As we travel from community to community over the holidays, our weekly Timmins history stories will focus on how they got their names.
Museum director-curator Karen Bachmann starts with Schumacher. Its original name was Aura Lake.
“It had also been called Pearl Lake,” says Bachmann. “But when people came here, Aura Lake was Aura Lake, because ‘aura’ means gold and all those good things.”
Problem was, there were five Aura Lakes in Canada.
“The post office stepped in and said ‘excuse me, but we have four other Aura Lakes in Canada, so pick another name,” according to Bachmann. “They moved to Pearl Lake and then some bright bunny decided that that was okay, but to name it after Mr. Schumacher, who owned quite a number of the mining properties in that area and really did a lot for that community, and that’s what stuck. So we have the community of Schumacher.”
Of course you can still see F.W. Schumacher looking over his namesake community,from the mural on the outside of the McIntyre Community Building.
