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The culture section needs major re-writing. The "culture" described in much of it is simply the culture of the Seattle region and in no way reflects the culture of much of the northwest. Especially the more arid rural regions, which are vastly different.
Suggestion: "Cascadia is a proposed name..." -- we should say *who* proposed it. (I don't understand it entirely, myself, and I've never heard of it before, or I would.)
Well, there was probably a person or a group at some point of time which have had that idea... Scriberius 01:51, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)
Skookum1 18:56, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Maybe, one could write about the Pacific Northwest if one is situated in the Middle of the Pacific Ocean - that would be Siberia, Japan and so on... I'm aware that that's not a common meaning but that is also the PacNW... Scriberius 01:51, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)
Would Alaska qualify as a part of the Pacific Northwest?
Quote: This arrangement ended as U.S. settlement grew and Polk was elected on a platform of "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight"; after a war scare with the United Kingdom, the two nations negotiated the 1846 Oregon Treaty, partitioning the region along the 49th parallel and resolving most (but not all) of the border disputes.
Not quite accurate; will be rewording this in near future. Skookum1 22:40, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
See discussion page at Oregon Boundary Dispute for more. Skookum1 22:50, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
I've always thought of the Pacific Northwest states to necessarily be Oregon, Washington AND Idaho, not just the first two. -- Faustus37 21:59, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Idaho is not the Pacific Northwest. It is simply "the West"
"Culturally, the PNW is somewhat of a mix of West Coast and Midwest culture."
Midwest culture? Really? "Rocky Mountain West" culture, sure, but Washington's a long way from Illinois. 130.132.199.75 06:15, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
'Foods include salmon, huckleberries, and chai??' I think the only reason chai is well known in the PNW is because of all the hippies who either traveled to India, or became interested in (an exoticized ideal of) whatever aspects of Indian culture they could pick up, and this popularity has partially led to the success of the tea company known as "Oregon Chai." How does one successful business imply that their product is in any way a 'food of the region?' I do, however, agree about the salmon, for cultural and historical reasons. DevinMcGevin 22:17, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Sure, why don't we create a 'local culture' section including not only cuisine, but coffeehouses, farmers' markets, music festivals like Bumpershoot and Folklife, the jazz scene, the Gorge, the Oregon Country Fair, etc.? That way we can include it all without implying that it's applicable to everyone in the area. Although perhaps we should leave indigenous foods as a part of an overview on indigenous peoples/culture in the region rather than categorized by food (probably with links to other pages that focus primarily on ind. peoples/culture in the PNW). I'm heading into finals right now so I won't be able to work on anything very comprehensive for the next two weeks, but once I'm finished I'd love to collaborate on a 'local culture' entry. DevinMcGevin 05:42, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
The section entitled "The United States' claim" is a mirror/abridged version of what's already in the Oregon Boundary Dispute article, and is also POV (as was the Oregon Boundary Dispute article until I began to add the non-American perspective on same); this doesn't really need to be here other than as a reference to the Oregon boundary dispute article; and should have some story of the BRITISH claim, as well as only stating the American; also POV is the premise of the article that British Columbia is not part of the "orthodox" Pacific Northwest, the narrowest definition here given as OR and WA only; no, the narrowest definition is OR, WA, BC, the Alaska Panhandle, northern/western Idaho and (north)westernmost Montana, plus the northernmost Pacific counties of California; Shasta is sometimes considered the spiritual/cultural boundary line, for instance. I'm from BC and we've ALWAYS considered ourselves part of the Pacific Northwest, and anyone I knew in WA or OR also considered BC to be part of the PacNW. The language of the area of the (U.S.) Pacific Northwest corresponding to the Oregon Territory of 1848 remains a bit awkward; the area corresponds to the US portion of the divided Oregon Territory/Columbia District, as left over arter the Oregon Treaty (1846); really the Pacific Northwest corresponds to the pre-partition Oregon Territory/Columbia District; plus a bit (i.e. the Alaska Panhandle, and Klamath, Humboldt and Shasta counties). Skookum1 08:06, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Being from Seattle, I agree with Skoomum1 that those of us in Washington have always considered BC as part of the core of the PNW. Many people here feel a kinship in that the PNW is an area not defined by national boundaries. -- Peel 19:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
There must be a map available that actually, you know, shows all of the Pacific Northwest? -- TheMightyQuill 09:55, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Can't remember the origin of the first one, which ALMOST fits the bill; someone in soc.history.what-if posted it a long time ago for making maps off of. The other is an adaptation of an Environment Canada weather satellite basemap from about 1999 or 1998. PNG format appears to have dropped the dark coastline-lines from what had been on the JPG, which I'll upload later; or in GIF whichever you'd prefer Skookum1 17:55, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Please see RE BC & Pacific Northwest History Forum re: Talk:List of United States military history events#Border Commission troops in the Pacific Northwest. If you think maybe I should also move some or copy some of my other stuff from NW history and BC history pages let me know; I never mean to blog, but I'm voluble and to me everything's interconnected; never meaning to dominate a page so have made this area to post my historical rambles on. Thoughts? Skookum1 05:12, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Gotta remember to ref these in here, and to write passages on them for Indian Wars. Reminder for self, unless someone has comments/input on these events to add. Also Rogue River Wars, Nez Perce War. Shoshone wars and more. Skookum1 05:15, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't think that's a valid cause-effect; there are other reasons for video-game mania in this area; and frankly the deleted bit about SAD (seasonal affective disorder) is a lot more to the point re the grey weather, and there's stats on that as I recall, though I can't say when or in which paper I saw the details. Also the higher rates of depression and concomitant social isolation might be more the direct cause of the high rates of videogame/internet usage in the area; not so much the weather keeping people in doors, but what the weather does to people's heads/souls. But the flip side of that is the intensity of high-speed connectivity and the prevalence of the videogame industry in the local technical culture to start with. Cause and effect are in other words not all that direct in the quoted bit above; which needs amendment or deletion IMO. Skookum1 23:30, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
198.104.64.238 21:56, 26 September 2006 (UTC)Bradf0rd
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I am originally from British Columbia and am confused as to why this article states that the 'Pacific Northwest' includes parts of Canada. The name, 'northwest' is an implicitly US-centric worldview - that region is not ' northwest' when you put yourself in the Canadian geographical context but instead ' southwest'. While there are cultural similartities and consistencies among Oregon, Washington and B.C. societies (and other shared traits which transcend both the U.S. and Canada) - which justifies an article on the region - the name ' northwest' is non-sensical when considering the borders of Canada; it is not in northern Canada it is in southern Canada. As such, although there should be an article on the Pacific Northwest, when describing what this US/Canadian region has in common it is by definition improper to use this term. I am at a loss for what the contents of the current article should be named, I will give it thought and comments/suggestions are needed. -- Gregorof 02:36, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
