Kangaroo Road isn’t named for the hills.
A joke at the Lands office, a Hong Kong harbourmaster and a golfer called the Golden Bear. Where 37 West Shore names come from, checked against B.C.’s own place-name records.
Kangaroo Road twists and climbs so much that the name seems to explain itself. It doesn’t. According to the Metchosin Museum Society, the road is named for a joke made in a government office.
In the 1890s a settler could stake 160 acres of Crown land and earn title by living on it. Plenty of them wandered off before their time was up, and a claim left empty for six months could be taken by someone else. A Lands Department official, watching the paperwork pile up, is said to have asked what was the matter with the people out there, always jumping one another’s claims “like a lot of kangaroos.” The road built in 1896 ran through what locals were already calling the Kangaroo District.
Most West Shore names hide a story like that. Below are 37 of them, checked against the province’s own place-name record, with the sources linked. Where the record contradicts itself, or nobody knows, we say so.
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