By Grant Warkentin
Featured image: Edward James Powell, courtesy of Karen Powell.
A divisive and ugly community conflict that’s raged for five years in Powell River has been based on a faulty understanding of the town’s history, recently rediscovered evidence shows.
The fight started after a formal May 28, 2021 request from the Tla’amin First Nation that the town “consider a name change in light of the devastating legacy the actions of Israel Powell has had and continues to have on the Tla’amin people.”
Since then the town has split into fractious camps for and against a name change. At least one local, Ted Vizzutti, lost his career over his opposition, and the topic has been a regular feature at Powell River council meetings and public events.
Former chief councillor for the Tla’amin and name change supporter Maynard Harry took the opportunity to weigh in on the conflict in 2024, telling the New Westminster Times in an interview that “white people in Canada are subhuman for what they’ve allowed to happen.”
However, as it turns out, the fight has been over the wrong person since the very beginning.
Focused on the wrong Powell
Most discussion since the Tla’amin’s 2021 request has centred on the alleged sins of Israel Wood Powell, who first arrived in pre-confederation BC on May 13, 1862. The Tla’amin hired a contractor to prepare a historical background document on Powell, which remains on the town’s official website as a centrepiece of the conflict.
In early 2025, historian and activist Sean Carleton gave a talk at the Powell River library, reinforcing the Tla’amin’s claims and attempting to make the case that Powell’s actions and decisions in BC’s early days had overwhelmingly negative consequences.
“Rather than being a marginal figure, Powell – as BC’s first superintendent of Indian affairs (1872–1889) – helped lay the foundation for colonial schooling targeting Indigenous Peoples in the province,” Carleton says in his article “Ruling by Schooling: Israel Wood Powell and Settler Colonialism in British Columbia,” published by a pro name change group which also sells merchandise. “Specifically, he played a pivotal role in expanding the IRS [Indian Residential School] system to British Columbia, clearing the path for the creation of the Kamloops and Sechelt residential schools that affected Tla’amin children and families.”
Carleton’s article examines Powell through a decidedly post-modern lens, making sure to attribute no altruism to his motives for establishing free public schools in BC.
“Though public schooling is generally thought to be a progressive social good today, early colonial schooling was used by the government to facilitate colonization and legitimate settler rule,” Carelton writes. “Settler children needed to learn how to become effective colonists, and public schools became important sites for teaching pupils key lessons in colonial legitimacy.”
Carleton leaves no room in his speculations about Powell for any selfless motivations, claiming everything he did was with the “end goal of facilitating settler capitalism.”
However as it turns out, Israel Powell doesn’t matter at all – he was always a red herring in the debate.
Powell River’s real namesake revealed
Edward James Powell, no relation to Israel Wood Powell, joined the British Admiralty’s Hydrographic Office in Whitehall, London as a draftsman in 1852. According to his great-great granddaughter Karen Powell, “he drew many of the important maps and charts from surveys carried out by the Royal Navy across the globe until he retired in 1892.”
Karen Powell lives in London and while researching her family tree, she recently visited the UK Hydrographic Office archives to see the original charts created by her great-great grandfather.
“I was interested to learn that there are many places in BC named after himself and close family members, e.g. Mount Powell and Mount Eliza appear side by side on the Bute Inlet Survey (Eliza was Edward’s first wife – she died in 1876). The HMS Daring Chart of Skeena River Entrance, dated 1877, features Edward Point, Clara Point, Eleanor Passage and Osborne Point all in close proximity (Clara Ann Osborn was his second wife – they married in November 1876 and Eleanor, their daughter, was born in 1877),” she said in a post on Facebook. “I believe that this adds weight to the fact that Powell Lake and Powell River were probably named after EJ Powell too!”
Powell shared pictures of the original charts and surveys, along with a photo of her ancestor (seen in this post’s featured image).
Following the primary sources
While it’s not definitive proof that Powell River is named after the hydrographer, there is far more evidence to suggest he is the original namesake rather than Israel Powell, despite the current position held by the qathet museum.
“Different sources offer up different dates for exactly when this naming occurred,” says the museum’s page about place names. “But the story goes that in either 1880 or 1881 Dr. Powell made a tour of the BC coast aboard the gun vessel the HMS Rocket, whose commander was Lieutenant-Commander V.B. Orlebar. Orlebar is said to have named Powell River and Powell Lake in honour of his passenger.”
This story comes from an article by Ronald Greene, published in the BC Historical Federation’s Fall 2010 journal. Greene’s sources for these claims are uncited.
The story fails to account for the fact that most, if not all, of the place names in the region had already been decided by 1877 by Edward Powell back in London. As Karen Powell discovered, the 1877 chart from the HMS Daring expedition and an even earlier chart from the 1862 HMS Hecate expedition feature the Powell name, as well as names from his family, years before Israel Powell made his one and only visit to the region.
There’s no evidence Edward James Powell ever visited Canada or the region which bears the names of his family, or had any influence over colonial policies in British Columbia before or after it joined Confederation.
There’s one more interesting piece of evidence uncovered by Karen Powell: a brief excerpt from an old book of BC place names, strongly suggesting most of the modern history linking Israel Powell to Powell River is revisionism:
On February 5 this year, Powell River council voted to take no further action on the name change issue until after this year’s municipal elections in October, leaving it to the future mayor and council.
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