That's a recent thing - "West Coast", especially in its trendy "Westcoast" form - and it's utterly Central Canadian in orientation. We (British Columbians) did use "West Coast" but always in a sense of affinity with WA/OR and (especially) California, rather than in any kind of orientational sense relative to the rest of the country (i.e. Canada) or in any kind of locational sense relative to same; every once in a while the newspapers publish something from some moron or other suggesting we should probably be calling outselves "Southwestern Canada" but that's so out-of-skew that it's openly derided as the mark of a complete neophyte to the area. We grew up knowing this was the Pacific Northwest, part of the Pacific Northwest, although it's true the common usage is "British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest". I'd say if anything there's a variation in context between the two countries; we don't tend to mean the Interior as much as maybe is the case south of the line, i.e. the "Pacific" part is critical; I don't generally think of Prince George or Kamloops or Cranbrook as being in the same sphere as more overtly Pacific-Northwest-y spaces, like Prince Rupert, Campbell River or Vancouver; on the other hand I don't think there's any doubt that New Caledonia (the region from the Cariboo northwards) was part of the pre-colonial "Pacific Northwest" (sometimes also referred to up here as "the Pacific slope". I'd say we're also the ones to use the term to mean farther north, i.e. the Alaska Panhandle. As far as the Columbia District/Oregon Country, that is a different context as neither one of those two names included the whole (i.e. Russian America and New Caledonia were both beyond Oregon/Columbia but still part of the Pacific Northwest). Skookum1 19:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC) What I mean there is that the term "Pacific Northwest" describes something different from "Oregon Country" or "Columbia District". Skookum1 19:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
And now that I've gathered you're Canadian, Gregorof, I'd like you to understand that attempts by Eastern Canadians to redefine British Columbia are on the one hand pretentious and cultural-imperialistic and on the other doomed to failure; we don't take kindly to Easterners deciding what we should be called, just because they have a stronger focus on the Canada-as-a-whole geographic nationalism implicit in the idea that this is "southwestern Canada". Southwestern Canada is the Thames Valley as far as I'm concerned. YOU may not think BC should be considered to be in the Pacific Northwest, but YOU are in Montreal and all the rest of us could, frankly, give a shit. This is and always has been part of the Pacific Northwest, and it has a distinct history and identity as such which, distinct from the rest of Canada. So, also, with our terms for geographic orientation, especially for ourselves. Keep your re-definitions on your side of the Rockies. Skookum1 19:50, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
OK, I'm sorry for the slag, first off. But I hold straight to the concept of British Columbia being in the Pacific Northwest, which is what I was taught and which is current in my group - at least in my age-group, anyway (50): there may be a generational difference, given the upgrading of pan-Canadian nationalism in the curriculum since the Trudeau years, i.e. redefining everything according to "what it is to be Canada/Canadians". YOU may not like it, but enough people have lived with it that way, and enough Americans DO consider us to be part of the same sphere, that it's not really relevant whether YOU like it or not. As for "West Coast", in the one-word form you've used it's decidedly a media invention, especially in that noxious "seriously Westcoast" used on the Sun banner. In the world I grew up in, when we used "West Coast" we didn't mean it only to mean British Columbia (or more specifically Victoria/Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland and the Coast) but it was a given that it was a shared identity with Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and L.A. I don't think you can equate the two in the moder "it's not Pacific Northwest, it's the West Coast"; the terms are different and have a different context; neither is exclusively Canadian OR American, although the growing anti-Canadian prejudices in new-nationalist Canada seem to want to make an issue of it. The Pacific Northwest spans the border, as does the West Coast, and the one is part of the other (although Americans may describe Spokane or Boise or even Missoula as being "towns in the Pacific Northwest"). There's also the Pacific Northwest Sprachbund in linguistics, which is related to the Pacific Northwest Culture(s) of anthropology/ethnology, and once again the term spans the border. True, as I already noted, that you'll hear "British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest" (as in the title of Derek Hayes excellent Historical Atlas of...) but the context there is something like "Quebec and Canada"; and there is no exclusive phrase that specifically omits BC, as "Maritimes" does re Newfoundland vs. "Atlantic Canada". "British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest" is an old phrase, a very old phrase, as is the reference to BC (and its predecessors New Caledonia and the Columbia District/ Oregon Country) as being in toto "the Pacific Northwest". I think, in closing, that one of the problems is the lack of BC history/identity in BC's high school curriculum, with more focus on Canadian "national" history and national contexts/orientations; thing is in my day it wasn't just those who read books and went to class who conceived of things this way; if you asked one of the redneck bohos I went to school with (in Mission) as to whether or not this was part of the Pacific Northwest, if you didn't get a "who the f**k cares?" you'd get a "sure, yup, sure is - why would you ask such a dumb question?"
So go on, "continue the debate" all you want; it's not going to change the historical reality of the term being used to include BC, and there's no comparison to "West Coast", which in any case is transborder as well. Skookum1 00:34, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
cf. Atlantic Seaboard, which includes the Maritimes as well as New England and the southern Atlantic States; same idea of a transborder term that has nothing to do with political boundaries, but general continental geography. Skookum1 01:26, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Atlantic Seaboard, however, has a decidedly APOV redirect to East Coast of the United States, which isn't accurate (as the term is also used in Canada). Skookum1 01:27, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Before joining this debate I did some preliminary research to determine whether there has been historical use of the phrase “Pacific Northwest”. E.E. Rich’s “The Fur Trade and the Northwest” (The Canadian Centenary Series, McLelland and Stewart Limited, 1967) describes the geographical background of the parts of Canada excluding Ontario, Quebec and the four maritime province. These parts consisted of two territories. The much larger part was known as “Rupert’s Land and the North-Western Territory”, which includes present day Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the lands north of them. The other territory was British Columbia. Thus, the phrase “Northwest Territories” did not apply to B.C.
As well, in Chapter 13 (Coalition and Consolidation) Rich make reference to the above two parts of Canada. The chapter deals with the British resolve, beginning in 1814, to quell infighting between the fur trading companies (Hudson’s Bay Company and Northwest Company) and to combat American and Russian claims to lands on the coast. His following description clearly does not include British Columbia as being within the sphere of the Northwest territory: “But American claims to the Columbia and Russian expansion in Alaska now combined with violence in the Northwest itself to necessitate some arrangement that would ensure peace and restore that region to its wonted obscurity. ” (p. 236).
Rich’s Chapter 15, which recounts the history of development on and near the Pacific, similarly does not refer to the British Columbia region as the Pacific Northwest. Rather, his title for the chapter is “Fur Traders and the Pacific Slope.”
In Roy Daniells “Alexander Mackenzie and the North West” (Faber and Faber, 1969) are references to the “north-west”. However in his descriptions of the travels of Mackenzie’s predecessor Peter Pond, it is clear that this phrase did not include the British Columbia coastline. This is because this “magnificent untouched territory” (p. 42) (my note: the north-west) was in this direction from Lake Winnipeg in which Pond ventured in 1775. That is, by the end of that decade he was exploring the region near Lake Athabasca.
On the other hand, there is some informal (non geo-political) evidence of the phrase Pacific Northwest Coast. This appears in Beth Hill’s “Guide to Indian Rock Carvings of the Pacific Northwest Coast (Hancock House Publishers, 1975). The book is an explanation and researching of Petroglyphs. Pages 11-12 contains a map of the coastal areas of southern Alaska, British Columbia and Washington State.
Based on the above preliminary research, I think it may be concluded that the title “Pacific Northwest” did not originate in a political sense, at least in Canada. Rather, British Columbia was a separate place. Further, I do not believe it would be logical for people living in what was or is now the region of Canada to consider that its western extremity could be classified as having a northwestern location. This conclusion is especially true when considering that places like the Yukon could be more truly described as the northwestern corner of the country.
On the other hand, the anthropological text referred to above does confirm to at least some extent the concept of a single region in the northwestern sector of the continent.
