This question has divided our community since we stopped doing anything about it since the last civic election in Oct. 2022.
Yes or no divides us. The community we need now, to face increasing challenges, needs to work together to find our way forward. It doesn’t matter how slowly; we just need to do it together. Division is our real current challenge. We must deal with that within our Powell River community before we can ever reconcile with the people who first asked the name question.
The Tla’amin Nation is thriving now like never before. Strength and pride have surged culturally and acquisitions of mill lands and TFL39 promise future economic prosperity. Meanwhile, our city faces sagging revenues, increasing costs, and people suffering mental health challenges, addictions, and homelessness too. There is a lot for us to work on together.
These two “name” problems are not two sides of the same problem. We are basically two distinct peoples with very linked but different histories. Some of us, or our ancestors, migrated here so we have inherited a problem, and now it is ours. Opportunity to reconnect within our community is ours. Failing to do that these past few years has resulted in antagonism, and conflict between us, prejudice, racism, blame. This is painful at a community scale, and it has gone on too long. Let’s take a breath, step back from reacting and taking it personally, and get working together again, for the good of ourselves and our whole community.
This fall we will have opportunity in a civic election to choose new leadership. The choice is very clear. Will we choose those who make promises that focus on what we fear, and deliver continued division and misery? Or will we choose leadership committed to reconnection with each other in spite of our different views, in spite of our apparent divisions, willing to face whatever is ahead of us together, however hard that might be, together as one community. I hope and pray we all care enough to vote with true hearts, and take the path back toward thriving together.
Rob Southcott 
Thank you for an interesting perspective on this difficult issue. One which I had never really considered.
When thinking about problems like this, I try to identify the two extreme positions. In this case, one extreme position is that the name of the City must always be Powell River and must never, under any circumstances, be changed. The other position is that the name of the City must** be changed from Powell River to ‘X’, where ‘X’ is the specific name that it must be changed to. Between these two extremes lies a whole range of other positions.
There is no easy solution to these problems. The Tla’amin Nation’s position is clear; it is never going to agree to keeping the Powell name – nor should it. However, it may be prepared to negotiate over what any new name should be. On the other hand, the City’s position is less clear. It may decide to keep the name Powell River, or it may decide to change it to some other name. This decision should be based on the wishes of the people of Powell River and an understanding of the distress caused to the Tla’amin Nation by the existing name. It also needs to consider the impact of a name change on things like postal addresses, which will involve Canada Post as well as other Provincial and Federal authorities. In making this decision, the City’s work is made more difficult because there is no consensus here about whether the name should be changed. One small group, calling itself Concerned Citizens of Powell River, attempted to carry out a rather questionable opinion survey, but it not clear that this group represents anyone other than themselves.
It is totally understandable that people who have lived here all their lives could feel that their identity is closely tied to the current name and would feel this identity threatened by any name change. There are also people who definitely want a name change, often with conditions about what the new name should be. A third group do not really care whether the name is changed or not, as long as the new name is a reasonable one and they are just left to get on with their lives.
My own position is with the “do not really care” group. An indigenous name is fine with me as long as it is not a long string of North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA) characters that I cannot remember, pronounce or enter on any standard computer keyboard. Examples of names that I would consider problematic are Sḵwx̱wú7mesh*, which is the indigenous name of Squamish and, closer to home, tiwšɛmawtxʷ, which is the Powell River campus of VIU. I wonder how many people use this name or can even remember it. The name tiskʷət would be fine, as long as it is spelt tiskwat, so I do not have to figure out how to enter the *kʷ or ə *characters on my computer keyboard. This approach has worked well with the name *qathet, which is actually *q̓at̓ᶿɛt *in the NAPA orthography. This attitude probably betrays my colonialist mindset, although I prefer to think of it as practicality.
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