Most street signs, an interpretive sign and a sign identifying a reservoir in Summerland all bear the name of Garnett, but the official spelling is different.
“One T is the official determination,” said Linda Tynan, Summerland’s chief administrative officer.
This spelling — Garnet — also lines up with information from Natural Resources Canada, which lists the lake as Garnet Lake. Provincial documents also list the lake as Garnet Lake.
A municipal bylaw from 2016, assigning names and numbers to streets and roads in Summerland, includes seven pages of street name spellings.
According to the list, the correct spellings are Garnet Avenue and Garnet Valley Road.
However, the streets, reservoir valley are named in honour of Edgar James Garnett and William Henry Garnett, who came to Summerland in the 1880s.
In the mid-1990s and again in the early 2000s, the Summerland Museum and Heritage Society made statements about the spelling.
David Gregory, a local historian and a member of the Summerland Heritage Commission, said street name spellings have been discussed by the commission since that time, as recently as six months ago.
Some Summerland streets, which are named for pioneers in the community, do not have the correct spelling of the name, he said. These include Garnet Avenue and Garnet Valley Road, which should be spelled with two Ts, and Kelly Avenue, which should be spelled Kelley, in honour of Judge Wellington C. Kelley.
However, the book The Streets of Summerland, compiled by F.C. Storey and published by the Summerland Museum Society, in the mid-1970s, has the spellings of the streets and families as Garnet and Kelly.
In addition, signs identifying streets in Summerland are not consistent. Along Garnet Valley Road, the street signs, an interpretive sign and a municipal sign at the reservoir have two Ts, while the street sign at Quinpool Road and Garnet Avenue has one T.
This is not the only instance in Summerland where street sign spellings are inconsistent.
The street sign at the intersection of Prairie Valley Road and Giants Head Road has the spelling of “Giant’s Head Road” while all other street signs for the same road are spelled “Giants Head Road.”
Tynan said the correct spelling for this street does not include an apostrophe — even though an apostrophe is grammatically correct.
“Our street names do not include any punctuation,” she said.
While the street name does not have an apostrophe, Summerland’s landmark mountain and the park both include apostrophes.
The official name of the park is Giant’s Head Mountain Park.