So far I have not investigated American journals to determine when and how the phrase Pacific Northwest came into common practice, if that is where it originated. Ramrods 03:49, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Read all of my above replies to Gregorof, and note I'm away for a week and definitely won't be wiki'ing; I was going to go point-by-point for you above but don't have the time tonight and the energy will have to wait for another day; suffice to sum up, as I accused Gregorof of thinking what you'd said/exampled was from him, that you're comparing apples and oranges; none of the terms are a split off any of the others, they existed, were born, and are used in contexts each their own. I'l be back... Skookum1 09:24, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Skookum, I doubt you will read this as you have demonstrated previously a low comprehension of the fundamentals of what I am saying (I wrote, to this effect, three times: "Please note I am not disputing that we share a significant regional and historical "sphere" and we deserve an article to these ends", yet you continue to respond with comments such as "Clean your own house first before getting all antsy about being painted into the same camp as the guy next door" and in doing so fail to acknowledge what I was stating). Thus, I am not writing this to your audience, but to those of an administrator, as your slander has grown out of control.
As if the fact that you re-edited past discussions to include your rebuttal in a more advantageous position and in doing so failed to indent my argument as to consume it by yours, that you re-edited specifically my last comment, breaking it up and interspersing your comments resulting in an incoherent argument of mine dominated by your responses (which to me constitutes vandalism), that you continued to engage in personal attacks and uncivil behavior :
after I specifically requested you not to ("Please avoid slandering me on wikipedia, and please lets keep this debate civil"), that you continue with your hopelessly misguided responses (see above) after, I, he who began the debate, declared it dead, was not enough, you specically devalued my opinion due to my age:
which is preposterous. I could insult your age in a multitude of ways. But because I have achieved a level of maturity you have as of yet been unable to, I will not go into those details.
Moreover, you wrote : "So go on, "continue the debate" all you want". After you sarcastically wrote this, I finished my postceding comment saying "I have been more than outvoted, and until anyone else comments on the issue, or I can find anyone to corroberate what I am saying, the Pacific Northwest as including BC, obviously stands", thus I did not "continue the debate" but ENDED the debate, ceding that I was outvoted and bring the matter to a close. Your sarcastic and contradictory manner in "continuing the debate" after i stated this, is bizarre to say the least. -- Gregorof 04:30, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
Could someone please summarize what the dispute was about? I, for one, am not going to read pages of personal rants. — Sebastian (talk) 19:28, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Gregorof, you will note in my recent post that I resisted my usual flair for back-country straight-talk; and did not attack you in my recent post; you here, however, have bleated in public again, and "not taken it in stride". If a little flippant langauge is regarded by you as an "systematic attempt my opinion due to my age...and my geographic location", you need to spend more time in .... oh, never mind, you'll just regard it as another "personal" attack. Point of fact is you were wrong, remain wrong, and now that you've changed your tune (in the face of what you would have found was overwhelming evidence) it would behoove you now to just shut up to not further engage the Big Nasty known as Skookum1. I'm actually a really nice guy, just with a taste for salty language and colourful metaphors. I'm from the Ma Murray school of writing/debating and it's just the way I am. And, point blank, the shots at you concerning your age and location were fair game considering the huge information gap between generations and (in Canada) parts of the country; that you happened to be in Montreal at present, and not in your native Burnaby or wherever, doesn't mean that your perception of BC as "Southwestern Canada" wasn't a Central-Canadian-influenced perception; underscored, perhaps, by your current domicile. And I restate my comments about the poor curriculum in BC schools (and universities) on history and other topics; whether or not you were a victim of those books or grew up befuzzled by the context Pacific Northwest because of your own initiative is a separate matter. Take all this as an insult if you need to (no doubt you will), but I'll point out that in my summary I was honest about your position, and made no personal judgements; if you were a grown-up, as you're exhorting me to be, you wouldn't have engaged in further attacks/complaints; or said I didn't summarize the issues, which on the other hand I did quite well and thoroughly, too. Maybe because I didn't write in point-form, which I know is the preferred mode of communications nowadays; I come from a time when people had more tolerance for longer sentence structures.... Skookum1 18:31, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Thank you, guys –I think I now see what the issue is. You disagree as to
But you also have a lot in common: Both of you care about Wikipedia and this topic. Both of you are well-traveled, culturally interested people. Both of you are skilled authors, as evidenced from your user pages and other contributions.
I would be happy if you could agree with me that this part of the world, across the border, has its own character that deserves a cohesive description in Wikipedia. The existing article already shows this. When several dedicated authors agree to collaborate on this interesting material we have a good chance to make this a featured article.
Once we agree on this, we can search for a good name for the article together; I’ll add a section for that below. — Sebastian (talk) 20:24, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
See also #Better Map? above
The current picture seems OR to me. In particular, I can not see which definition includes half of Nevada; the article does not explicitly say which definition this is supposed to be, let alone sourcing it. Instead, I'm proposing a map that shows different definitions of PacNW and similar terms such as the one to the right. I'm not good at drawing maps; if anyone can improve this I'd be happy. — Sebastian (talk) 19:28, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
We have lots of personal statements but precious few sourced definitions for the term "Pacific Northwest". I would like to include all sourced definitions in this map. Unfortunately, I'm only aware of the following few sources so far:
BTW, I found another related map here: [4]. — Sebastian (talk) 20:10, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
i think most people wouldnt consider that much of california as part of the PNW. NorCal has a pretty arid climate and is a different biome, it suppors palm trees. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.121.247.116 ( talk) 04:10, August 26, 2007 (UTC)
Thats not very true, Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino, Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Lake counties and the Shasta Cascade region (which has strong cultural ties to southern Oregon ( State of Lincoln) have a climate that is much, much more wet than Idaho, or even Eastern Oregon and Washington. I think that the reason Northern California shouldn't be a Northwest state is not because of a reason invloving climate, geography, geology or culture, as Northern California shares almost all of these with Oregon and Washington, but because it was not historically part of the Oregon territory.-Anonymous
BTW an interesting map/boundary overlay to consider, if it can be found or made (I'm not good at maps either) would be of the Pacific Northwest Sprachbund, aka the Northwest Coast Sprachbund (whatever it is in German, the original coinage), which would comprise all the coastal peoples from the Tlingit south to the Salish, excluding the Athapaskans and, I think, the Chinooks (just a sliver along the Columbia from the Dalles on down); excluding the Shoshonians in southern Idaho, and the Ktunaxa, but otherwise approximating the same area, here including the Cariboo (because Shuswap, i.e. Salish) but not the Chilcotin or Bulkely-Omineca (Athapaskan); can't remember who it looks down towards OR-CA boundary but native linguistic boundaries are a bit of a patchwork quilt south of the Columbia; not sure where the Sprachbund runs out or if Kalapuya and Klickitat and Sahaptian and others are included in the Sprachbund; its context is largely coastal and penetrates inland only because the Salishan group does. What it means is that all those languages, despite being from many differnt language families, have related sound systems; there are only so many sprachbunds in the world (the term originated in the Balkans, where unrelated languages like Hungarian, Romanian and the various Slavic languages have related sound systems but are otherwise unrelated); I don't know if there's a wiki article on them so I linked that; there should be, although I'm not qualified to write it. Skookum1 00:36, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I thought “Pacific Northwest” was a good name, but it is not as straightforward as I thought. From your contributions in the summary I gather: The term “Pacific Northwest”...
