Bigger might be better, but it’s not quite as specific.
Now that Diamond Valley has officially been around for three months, people are slowly but surely getting used to the new name for the amalgamated towns of Black Diamond and Turner Valley. Old habits die hard — as does highway signage — so there are still those, both within town limits and beyond, who aren’t quite ready to toss the old names aside, and it remains to be seen whether they’ll ever get on board.
Stubbornness, however, isn’t necessarily the only reason why the new name hasn’t caught on everywhere. I have encountered multiple instances where the former names have been used to act as a locator, a way to be more specific about the locale of someone or something within the new, larger town. It’s not being dismissive of the new name, it’s just being a little more precise.
We’ve been guilty of this too. There was a house fire last month and we dared to use Turner Valley to describe where it took place, which some readers pointed out should have read Diamond Valley. Fair enough, but if a fire, or other spot news event, happened in Okotoks, we typically wouldn’t just write Okotoks, we would specify a neighbourhood like Cimarron or Drake Landing. I guess we could have used the Turner Valley section of Diamond Valley, but that’s quite the mouthful so Turner Valley was just more expedient. Apologies if it offended anyone because it wasn’t intended to be a slight on the new town.
I’ve seen instances where people have used the term Diamond Valley West to denote Turner Valley and Diamond Valley East to signify Black Diamond. That’s an ingenious way to ensure the new name is still front and centre, while also providing additional context, so perhaps that kind of labelling catches on.
I came from Delta, a Vancouver suburb of about 100,000 that has three distinct communities — Ladner, Tsawwassen and North Delta — that are separated by farmland as well as the largest peat bog on the West Coast. If you ask Deltans where they live, almost without fail they’ll say their specific community, not the larger city.
They’ll use Delta for their official address and it’s who they make their property tax cheque out to every year, but that’s not necessarily how they identify themselves; they’re simply more connected to the smaller community than the city as a whole.
I’m guessing at least some of that will happen in Diamond Valley given the connection that many residents have to either Black Diamond or Turner Valley, allegiances that run so deep not even an amalgamation vote will be able to change them. Again, it’s nothing against the larger entity, it’s merely what you’ve always known; it’s also a way of identifying what part of Diamond Valley you live in.
Delta was incorporated more than 140 years ago, so there’s been plenty of time for its three communities to come together as one big happy family, but it just hasn’t worked out that way. That’s not to say Diamond Valley will follow suit, but if it does, and you’re looking to lay blame, pin it on geography, not people.
