Kaslo River is a river in the

West Kootenay The Kootenays or Kootenay ( ) is a region of southeastern British Columbia. It takes its name from the Kootenay River, which in turn was named for the Kutenai First Nations people. Boundaries The Kootenays are more or less defined by the Kootenay ...

region of southeastern

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

. The village of

Kaslo Kaslo is a village on the west shore of Kootenay Lake in the West Kootenay region of southeastern British Columbia. A member municipality of the Central Kootenay Regional District, the name derives from the adjacent Kaslo River. At 2016, the p ...

was founded at the river mouth on the western shore of

Kootenay Lake Kootenay Lake is a lake located in British Columbia, Canada. It is part of the Kootenay River. The lake has been raised by the Corra Linn Dam and has a dike system at the southern end, which, along with industry in the 1950s–70s, has changed th ...

. The river valley was mined by European and Chinese miners. Many theories suggest the origin of the word. Although one popular early legend states the river was named after a placer miner named John Kaslo, Jean Kasleau, or some other spelling, who was part of a

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...

party, no reliable evidence survives to support that such a person existed. Kaslo, or Caslo, likely derives from a First Nations word for which either no interpretation is available, or means the place where blackberries grow. The weakness of this theory is that blackberries never grew in the area, and the idea seemed foreign to First Nations peoples at the time. However, a better translation might be

crataegus douglasii ''Crataegus douglasii'' is a North American species of hawthorn known by the common names black hawthorn and Douglas' thornapple. It is most abundant in the Pacific Northwest. Description ''Crataegus douglasii'' is a compact erect bushy shrub gr ...

, a North American species of

hawthorn Hawthorn or Hawthorns may refer to: Plants * '' Crataegus'' (hawthorn), a large genus of shrubs and trees in the family Rosaceae * ''Rhaphiolepis'' (hawthorn), a genus of about 15 species of evergreen shrubs and small trees in the family Rosace ...

known commonly as black hawthorn.

References

Rivers of British Columbia {{BritishColumbia-river-stub