I’d be very happy if we could find a less problematic name. I would rule out terms like BC+WA+OR because there is no need for our article to stop at state and province borders. For lack of a better name we could temporarily agree on “overall area” for this discussion. Alternatives for the article name include so far:
Note: The sole purpose of this section is Finding a good name for this article. Since previous sections with similar purposes have shown a tendency of getting extremely verbose and emotional I insist on a special rule for this section: Everybody has to stay on topic; in particular, nobody is allowed to personally attack another editor here. Since I have never met any of the editors of this page before, I volunteer as a mediator. If I have the impression a statement does not serve this purpose then I will, in this section only, deviate from general Wikipedia policy and edit it. Disclaimer: I do have an interest in splitting Cascadia into a redirect, but I will put this aside for the moment. I will not do any other work on the overall area until we find a name for this article. — Sebastian (talk) 22:07, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
It's not really workable to change the principal name, because it's such a well-known term and has an obvious history of its own; the issue is the vagueness of the boundaries, which don't coincide with state/provincial or national boundaries; a discussion of the variation in meaning is perhaps needed, but the "Southwestern Canada" thing is very rarefied, and only occasionally shows up in actual Canadian discussions, usually people in Letters to the Editor writing who want to enforce a Canadian perspective on geographic language; which like other Canadian perspectives in reference to BC is an imposition, not a reflection of historical or social/cultural fact. Anyway, such points aside, there's no viable alternate name; the Cascadia thing has its own connotations, and is also less circulated on this side of the border (though it has its adherents in the bioregionalist factions of the environmental movement, and also in the annexationist/independent BC movements which crop up from time to time, but always on the fringe). The Pacific Northwest isn't an invented or theorized region, and it's also not an invented/adapted name like Whulge (q.v.). Skookum1 23:32, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
In two days, this discussion has not yielded any new ideas. To be honest, I was hoping we could agree on "Cascadia", which is a clearly defined name as a bioregion and also used in cultural, economical and geological contexts. However, this term is obviously not established enough. Unless I hear an objection I conclude therefore that the name of the article should continue to contain the term "Pacific Northwest". Another question is if we need a disambiguation and a parenthetical addition, which I would like to discuss in section #Disambiguation. — Sebastian (talk) 22:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
There are currently 762 articles linking to this article. Numbers by namespaces are:
Counting only main and Template namespaces, there are 850 links that we need to care about. After looking at 35 of the articles that link to this page, I obtained
If this is a representative sample we have to assume that of the 850 relevant links,
For details see User:SebastianHelm/PacNW material — Sebastian (talk) 02:08, 8 November 2006 (UTC), rewritten 22:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Since there are about 275 links that were meant to refer to Northwestern United States, instead of the overall area, we need a disambiguation. If no one has a better idea, I will add a disambig link on top, saying something like
We then can rely on the Wikipedia ant algorithm to disambiguate them alki. Another option I considered was to rename this article to something like term "Pacific Northwest (international region)", but that looks like much more work. — Sebastian (talk) 02:08, 8 November 2006 (UTC) , rewritten — Sebastian (talk) 22:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Editors regularly clean out undiscussed links from this article. Please discuss here if you want a link not to be cleaned out regularly. ( You can help!) Katr67 03:07, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure how to word what needs to be added here, because while there are differences between the culture and politics of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest states, there is a common social history and shared political history and mutual awareness spanning the international boundary; no other Canadian province has as high a concentration of its population so immediately adjacent to a land boundary; the Lower Mainland-Whatcom County border crossings are among the busiest on the continent, and Lower Mainlanders cross the border more often than any other metropolitan population in Canada; similar familiarity exists between the Okanagan and West Kootenay to Spokane and Couer d'Alene. I think there's also an exteremely high rate of cross-border property ownership. There is also a shared ethnic makeup to some degree because of the heavy concentration of Scandinavians in Washington, which while present is to a much lesser degree and much more assimilated in BC (elements of Scandinavian culture and "Scandinavian pride" are much more evident in Seattle than in the GVRD); also the residual Asian presence in Seattle, though less than Vancouver and more Japanese than Chinese. The shared early history of the region also did not end with the Oregon Treaty of 1846, but continued due to mining, railway and ranching societies/populations; very pointedly in fact the union movement in the railways and mine workings both regions was very linked and there were strong similarities in the conditions of near-revolution during the Great Depression; likewise links between business and government - the Washington Group owned by Washingtonian Kyle Washington, for instance, is one of BC's most dynamic entrepreneurships/megalopolies (cf. Fast Ferries) - again to a greater degree than elsewhere in Canada except as concerns the Auto Pact in the central provinces, and the oil and ranching industries in Alberta. There's also the International Joint Commission, which governs the salmon fishery and other boundary-waters matters (the current Wiki page as I recall tends to focus on Ontario but the bulk of the IJC's work has to do with salmon, as well as water issues including the Columbia River Treaty - another major business/industry link. Then there's the parallels between the trendy/corporate/urban/ecotopian flavour of the coastal regions spanning the border, vs. the much more redneck/resource/conservative/native composition of the interior of both also are demonstrations of the shared cultural and political values, although the distinction from one side of the Cascades/Coast Mountains to the other is part of it. And there's the shared marine society of people living and working or recreating on Puget Sound and the Gulf of Georgia/Desolation Sound , and the similarities between the San Juans and the Gulf Islands as well. All those powerboats and sailboats moored in Seattle's marinas regularly come north, and likewise those from BC who at least go to northern Puget Sound, if not down to Seattle or Olympia so much. Sports circuits such as drag-racing, rodeos and horse races and also contribute to a collective awareness from one side of the border to the other; although only SFU ever competed in US collegiate leagues, in their case the NAIA (no longer). Skookum1 23:33, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
"The rainy weather promotes an indoor culture; video game usage is higher per-capita than any other region of the country"
First off, the link doesn't provide a study of the correlation between rain and gaming. Second, it doesn't specifically mention the region, just Seattle. I move we at least remove the first statement, since it really goes against the nature and spirit of most northwesterners. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.168.187.240 ( talk • contribs) 06:59, November 16, 2006
Regardless which side of the border, we all need to emphasize the conservation of the Pacific Northwest as one of the last-remaining ecosystems in North America still relatively "free." -Jackmont, Nov —Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.20.13.41 ( talk • contribs) 12:36, November 18, 2006
This page is 94 kilobytes long... I created an archive for this page. I'd like to sort through the posts and add {{ unsigned}} templates to some of the comments before those get archived. Have we worked out the naming dispute enough to everyone's satisfaction that we can archive some of the older discussions about that? If anyone wants to check out some of the other comments and archive them if they've been worked out (chai anyone?), please feel free. BTW, I think the subsection under "Culture" in the main article about ethnicity needs to checked out; I tagged it for sources long ago. It all sounds fairly reasonable, but without sources, should probably be removed. The new additions on religion need to be checked out as well. Katr67 17:57, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
OK, I won't change something until I check to see if that was part of that apparent compromise solution here; but it's still wrong:
