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  Copyright / Reprints Geology Streets By Chris MacKinnon
Canada was still very young in 1903 when the government built a railway up through the Northern Ontario wilderness. The Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Line was supposed to exploit for the southern regions the vast timber wealth around New Liskeard and Haileybury. It did that, but the railway is more famous for a chance discovery made during its construction. At Mileage 103, the new railroad uncovered rich deposits of silver. Word spread fast, and soon a mining town called Cobalt sprang up at the site. Silver Street was the obvious choice when Cobalters needed a name for the main route through town.
Almost exactly 100 years later, a little street called Tourmaline Court debuted almost 500 kilometers south of where the T&NO struck silver. The municipal government in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga approved the name for a new street in March 2003. In the century that spanned the naming of Silver Street and Tourmaline Court, hundreds of other streets with names culled from geology turned up in every nook and cranny of Ontario. Examples are everywhere in the province at the heart of the Canadian Shield. Sudbury, a three-hour car ride southwest of North Bay on the other side of Lake Nippissing, wears its character on its sleeve. Nickel Street runs southwest on the outskirts of town near the Inco and Falconbridge mines that produce a quarter of the world's nickel. Other green signs at Sudbury intersections are inscribed with names like Copper Street, Gold Street, Granite Street, Serpentine Street, and Zinc Street. Only Sudbury rivals another Ontario city for sheer number of geology streets. At least seven streets in Chatham-Kent, near Windsor, have mineral names. There is Diamond Street, Zircon Place, Jasper Avenue, and other streets named after Opal, Turquoise, Emerald, and even Pearl. The story is that Chatham-Kent's gemstone streets are a play on the discovery made by Carroll F. Chatham. Chatham was the American scientist who in 1938 discovered a way to grow emeralds in a laboratory. The company he started now sells artificially cultivated opals, emeralds, sapphires, rubies, and diamonds.
The geology lesson picks up again further along the Trans-Canada highway with Slate Drive in Sault Ste. Marie, a border town near Michigan's northern tip. Lithium Drive is in Thunder Bay, which skirts the coast of Lake Superior and the Minnesota boundary. Trekking deeper into the south of Ontario, the Canadian Shield gives way to the separate geology of the Ontario peninsula. The so-called economic engine of Canada is located in this region, encompassing the Golden Horseshoe centers of Toronto, Hamilton, and Windsor. Amethyst Road-named after the provincial mineral emblem-is in Scarborough. Beryl Avenue is in Hamilton. Quartz Drive is east of Toronto in Pickering. It's here in the most heavily populated part of the country where the densest deposits of geology streets are found. It's anybody's guess how some of the streets got their names. City surveyors and local officials in charge of street naming policy are often bureaucrats without a historical understanding of the names. The famous University of Toronto professor Northrop Frye (1912-1991) explained that Canadians are gripped by a "Garrison mentality." The theory goes that we are so awestruck by the immensity of nature that we develop all kinds of tactics to cope. Street naming has arguably become one of the most common expressions of Frye's theory. Literally hundreds of examples pepper the streetscapes of the tiniest villages and the biggest cities (Table 1). Random map samples include Corundum Crescent in Toronto, Epsom Road in Barrie, and Agate Road in Stoney Creek. Crystal Street is within Beamsville city limits, near Grimsby, where the Nelson Aggregates Company opens its premises every summer to field tripping rockhounders in search of Fluorite, Calcite, and Gypsum. Just hang a right on Quarry Drive to get there.
As for street names that honour famous geologists, there is little to speak of. But the shortfall is made up by the names of many geographical places and features. Evidence suggests Logan Island and Murray Island, both near Thunder Bay, are named after the eminent geologist Sir William Logan and his assistant Alexander Murray, the pair who explored and surveyed Ontario at the beginning of the 20th Century. A town near Pictou, Nova Scotia also bears Logan's name. And of course, Canada's highest mountain, Mt. Logan, is a tribute to Sir William. Fortunately, talk of renaming the mountain in tribute to former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau faded quickly last year after a public outcry. Geology has always matched easily with place naming. Its connection with hockey is more obscure. Back in Sir William Logan's day, the Ottawa Silver Seven of the Amateur Hockey Association were perennial Stanley Cup Champions. They later became the original Ottawa Senators and the teams won a combined eight championships before going bankrupt and folding in 1934. Hockey finally returned to Ottawa 59 years later. In an odd twist of geological lore, the team's new home was an arena 12 kilometers outside the city called The Palladium. The Palladium was renamed The Corel Centre after the software company in 1996, but the address-100 Palladium Drive-hasn't changed. The street received its name from the abundance of the white metallic element north of the Capital region that helped fuel the 1990s tech sector boom that earned Ottawa the nickname Silicon Valley North. Speaking of silicon, you'll find a street called Silicone Drive in Ajax, Ontario. Its geological cousin, Topaz Drive, is in Niagara Falls. They're a world away from Cobalt where long ago a few hardy prospectors christened a short row of ramshackle cabins Silver Street. In fact, many of today's newer geology streets are more likely to be in urban settings than in rugged hinterlands. But Silver Street once brought a measure of order to the wilderness like a geologist unraveling the secrets of the Canadian Shield. And just like silver, the practice of naming routes and thoroughfares after rocks and minerals has proven very durable. 
Reprint instructions: This article may not be copied, distributed or reprinted in any form without permission from the author. To contact the author, please use the e-mail address provided. If you are unable to contact the author, please contact the Canadian Rockhound. Authorized reprints must acknowledge the author and the Canadian Rockhound, and include the website URL address of the Canadian Rockhound. 
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MACKINNON, Chris. Geology Streets. Canadian Rockhound [online]. 2003, vol. 7, no. 2. Available from World Wide Web: <http://www.canadianrockhound.ca/2003/02/cr0307204_geostreets>.
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  Copyright © 2003 Canadian Rockhound Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
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