The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor One of Flin Flon's big claims to fame still stands. For years the city promoted itself as the only community in the world named after a science fiction character. Then along came the Internet and suddenly anyone with basic Googling capabilities discovered that perhaps the label was not quite genuine. A multitude of websites report that Flin Flon in fact shares this distinction with Tarzana, California, purportedly christened after Edgar Rice Burroughs' famous literary ape man, Tarzan. Of course it is debatable whether Tarzan's jungle exploits qualify as 'science' fiction, but that is really besides the point. Assertion As it turns out, the notion that Tarzana is named after Tarzan _ an assertion so widespread that it appeared on the district of Tarzana's official website _ does not have a leg to stand on (or a vine to hold onto). According to Snopes.com, the Internet's premier myth-buster, the truth is precisely the opposite, though it is easy to how some confusion might come about. Years before achieving triumph as a writer, Burroughs, according to Snopes, scooped up 550 acres of land in the heart of Southern California's San Fernando Valley. 'He dubbed his land 'Tarzana Ranch,' after the sleepy little community in which it was situated, and his creation of a character named 'Tarzan' two years later can hardly be considered a coincidence,' the site says. Snopes adds that since Tarzana did not become an 'official' community with its own post office until 1930, 'the legend has arisen that the town was named after Burroughs' ape man, but actually the reverse is true.' Had Burroughs lived in Topanga Canyon, a few miles to the west, 'we would undoubtedly know his immortal creation as 'Topang, the ape man' instead,' the site concludes. Flin Flon, of course, is named after Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin, the adventuresome professor in The Sunless City, a novel published in 1905. We have only decades-old accounts to tell us all the ins and outs of how exactly it happened, but there is no doubt that 'Flin Flon' sprung from this dimestore paperback. So with apologies to the fine folks in Tarzana, it looks like this is one claim to fame Flin Flon won't be sharing.