There is no equivalency in the terms; can't remember what went on with the Cascadia article, but it's NOT a synonym for the Pacific Northwest; different origin, concept. Might as well merge the Oregon Country article; just being sarcastic' (there's also Pacific Slope, which is a used but fairly uncommon term in Canada, small or large 's'). I'm uncomfortable with that as an opening line; any mention of Cascadia should only be farther down in the document, stating that they're not quite the same thing, although neither is well-defined. Cascadia has overtones of particular politico-cultural associations and isn't as broad or neutral (or old) in origin as Pacific Northwest. Pacific Norrthwest is more synonymous, if at all, with Northwest Coast, but it's not purely coastal in nature; Cascadia is much more coastal in definition/sense also. Skookum1 02:59, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Sebastian, it may be more common today, and to even be used in contexts which don't have New Age-Ecotopian-political sentiments attached; but it CAN'T be equated with "Pacific Northwest", as is the way the opening sentence of the article still reads. Cascadia more resembles Ecotopia; and even less so than Pacific Northwest it is a more identifiably American term that is only imposed to include British Columbia, which pretty much disdains the use of the term, except in the vague what-if about "what if we could only get rid of all the bastards on the other side of the mountains" which is shared on both sides of the border; those companies in BC using Cascadia in their names are partly doing that out of cross-border marketing profile. Geologists, geographers and other academics might have started using the word but it's just trend-following and, again, is NOT equatable with the broader concept of Pacific Northwest; that it was coined by a geographer in the first place makes this all the more a pointed critique - he created a perpsective/term now mimicked by other academics, but it always had a different meaning than "Pacific Northwest", even in his coinage. Many of your links above clearly have political baggage (esp. the Green Party), likewise the Cascadia Society, a Steinerite quasi-New Age education foundation), and the use of the term always has an implicit cross-border political implication; the cascadia.bc.ca domain name is/was very likely a separatist/regionalist movement site, but for all I know it could be someone holding onto the name thinking that it might become valuable - actually just looking at it it's for "Interactive Solutions", inferring the IT industry and therfore definitely somebody who's targeting Seattle-area investment/customers; and there's a tide of "if we use it enough, people will be forced to accept it". Indeed. But that still doesn't make it the same thing as "Pacific Northwest" and should have its own article because of that. Skookum1 20:32, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Which is why I haven't changed it, please note. But from my end of it, the merging of Cascadia and Pacific Northwest is the pushing of a point of view, namely that the two are synonymous, WHICH THEY ARE NOT. Cascadia-using people like to pretend that it is, but that's their POV; and the term Pacific Northwest is a LOT OLDER and also doesn't directly have the ecotopian/separatist/regionalist flavour that Cascadia does; in fact most of the BC Cascadia links you cited were flavoured by that (why Scouts Canada calls itself that instead of the old Dogwood Region is a matter of taste/trend, but I'd bet that "Cascadia" for this Ottawa-based organization is thought to include Alberta, which definitely does NOT have much in common with the Evergreen Triangle (another more obscure name for the "ecotopian heartland" along I-5). I think the problem began here with someone questioning the entire validity of "Pacific Northwest" as a term and looking for a "better name" for it; it didn't need a better or different name and Cascadia is a NAME FOR SOMETHING ELSE. The cites you need a are ones proving that "Cascadia" means the same thing as "Pacific Northwest" - the burden of proof is on you, not me. Again, I repeat, the equation between Pacific Northwest and Cascadia made in the first line of the article is not verifiable and is in and of itself a POV "Cascadian" view/agenda. One may include part of the other, but they are not the same thing. Cascadia as an agenda has been trying to insert itself into academic literature/language for a while now; that they have a claque doesn't mean that they have a case. Skookum1 21:18, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Please provide a citation for:
If it was
Because of the alternative definitions/regions/names, Cascadia should not have pride of place. For hell's sake, it was ONLY INVENTED IN THE 1980s!!!! Even Ecotopia at least dates back to the '70s or '60s. Skookum1 21:21, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Page and sentence of the particular cite where: The name Cascadia, which is derived from the Cascade Range, is often used as a synonym to "Pacific Northwest" in geology, ecology and climatology, as well as by the Cascadia independence movement. Which geological, ecological and climatological papers define Cascadia as a synonym for Pacific Northwest? And is this a standard in geology/ecology/climatology and to what degree? Here again the issue of one of language; that the two are equated and synonymous and defined as such in a given cite. They cannot, for one thing, be used interchangeable: "Heavy rains and storms hit the Pacific Northwest all weekend" vs "Heavy rains and storms hit Cascadia all weekend". You tell me they're the same thing and it's you that's forcing a point of view, NOT ME. They're clearly different, and one is clearly an invented neologism that has only recently gained any currency at all, whereas the other evolved historically and is in much wider use in the general population. For whom "Cascadia" inherently has something to do with regionalist/separatist and maybe techno-ecotopian agenda. My issue is not with the parallel between the two, but with the language used that seeks to equate and synonymize them; but no one has defined that in clear terms, i.e. that they are synonyms. Even the original geographer, whose interview I remember from TV years ago, as he gestured at the map explaining the boundary he'd outlined (all the Pacific Slope drainage basins from the Columbia to the Stikine, maybe the Taku) and spoke glowingly about how "Cascadia" (a name he'd invented) was meant to describe that part of the Pacific Northwest that "cascaded" towards the sea, amidst other flakey New Age-y poetry/eco-doggerel; he also made the usual Yankee extension of "the Cascades" to include the Coast Mountains [admittedly in use in obscure frontier-era documents as in "summit of the Cascades as defined for administrative purposes" which you'll find on some maps). Cascadia's a concocted name, again, and not an organic, historical one like Pacific Northwest; and even its originator defined it as being part of the Pacific Northwest; or the language he may have used was "located in" or "spanning" the Pacific Northwest; but it is clear that he made a distinction between the terms and used them in different contexts...and he's the ultimate cite on this, the provenance; all I remember is that he was at U.W. or U.Seattle; don't think it was a state university). And while there may be a Cascadia Subduction Zone, that's not the same thing as a Pacific Northwest Subduction Zone, or that geologists use the terms Cascadia and Pacific Northwest interchangeably, as this article seeks to establish a standard for; there is no standard, the two terms have different histories, are not synonyms, despite overlapping geographies; one is at best an outgrowth of the other, but they are not the same. Like I said, there's no reason why Pacific Slope, Northwest Coast, Ecotopia and Evergreen Triangle shouldn't also be mentioned on equal terms; except that "Cascadia" is an agenda that, while it's manifested itself in some academic circles as fashionable (and there is often meant to have implications for the Cascadia agenda) this doesn't make it current in general use. It's more an overlay, such that if you asked someone on the street in the Pacific Northwest they'd immediately identify it with the separation thing, not with the region per se, which is the meaning of Pacific Northwest. This isn't "original research"; it's obvious. What isn't obvious in the cites you've mentioned again, is how they state that the two terms are the same; that it exists in academic literature and marketing doesn't mean it's a synonym; nowhere does it say that. If you happened to ask certain bureaucrats on either side of the border, they may speak of the regional trade/business agreements that the PacNW states and BC as well as Alberta are working towards; but that includes Alberta and I think also Alaska and Yukon as well as Montana and isn't purely Pacific Northwest, or Cascadia either; but they'd likely use or apply that term without its regionalist-separatist overtones. But even if they did, it's still not synonymous; nor should the syntax of the opening line suggest that they are, either. What do I need? Stylebooks from the newspapers and TV stations, every mention of Pacific Northwest (with no mention of Cascadia) in the estensive academic, popular and journalistic literature covering the region), a quotation of "Cascadia is that part of the Pacific Northwest that drains/cascadces towards the Pacific flanking the Cascades" (sic, as here Cascades is used to mean other ranges than the Cascade Range). A definition which is very different from the emerging marketing/government usage, which as mentioned takes in Alberta and is on equal terms in Idaho and Montana, which the ecotopian agenda/version of its meaning is not. This whole discussion reminds me of the effort to establish "the Whulge" as if it were a commonplace term for the Georgia Depression/Georgia Basin or Georgia-Puget Basin or whatever it properly is; equating Cascadia with Pacific Northwest is a neologistic definition of a very deliberately invented (if fashioanble) neologism. Even "sometimes used as a synonym" doesn't cut it with me; again, even the existence of a Cascadia section when the other names for the area don't have theirs speaks to me of the Cascadia agenda. That may not be your intent, but to my that's what's been pushed into the content of this article as a result of "compromises" settled upon in previous discussions; I'll poll some of my author and reporter and blogger friends, although I realize the poll result is O.R., although some of them may be able to cite their own stylebooks or published works; it's an incredibly obscure splitting-of-hairs, but I also know even asking is going to get some rolling-of-eyes.... Skookum1 02:06, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
