Enderby city council has dug into its archives to find names for some downtown lanes
The lanes to the north and south of Cliff Avenue have been seeing more activity in recent years, and Mayor Greg McCune said it’s become necessary to assign names to make reporting incidents to 911 easier.
“There were starting to be businesses that were open on the back sides of those buildings,” he said. “For example there’s a tattoo shop, there’s a clothing shop, there’s a little manufacturer … so because more and more is happening we felt that it was time to name the lane.”
Council asked the heritage commission to pull out their directory of families with a long history in the Enderby area. The names they ended up suggesting were Lambly, Speers and MacPherson.
“The Lamblys were one of the first settlers here,” said McCune. At one point, before the city of Enderby had its current name, the family owned a majority of the land in the area. Brothers Thomas and Robert Lambly were entrepreneurial men who built a large freight warehouse next to the Shuswap River in 1876. The warehouse became the new landing spot for the steamboat that used to traverse the river, and as a result the area became known as Lambly’s Landing.
Sid Speers was the operator of the Speers Department Store in town for more than 60 years. He was an avid sportsman and skilled curler, and he was a member of the Coy Cup-winning Enderby Hockey Team of 1922-23.
The MacPherson family has been in the area since the 19th Century, and in early November Don “Moose” MacPherson passed away at the age of 94. He lived in Enderby all his life and was a well-respected business owner, a volunteer Fire Chief, a founding member of the Hunter’s Range Snowmobile Club.
Lambly Lane will be the name for Enderby’s southern lane. The northern lane needs two names as it’s misaligned by about 15 feet, which can be a cause for confusion for people using GPS.
The eastern portion of the north lane - from the Enderby Pharmacy to the Bargain Shop - will be called Speers Lane while the western portion from the bottle depot to City Hall will be named MacPherson Lane.
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