The Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) is throwing its support behind renaming the lake most residents know as Wormy Lake to John Phare Lake.
Phare, a tree faller from Roberts Creek, lost his life fighting the Old Sechelt Mine wildfire in July 2015 not far from the lake.
Sechelt council passed a resolution in 2016 asking its staff to start looking into the possibility of naming the lake to honour Phare, and it’s now ready to go ahead with an application to the province’s Geographical Names Office.
Although Sechelt council has taken the lead, the lake is within SCRD Area B, and support from the SCRD could “strengthen the application and potentially expedite the request,” according to a report presented to the SCRD’s planning and community development committee.
As it stands now, the lake has no official name and became known as Wormy Lake through common usage, which is starting to shift in favour of the new name.
Many in the community have already taken to referring to the lake as John Phare Lake and a hand-carved sign was put up in early 2016.
Making the name official, however, has faced a significant hurdle. Regulations of the Geographical Names Office, which is part of the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, do not allow features like mountains, rivers or lakes to be named “to commemorate the victim(s) or to mark the location of mishaps, accidents or tragedies.”
The District of Sechelt plans to ask for an exemption to have the name change considered despite the regulation.
Darren Inkster, one of Sechelt’s directors at the SCRD, said the district has been holding off, because it was told it would have to wait at least a year from Phare’s death to make the application.
“This has gone on for quite a while,” said Inkster. “It’s pretty important to me and many community members.”
The only reluctance shown by the other directors was around whether Phare’s family supported using his name.
They were assured by Inkster, and through an email from Area B director Garry Nohr, who could not attend the meeting, that the family is supportive.
Milne said recognizing the need to consult the family is one of the reasons the District of Sechelt has been cautious about rushing the application through.
“Our main concern has [now] been addressed, on the issue of the family. We wouldn’t want to do anything that is at odds with the family’s wishes,” said Milne, who went on to mention that similar initiatives in the immediate aftermath of the fire “were met with less than wholehearted enthusiasm.”
Phare was posthumously awarded the province’s first Medal of Good Citizenship in October of 2015.