You forgot to stick a /font tag after your first link. May want to do that, so the entire rest of the page doesn't show up as green. LeviathanMist 22:31, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Here's what there is:
Here's what there should be:
If it was put THIS way, without any direct equation being made between Cascadia and the Pacific Northwest, I could deal with it. To me the vandalism is the forced inclusion of Cascadia, especially relative to other much more historically-valid options (though none with exactly the same meaning, including Cascadia). Likewise if the article made equal-time references to other parallel areas as listed in the new version above. But without that, the article is "Cascadia POV" and I'll continue to dispute it. For the fifth, sixth, seventh and nth times. The two terms are NOT synonyms, CANNOT be used interchangeably, and Cascadia is clearly an upstart (if a trendy one) on the scene relative to other terms. Skookum1 19:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
The presence of "or Cascadia" in the opening line really bugs me; it's saying something as if it were the case which it's not, despite the selective cites "proving" that it is. I could just delete it again but because of the obstinacy of the Cascadia faction here (sorry guys, but it's what it boils down to) I'm up against two deletions - "vandalism" - and I'd be blocked. The evidence presented to supported your case doesn't hold water, and has no overall substance except academic speciousness. Too many words for you again? I'm the one trying to be clear, instead of allowing vaguely-made logics and conclusions to go unchallenged. You don't have to repeat yourself for the fourth or fifth time; it's pretty obvious you have no intention of listening to common sense. And would seek to punish me for correcting what needs to be corrected (and Cascadia can go to its section or article or wherever else it belongs; it shouldn't have a special section here IMO, unless all other parallel region-concepts are also included. I'll have to figure out which admin or arbiter to consult on this; perhap the "expert" template should be called in, but it's such a nonsensical issue I still can't get over it (others in my web circle in BC just shake their heads about it, as if it's "what do you expect from Wikipedia?"). Skookum1 06:55, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I have made preliminary edits to edit out most references to British Columbia (except for the historical part) since British Columbians do not see themselves to be part of the Pacific Northwest. The Cascadian Institute (of Washington) may have a political project of including British Columbia as part of the region, but this does not constitute British Columbians accepting BC to be part of the Pacific Northwest. Again, has been mentioned by several people, the term Pacific Northwest comes from a US-centric spatial reference. For a British Columbian, areas like Seattle and Oregon are in the south. North, for Canadians, imply areas more towards the Yukon and Northwest territories. So please do not include British Columbia as part of this U.S.-centric spatial reference.
Someone else with better editing skills I hope can continue to edit the more difficult items like the map and so forth so that BC is excluded from this entry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.146.50.237 ( talk • contribs) 13:39, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I have lived in british columbia my entire life and have always thought of it as part of the Pacific Northwest. Its a matter of geography and common usage, not what province or state you're facing when you look north. There certainly is enough inclusion of BC as part of the Pacific Northwest by both Canadians and Americans to merit its mention here, to excise it from the article is to misrepresent how this term is thought of by a significant number of people. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
BC-er eh? (
talk •
contribs) 23:49, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
i was linked to this page through the Civilization page about the tribes of the pacific northwest and find the history of the area here officially starts with white men "discovering" the area. it'd be nice if there were some information on the peoples who lived successfully in the pacific northwest for thousands of years.-- 74.97.142.249 05:34, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
seems reasonable
From the article, 3 June, 2007:
It is often claimed that the region also has a shared political culture and/or common cultural values. The region is referred to by some as Cascadia as part of a modern-era rebranding effort, that is also associated with the perception of shared cultural and political traits.
Claimed by whom? Referred by which some? Rebranding effort? Perceived by whom? Why am I leaving the article with more questions than answers?
The above questions are somewhat rhetorical. The article demonstrates (or at least implies) "shared political culture and/or common cultural values" in the Pacific Northwest (regardless of what it's called or what its boundaries are). As far as I know, "Pacific Northwest", common though it may be, has no " official" standing with Statistics Canada or the US Census Bureau. Also, as far as I know, USGS invariably uses the geometric boundary between California and Oregon to separate California from the Pacific Northwest. NOAA also seems to make this distinction. (Why are lower Klamath River issues at NMFS governed from Long Beach, California?) Needless to say, neither agency has jurisdiction in British Columbia. Disclaimer: I work "in the field" for United States government contractors in "the far southwest" and know coastal California and the lower Columbia well, but I don't know the northern areas (British Columbia/Colombie-britannique and Alaska) nor the regionalization schemes of other U.S. and Canadian agencies. Doesn't Pacific Nowthwest, historically, refer to the region around the presumed Pacific outlet of the Northwest Passage? I might have gotten that from U.S. Navy archives, but I'll have to dig around for it.
I don't object to most of the article, and I can tell from the talk and talk archives that much effort has gone into it (Bravo!), but the fact that the borders are not fixed allows for all manner of "interpretation". If any particular "interpretation" is to be characterized as " rebranding", that requires a source. This looks like an inadequate wiki- compromise--a "cascading" paragraph of weasel words. Since the shared values and Cascadia concept are adequately covered in the article, this non- NPOV paragraph is subject to prompt deletion if it is not sourced.
Consider a Pacific Northwest example of regional rebranding-- King County, Washington rebranded ahistorically a few years ago, and this is non-controversial in the King County article. King County has little historical connexion to Martin Luther King, Jr., but its rebranding was a public process and can be verified through local government and media archives.
[NOTE: Minor edit for clarity 30 June, 2007]
.s
X ile 12:46, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
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The culture section needs major re-writing. The "culture" described in much of it is simply the culture of the Seattle region and in no way reflects the culture of much of the northwest. Especially the more arid rural regions, which are vastly different.
Suggestion: "Cascadia is a proposed name..." -- we should say *who* proposed it. (I don't understand it entirely, myself, and I've never heard of it before, or I would.)
Well, there was probably a person or a group at some point of time which have had that idea... Scriberius 01:51, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)
Skookum1 18:56, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Maybe, one could write about the Pacific Northwest if one is situated in the Middle of the Pacific Ocean - that would be Siberia, Japan and so on... I'm aware that that's not a common meaning but that is also the PacNW... Scriberius 01:51, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)
Would Alaska qualify as a part of the Pacific Northwest?
Quote: This arrangement ended as U.S. settlement grew and Polk was elected on a platform of "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight"; after a war scare with the United Kingdom, the two nations negotiated the 1846 Oregon Treaty, partitioning the region along the 49th parallel and resolving most (but not all) of the border disputes.
