Wannock River
Feature Type:River - Watercourse of variable size, which has tributaries and flows into a body of water or a larger watercourse.
Status: Official
Name Authority: BC Geographical Names Office
Relative Location: Flows W from Owikeno Lake into head of Rivers Inlet, Range 2 Coast Land District
Latitude-Longitude: 51°40'43"N, 127°15'01"W at the approximate mouth of this feature.
Datum: WGS84
NTS Map: 92M/11
Origin Notes and History:

Wannock River adopted 31 December 1930 in the 1930 Gazetteer of Canada, confirmed 3 June 1947 on Hydrographic Services Chart #3778.

Source: BC place name cards & correspondence, and/or research by BC Chief Geographer & Geographical Names Office staff.

According to BC historians Helen and Phillip Akrigg, this name means “river spirit” in the Oowekyala language spoken by the region’s First Nation inhabitants, the Oweekeno people. John Walbran, an earlier coastal historian, mistranslated the word as “poison,” because “visitors to the tribe, evidently unwelcome, had the reputation of dying suddenly.” The name has had quite a variety of spellings, including Wanuck, Whannock, Wannuck, Wharnock and Wannick. Wannock Cove, where a cannery was built in 1884 by the Wannock Packing Co, takes its name from the river. This cannery, which was abandoned in 1934, was acquired by the Victoria Canning Co in 1892 and eventually became part of the BC Packers empire. The cove was the site of the first summer hospital on Rivers Inlet and also featured a pioneer post office called Wanborough, 1896-1903. Another cannery, the earliest in the region, was built at the mouth of the Wannock R in 1882 by Robert Draney and Thomas Shotbolt. Known as the Rivers Inlet or Oweekayno cannery, it was also later owned by a fishing camp for many years. There is no relationship between Wannock and Whoock (or Whonnock) in the Fraser Valley. The name Whonnock is from Halkomelem, a completely different First Nation language, and is usually translated as “place of many humpback salmon.”

Source: Scott, Andrew; "The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Place Names"; Harbour Publishing, Madeira Park, 2009, page 632.

(Owikeno Lake) is about 35 miles long, and connected with the inlet by the Oweekayno river now known by the name, adopted by the Indians, of Wannuck (sic); the meaning of which is "poison", as in olden times visitors to the tribe, evidently unwelcome, had the reputation of dying suddenly, these deaths being attributed to poison. p.368.

Source: Walbran, John T; British Columbia Coast Names, 1592-1906: their origin and history; Ottawa, 1909 (republished for the Vancouver Public Library by J.J. Douglas Ltd, Vancouver, 1971)