Our colourful mental geography

There are two cities in Canada separated by thousands of kilometres of Precambrian rock, sun-starved fir trees and ranges of jagged, snow-covered mountains, which share the same identity. One is named Yellowknife, capital city of the Northwest Territories. And the other is Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon.

After announcing to friends and family in the South that you are planning to move to either of these northern metropolises, the fluid name substitutions will immediately begin. "What will you be doing in Whitehorse?" people asked me as I prepared to move. "Actually, I'm going to Yellowknife," I'd say, over and over again. Five minutes later, they'd have forgotten. "So, is it cold in Whitehorse?"

People's tongues become coiled like red licorice when speaking of Whitehorse or Yellowknife. They're the place-name equivalent of words for genitals or cusses -- Freudian nouns just waiting to be blurted out at inappropriate times. Rather than fighting the odd urge to say one of them, however, most liberally substitute one for the other. In fact, in the minds of many, Whitehorse and Yellowknife appear to have become the same place.

John, a Yellowknifer I work with, told me a story related to all of this. On a recent Air Canada flight from Edmonton to Yellowknife, the pilot got on the plane's public address system and announced that the flight to "Whitehorse" was going well. "We're goin' to YELLOWKNIFE!" the passengers snapped back. The pilot went on to make the error three more times before the plane landed. In Yellowknife.

Such mistakes smack of southern Canadian ignorance of the North to people living above the 60th parallel. It's a convenient belief that all of this is due to a lack of understanding, but that isn't quite true. After all, northerners mix up their two big cities almost as often as southerners. Flabbergasted, I've listened like a helpless idiot as I've mixed the two up. Each time I realize my error mid-word, but having already committed I give in to the laws of linguistic momentum.

Is it the colours that are screwing us all up? For years, I struggled to distinguish between Iceland and Greenland. "Iceland" was a descriptive name that seemed to fit a cold country; but "Greenland," well, it wasn't green at all. It was a felonious euphemism of a place-name if there ever was one and it made it next to impossible to distinguish between the two islands.

Colours seem to explain a lot in this situation, too. Along with white stallions, Whitehorse evokes thoughts of snow. Yellowknife, aside from a purely literal translation, prompts thoughts of yellow things, like gold. Could it be that people are mixing up cold words with gold words and, with their cloudy historical knowledge, merging the two cities into one? Perhaps. Of course, it's not very often that people confuse Red Deer, Alberta, with Whitecourt, Alberta, or with White Rock, British Columbia. And if I ever hear someone mix up Dawson City, Yukon -- the home of the 1897 gold rush -- with Golden, British Columbia, I will call them an idiot. Immediately.

So it's deeper than just the colours, then. I think it comes down to emotional understanding. A place earns its name through repetition, passion, hatred or myth. Through stories. It's said there are eight million stories in New York. And for this reason there can only be one place called New York. Berlin, I learned this summer, is an old Slavic curse. It means smelly swamp. People called Berlin its name not because they remembered it but because they felt it. Or is that smelt it? Regardless, Berlin has stuck.

Clearly, few in southern Canada will ever have the fortune of visiting Whitehorse or Yellowknife so that they, too, can feel and remember the white-ness of the Yukon's snow-choked capital. Even fewer will feel the yellow warmth of Yellowknife's afternoon sun in the summer.

The solution, then, is simple: a merger. Yellowknife must become Yellowhorse; Whitehorse should be called Whiteknife. It's jarring, I admit, but I bet it'll work. Who ever saw a yellow horse? Or a white knife? If that doesn't make someone remember where they're talking about, nothing will.