One of the guilty little secrets of those who read biographies of people they know is that they invariably look in the index first to see if they are listed. Relief, exultation, or anger can be the result. Something of the same feelings naturally arise from picking up this splendid compilation of Ontario place names.

I knew my home town of Toronto would be included (though I was surprised to see debunked the traditional origin of the name as “place of meeting”), so I quickly turned to the area in which my spouse’s family farm is located. Yes, Sunbury was included, but I had not known that it was originally called Spooner’s Corners.

Brewer’s Mills, the dot on the map at the other end of Storrington Township Road No. 12, was also there, and I was pleased to learn that founder John Brewer had actually been a brewer. Storrington Township was also included, its derivation coming in 1845 from the English town where the speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Canada was born. Storrington’s seat, Battersea, similarly turned up, its founding dated to 1802, and its name changing from Van Luven’s Mills to Rockville, and finally in 1857 to Battersea. Regrettably, Dog Lake, on which our farm fronts, was omitted, but then Dog Lake isn’t much of a lake, so how can I complain?

In other words, Alan Rayburn’s book is a success. The retired geographer’s collection met the test of locality and interest, and what other test can there be for a book of place names? There are 57,000 official place names in Ontario and this book has only 2,285 entries. But Rayburn has covered all the municipalities, the unincorporated places with populations above 75 souls, and many key geographical features. I found what I wanted and learned much I did not know in the process. But is Seeley’s Bay, just up Highway 15 from Brewer’s Mills, really Seeleys (no apostrophe) Bay? Whatever the official spelling, everyone puts in that apostrophe!