Not quite accurate; will be rewording this in near future. Skookum1 22:40, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
See discussion page at Oregon Boundary Dispute for more. Skookum1 22:50, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
I've always thought of the Pacific Northwest states to necessarily be Oregon, Washington AND Idaho, not just the first two. -- Faustus37 21:59, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Idaho is not the Pacific Northwest. It is simply "the West"
"Culturally, the PNW is somewhat of a mix of West Coast and Midwest culture."
Midwest culture? Really? "Rocky Mountain West" culture, sure, but Washington's a long way from Illinois. 130.132.199.75 06:15, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
'Foods include salmon, huckleberries, and chai??' I think the only reason chai is well known in the PNW is because of all the hippies who either traveled to India, or became interested in (an exoticized ideal of) whatever aspects of Indian culture they could pick up, and this popularity has partially led to the success of the tea company known as "Oregon Chai." How does one successful business imply that their product is in any way a 'food of the region?' I do, however, agree about the salmon, for cultural and historical reasons. DevinMcGevin 22:17, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Sure, why don't we create a 'local culture' section including not only cuisine, but coffeehouses, farmers' markets, music festivals like Bumpershoot and Folklife, the jazz scene, the Gorge, the Oregon Country Fair, etc.? That way we can include it all without implying that it's applicable to everyone in the area. Although perhaps we should leave indigenous foods as a part of an overview on indigenous peoples/culture in the region rather than categorized by food (probably with links to other pages that focus primarily on ind. peoples/culture in the PNW). I'm heading into finals right now so I won't be able to work on anything very comprehensive for the next two weeks, but once I'm finished I'd love to collaborate on a 'local culture' entry. DevinMcGevin 05:42, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
The section entitled "The United States' claim" is a mirror/abridged version of what's already in the Oregon Boundary Dispute article, and is also POV (as was the Oregon Boundary Dispute article until I began to add the non-American perspective on same); this doesn't really need to be here other than as a reference to the Oregon boundary dispute article; and should have some story of the BRITISH claim, as well as only stating the American; also POV is the premise of the article that British Columbia is not part of the "orthodox" Pacific Northwest, the narrowest definition here given as OR and WA only; no, the narrowest definition is OR, WA, BC, the Alaska Panhandle, northern/western Idaho and (north)westernmost Montana, plus the northernmost Pacific counties of California; Shasta is sometimes considered the spiritual/cultural boundary line, for instance. I'm from BC and we've ALWAYS considered ourselves part of the Pacific Northwest, and anyone I knew in WA or OR also considered BC to be part of the PacNW. The language of the area of the (U.S.) Pacific Northwest corresponding to the Oregon Territory of 1848 remains a bit awkward; the area corresponds to the US portion of the divided Oregon Territory/Columbia District, as left over arter the Oregon Treaty (1846); really the Pacific Northwest corresponds to the pre-partition Oregon Territory/Columbia District; plus a bit (i.e. the Alaska Panhandle, and Klamath, Humboldt and Shasta counties). Skookum1 08:06, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Being from Seattle, I agree with Skoomum1 that those of us in Washington have always considered BC as part of the core of the PNW. Many people here feel a kinship in that the PNW is an area not defined by national boundaries. -- Peel 19:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
There must be a map available that actually, you know, shows all of the Pacific Northwest? -- TheMightyQuill 09:55, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Can't remember the origin of the first one, which ALMOST fits the bill; someone in soc.history.what-if posted it a long time ago for making maps off of. The other is an adaptation of an Environment Canada weather satellite basemap from about 1999 or 1998. PNG format appears to have dropped the dark coastline-lines from what had been on the JPG, which I'll upload later; or in GIF whichever you'd prefer Skookum1 17:55, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Please see RE BC & Pacific Northwest History Forum re: Talk:List of United States military history events#Border Commission troops in the Pacific Northwest. If you think maybe I should also move some or copy some of my other stuff from NW history and BC history pages let me know; I never mean to blog, but I'm voluble and to me everything's interconnected; never meaning to dominate a page so have made this area to post my historical rambles on. Thoughts? Skookum1 05:12, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Gotta remember to ref these in here, and to write passages on them for Indian Wars. Reminder for self, unless someone has comments/input on these events to add. Also Rogue River Wars, Nez Perce War. Shoshone wars and more. Skookum1 05:15, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't think that's a valid cause-effect; there are other reasons for video-game mania in this area; and frankly the deleted bit about SAD (seasonal affective disorder) is a lot more to the point re the grey weather, and there's stats on that as I recall, though I can't say when or in which paper I saw the details. Also the higher rates of depression and concomitant social isolation might be more the direct cause of the high rates of videogame/internet usage in the area; not so much the weather keeping people in doors, but what the weather does to people's heads/souls. But the flip side of that is the intensity of high-speed connectivity and the prevalence of the videogame industry in the local technical culture to start with. Cause and effect are in other words not all that direct in the quoted bit above; which needs amendment or deletion IMO. Skookum1 23:30, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
198.104.64.238 21:56, 26 September 2006 (UTC)Bradf0rd
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I am originally from British Columbia and am confused as to why this article states that the 'Pacific Northwest' includes parts of Canada. The name, 'northwest' is an implicitly US-centric worldview - that region is not ' northwest' when you put yourself in the Canadian geographical context but instead ' southwest'. While there are cultural similartities and consistencies among Oregon, Washington and B.C. societies (and other shared traits which transcend both the U.S. and Canada) - which justifies an article on the region - the name ' northwest' is non-sensical when considering the borders of Canada; it is not in northern Canada it is in southern Canada. As such, although there should be an article on the Pacific Northwest, when describing what this US/Canadian region has in common it is by definition improper to use this term. I am at a loss for what the contents of the current article should be named, I will give it thought and comments/suggestions are needed. -- Gregorof 02:36, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
That's a recent thing - "West Coast", especially in its trendy "Westcoast" form - and it's utterly Central Canadian in orientation. We (British Columbians) did use "West Coast" but always in a sense of affinity with WA/OR and (especially) California, rather than in any kind of orientational sense relative to the rest of the country (i.e. Canada) or in any kind of locational sense relative to same; every once in a while the newspapers publish something from some moron or other suggesting we should probably be calling outselves "Southwestern Canada" but that's so out-of-skew that it's openly derided as the mark of a complete neophyte to the area. We grew up knowing this was the Pacific Northwest, part of the Pacific Northwest, although it's true the common usage is "British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest". I'd say if anything there's a variation in context between the two countries; we don't tend to mean the Interior as much as maybe is the case south of the line, i.e. the "Pacific" part is critical; I don't generally think of Prince George or Kamloops or Cranbrook as being in the same sphere as more overtly Pacific-Northwest-y spaces, like Prince Rupert, Campbell River or Vancouver; on the other hand I don't think there's any doubt that New Caledonia (the region from the Cariboo northwards) was part of the pre-colonial "Pacific Northwest" (sometimes also referred to up here as "the Pacific slope". I'd say we're also the ones to use the term to mean farther north, i.e. the Alaska Panhandle. As far as the Columbia District/Oregon Country, that is a different context as neither one of those two names included the whole (i.e. Russian America and New Caledonia were both beyond Oregon/Columbia but still part of the Pacific Northwest). Skookum1 19:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC) What I mean there is that the term "Pacific Northwest" describes something different from "Oregon Country" or "Columbia District". Skookum1 19:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
