SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A former Yellowknifer is disputing the generally-agreed-upon root of the quirkiest street name in the city.

Joanne Teed stands in front of her home on Ragged Ass Road. Credit for naming the street "sometime in the 1950s or 1960s" officially goes to prospector Lou Rocher but one former resident said the name was provided by another prospector named Cliff Sluggett. - Evan Kiyoshi French/NNSL photo

Archive records name Lou Rocher, a former prospector and miner, as being the first to coin the term Ragged Ass Road, which remains a street in Old Town but a former resident said the phrase comes from another prospector who lived in town during the same period.

Doug Lorenzen moved to the city in 1954 and lived down the street from Cliff Sluggett, a prospector and miner Lorenzen said was the first to use the term ragged-ass road'.

"There was a lot of people living on it (the road) at the time - hard luck people," said Lorenzen. "Drinking was a popular sport at the time."

Lorenzen - who now lives in Campbell River, B.C. - said around 1958 Sluggett, a downtrodden miner, was asked what it was like living in Yellowknife.

"He said, 'It's pretty rough and I'm living on a ragged-ass road," said Lorenzen.

"This got around. So that might be where Rocher picked it up. It was sort of a joke around there. How Rocher got credit for it I don't know."

Lorenzen said he and his wife were in the city to attend a reunion a few years ago and noticed in a brochure that Rocher was given credit for naming the road.

Historian Ryan Silke said he's never heard Lorenzen's version of the story.

"He has a story that doesn't sound like it jives with what everyone else says," he said. "I'm not aware of Cliff Sluggett's role in the naming ... it's been fairly well established that Lou was the guy that named it. The family confirms that. I don't think it necessarily needs to become a he-said-she-said debate."

Silke did confirm that Sluggett lived in the Woodyard neighbourhood for "many years."

"He was a long-term miner and prospector in the area. He got involved in drilling and blasting with Curly McDonald in the 1950s and 1960s. He was certainly a character that would have hung out with Lou. Maybe that's where the confusion lies. Maybe it was him that was joking around the table that we should name this road Ragged Ass Road. He might have been involved but certainly Lou has taken the credit over the years. It's very well possible that he was part of the bunch that coined the term."

Silke said it's difficult to be certain who authored the term.

"Everybody has their own version of the story," he said.

Leslie Rocher Jr., the great-grand nephew of Lou Rocher, said the story as it was told to him is that his relative was sitting around with friends one day and came up with the name since the road is pitted with potholes.

"Nothing suited it better than that," he said.

He confirmed Rocher hung around with Sluggett.

"They all chummed around," he said. "So it's possible that he (Sluggett) was a part of the naming."

Joanne Teed is familiar with the story of how the road was named but wasn't sure who named it. Teed has been living on Ragged Ass Road since 2006, but has been living in the city for 26 years.

"From what I understand prospectors back in the day, they were sitting around ... and they were saying what a tough winter they were having - what a ragged-ass winter," she said. "And then they just started referring to it as Ragged Ass Road."

Teed said the neighbourhood is a nice one nowadays, and she doesn't get teased by family members when she mentions the name.

"My family members pretty much know where I stay," she said. "But if I phone somewhere else sometimes they say are you serious? Is

that a real name?"

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