Toponymie | Canton de Potton | Place Names

The name of this orographic entity has been used for more than a century, although Sugar Loaf Pond was once called Concert Pond.  Such a pleasant sounding word is orographic!  I had to look it up – “ of, or relating to, mountains especially with respect to their location, distribution of accompanying phenomena ».  Sugar Loaf Pond falls into this latter category and one wonders which was named first?  A map of Potton from 1881 showed the name Sugar Loaf Pond designating a little settlement on the west bank of the pond of the same name, its name having been borrowed from the Mountain.  Sugar Loaf Mountain rises sharply on the shores of the pond, and takes its name from its shape at the summit – a granitic mass shaped like a “loaf of sugar”!  

Before people figured out how to get sugar into the ready-to-use granulated form we now use, sugar producers would pour hot sugar syrup into a mould, either loaf or cone shaped, and allowed it to solidify, after which it was wrapped for storage and transportation.  When it was used, pieces were nipped off and crushed. 

Did you know that our word “candy” is derived from the word khanda?  In about 500 BC, Indians began making sugar syrup from sugarcane juice and cooling it in large flat bowls to make crystals.  The crystals were called khanda. 

The pond was designated Concert Pond by Charles D. Watkins in 1889, as well as by Marie A. Kuhnel in 1890.  Burt's Illustrated Guide to the Connecticut Valley, published in 1866, calls it Concert Pond with no mention of a reason for the name.

It is the Association de l'étang Sugar Loaf who oversees the ecological protection of Sugar Loaf Pond, where access is private and strictly controlled.