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Oregon Grape
Looking much like tiny concord grapes on a holly bush, the intensely sour fruit of the Oregon grape is loaded with Vitamin C. Munch them directly from the bush for a surefire pucker or render them into sugar-loaded jelly for a more palatable treat. Traditionally Oregon grape berries were mashed with other, sweeter berries to enhance their flavour. The inner bark of both stems and roots was a source of brilliant yellow dye during pre-European times. The source of the colour, an alkaloid called berberine, is known to possess antibiotic properties that are still used to combat both internal and external infections. An extract concocted from the roots is used by modern-day herbalists to correct a wide range of liver, kidney and urinary tract problems.
Illustration by Manami Kimura
Tongue Twisters
(2 - user rating)
Written by Brian Grover
Monday, 19 February 2007 11:45
Tongue Twisters
Place names of First Nations extraction are common enough hereabouts that localities like Tsawwassen, Nanaimo, Sechelt and Squamish immediately leap to mind. The skunk, raccoon and moose all owe their handles to the original inhabitants of eastern North America.
On the west coast of British Columbia sockeye and chinook, delicious smoked, baked or broiled, swam into the lexicon from Chinook Jargon. Sockeye or suka meant literally: the fish of fishes. Chum salmon -- originally pronounced tzum samum -- came from the Sne Nay Muxw language. Salal also arrived via the lingua franca called Chinook Jargon. Bushwacker's bane might have been a more appropriate name. The geoduck, meaning "neck-attached," is not a gooey duck. Gooey yes but the etymology is strictly Chinook Jargon. Neither is that camp robber, the whisky-jack, a souse after a hard day of pilfering peanuts. From the original Cree, wiskatjan got the misappellation through a case of mispronunciation, Whisky John, with the diminutive being misapplied.
Chinook Jargon, incidentally, was a trading language that developed to facilitate communication among the diverse original inhabitants of western Canada and later, those who showed up to barter blankets, bullets and booze. Chinook Jargon was a pidgin comprised mainly of the Chinook language of Oregon, the Nuu-cha-nulth language of Vancouver Island's west coast and French and English. Apart from being a fish name and that of both a language and a pidgin, chinook has the added meaning of a warm winter wind.
