Up front, we'll admit it - we are new here. We moved to Bonners Ferry only 10 months, 9 days and 3 hours ago - and we just love it!

What we have is this: A neat downtown, where we can easily find a parking place and walk to everything, where perfect strangers smile at you in the street and mean it, where there is a veritable treasure trove of a bookstore, sporting its motto in Latin over the door (even if the motto is backwards, saying, "Prayer is work").

This is our town, where there is the neatest café under the sun, a friendly and obliging Post Office and a great little hospital where you can have your blood drawn right now.

It's our town, with an American flag bigger than heck and more churches than you can shake a stick at, where there is only one stop light, and street-sign installers have a sense of humor and like to use lesser-known spellings.

And where, at last, we have our very own triumphant town timepiece, the Harold Sims Clock Tower. (Thank you for pushing so hard for it, R.J.).

But we have a question about our town. It's only a little question. At least, it's only a question about a little thing: Whatever happened to the apostrophe in Bonners Ferry?

The river crossing here was established at the time of the East Kootenays gold rush, right? Edwin Bonner provided a ferry for the prospectors in 1864. (Can't you tell that we have done our homework at the smart, new Visitor's Center?)

Anyway, it was a ferry owned by E. Bonner, right? That makes it Bonner's ferry, right? (Genitive singular.)

So, really, we live in Bonner's Ferry, don't we?

Don't get us wrong. We do love it here - with or without the apostrophe.

Fabulous article. Since moving here this December, I have wondered about this little quirk as well.

Question, though: were you the only visitor at the Center? Dang those apostrophes! (The Center, I presume, would accommodate many visitors, rather than just a sole, albeit, studious one, thereby making it Visitors' Center: genitive plural.)

I'm glad there are other people out there who find grammar as funny as I do.

Sarah Milligan
Grammar Nerd
hermia_mnd@yahoo.com

If you would like to see a painting of Edwin Bonner, stop by the Boundary County Museum located on Main Street across from the Harold Sims Clock Tower. By the way the museum burst through the hole in the wall this winter and occupies half again as much space as last year and sports a new look. The David Thompson Bicentennial Exhibit continues this week. Our community museum is open Tuesday-Saturday 10-4. Stop in and learn more about the pioneer days of early Bonners Ferry, your hometown!

Gini Woodward, Secretary
The Boundary County Historical Society
andg.woodward@verizon.net

Awesome article. Let me try to answer where the apostrophe went?

Bonner's ferry has long not existed. If we were Bonner's Ferry, people would be coming here looking for Bonner's ferry. So Bonners Ferry is now the name of a town. It is now a noun describing a town and not someone owning a ferry.

That is my story and I am sticking to it.

Darrell Kerby
dkerby1@verizon.net