The Canadian Navy and the news

[James Crippen]

The earthquake disaster in Haiti elicited a response from the Canadian
Navy / La Marine canadienne, which involved sending two ships, the
frigate HMCS Halifax and the destroyer HMCS Athabaskan. The latter is
from the Iroquois class, a series of destroyers named after Canada's
indigenous peoples
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois_class_destroyer). This results
in me seeing a lot of news articles via my searches for Athabaskan.
Interestingly, I also see a few articles about the "Athabascan". So it
seems that even though the name of the ship is fixed, people still
can't agree on how to spell the name. I should note that I've seen
nothing about the "Athapaskan" or "Athapascan", confirming Joyce
McDonough's suspicion that people always pronounce the name with a
voiced stop.

Cheers,
James