And now that I've gathered you're Canadian, Gregorof, I'd like you to understand that attempts by Eastern Canadians to redefine British Columbia are on the one hand pretentious and cultural-imperialistic and on the other doomed to failure; we don't take kindly to Easterners deciding what we should be called, just because they have a stronger focus on the Canada-as-a-whole geographic nationalism implicit in the idea that this is "southwestern Canada". Southwestern Canada is the Thames Valley as far as I'm concerned. YOU may not think BC should be considered to be in the Pacific Northwest, but YOU are in Montreal and all the rest of us could, frankly, give a shit. This is and always has been part of the Pacific Northwest, and it has a distinct history and identity as such which, distinct from the rest of Canada. So, also, with our terms for geographic orientation, especially for ourselves. Keep your re-definitions on your side of the Rockies. Skookum1 19:50, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
OK, I'm sorry for the slag, first off. But I hold straight to the concept of British Columbia being in the Pacific Northwest, which is what I was taught and which is current in my group - at least in my age-group, anyway (50): there may be a generational difference, given the upgrading of pan-Canadian nationalism in the curriculum since the Trudeau years, i.e. redefining everything according to "what it is to be Canada/Canadians". YOU may not like it, but enough people have lived with it that way, and enough Americans DO consider us to be part of the same sphere, that it's not really relevant whether YOU like it or not. As for "West Coast", in the one-word form you've used it's decidedly a media invention, especially in that noxious "seriously Westcoast" used on the Sun banner. In the world I grew up in, when we used "West Coast" we didn't mean it only to mean British Columbia (or more specifically Victoria/Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland and the Coast) but it was a given that it was a shared identity with Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and L.A. I don't think you can equate the two in the moder "it's not Pacific Northwest, it's the West Coast"; the terms are different and have a different context; neither is exclusively Canadian OR American, although the growing anti-Canadian prejudices in new-nationalist Canada seem to want to make an issue of it. The Pacific Northwest spans the border, as does the West Coast, and the one is part of the other (although Americans may describe Spokane or Boise or even Missoula as being "towns in the Pacific Northwest"). There's also the Pacific Northwest Sprachbund in linguistics, which is related to the Pacific Northwest Culture(s) of anthropology/ethnology, and once again the term spans the border. True, as I already noted, that you'll hear "British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest" (as in the title of Derek Hayes excellent Historical Atlas of...) but the context there is something like "Quebec and Canada"; and there is no exclusive phrase that specifically omits BC, as "Maritimes" does re Newfoundland vs. "Atlantic Canada". "British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest" is an old phrase, a very old phrase, as is the reference to BC (and its predecessors New Caledonia and the Columbia District/ Oregon Country) as being in toto "the Pacific Northwest". I think, in closing, that one of the problems is the lack of BC history/identity in BC's high school curriculum, with more focus on Canadian "national" history and national contexts/orientations; thing is in my day it wasn't just those who read books and went to class who conceived of things this way; if you asked one of the redneck bohos I went to school with (in Mission) as to whether or not this was part of the Pacific Northwest, if you didn't get a "who the f**k cares?" you'd get a "sure, yup, sure is - why would you ask such a dumb question?"
So go on, "continue the debate" all you want; it's not going to change the historical reality of the term being used to include BC, and there's no comparison to "West Coast", which in any case is transborder as well. Skookum1 00:34, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
cf. Atlantic Seaboard, which includes the Maritimes as well as New England and the southern Atlantic States; same idea of a transborder term that has nothing to do with political boundaries, but general continental geography. Skookum1 01:26, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Atlantic Seaboard, however, has a decidedly APOV redirect to East Coast of the United States, which isn't accurate (as the term is also used in Canada). Skookum1 01:27, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Before joining this debate I did some preliminary research to determine whether there has been historical use of the phrase “Pacific Northwest”. E.E. Rich’s “The Fur Trade and the Northwest” (The Canadian Centenary Series, McLelland and Stewart Limited, 1967) describes the geographical background of the parts of Canada excluding Ontario, Quebec and the four maritime province. These parts consisted of two territories. The much larger part was known as “Rupert’s Land and the North-Western Territory”, which includes present day Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the lands north of them. The other territory was British Columbia. Thus, the phrase “Northwest Territories” did not apply to B.C.
As well, in Chapter 13 (Coalition and Consolidation) Rich make reference to the above two parts of Canada. The chapter deals with the British resolve, beginning in 1814, to quell infighting between the fur trading companies (Hudson’s Bay Company and Northwest Company) and to combat American and Russian claims to lands on the coast. His following description clearly does not include British Columbia as being within the sphere of the Northwest territory: “But American claims to the Columbia and Russian expansion in Alaska now combined with violence in the Northwest itself to necessitate some arrangement that would ensure peace and restore that region to its wonted obscurity. ” (p. 236).
Rich’s Chapter 15, which recounts the history of development on and near the Pacific, similarly does not refer to the British Columbia region as the Pacific Northwest. Rather, his title for the chapter is “Fur Traders and the Pacific Slope.”
In Roy Daniells “Alexander Mackenzie and the North West” (Faber and Faber, 1969) are references to the “north-west”. However in his descriptions of the travels of Mackenzie’s predecessor Peter Pond, it is clear that this phrase did not include the British Columbia coastline. This is because this “magnificent untouched territory” (p. 42) (my note: the north-west) was in this direction from Lake Winnipeg in which Pond ventured in 1775. That is, by the end of that decade he was exploring the region near Lake Athabasca.
On the other hand, there is some informal (non geo-political) evidence of the phrase Pacific Northwest Coast. This appears in Beth Hill’s “Guide to Indian Rock Carvings of the Pacific Northwest Coast (Hancock House Publishers, 1975). The book is an explanation and researching of Petroglyphs. Pages 11-12 contains a map of the coastal areas of southern Alaska, British Columbia and Washington State.
Based on the above preliminary research, I think it may be concluded that the title “Pacific Northwest” did not originate in a political sense, at least in Canada. Rather, British Columbia was a separate place. Further, I do not believe it would be logical for people living in what was or is now the region of Canada to consider that its western extremity could be classified as having a northwestern location. This conclusion is especially true when considering that places like the Yukon could be more truly described as the northwestern corner of the country.
On the other hand, the anthropological text referred to above does confirm to at least some extent the concept of a single region in the northwestern sector of the continent.
So far I have not investigated American journals to determine when and how the phrase Pacific Northwest came into common practice, if that is where it originated. Ramrods 03:49, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Read all of my above replies to Gregorof, and note I'm away for a week and definitely won't be wiki'ing; I was going to go point-by-point for you above but don't have the time tonight and the energy will have to wait for another day; suffice to sum up, as I accused Gregorof of thinking what you'd said/exampled was from him, that you're comparing apples and oranges; none of the terms are a split off any of the others, they existed, were born, and are used in contexts each their own. I'l be back... Skookum1 09:24, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Skookum, I doubt you will read this as you have demonstrated previously a low comprehension of the fundamentals of what I am saying (I wrote, to this effect, three times: "Please note I am not disputing that we share a significant regional and historical "sphere" and we deserve an article to these ends", yet you continue to respond with comments such as "Clean your own house first before getting all antsy about being painted into the same camp as the guy next door" and in doing so fail to acknowledge what I was stating). Thus, I am not writing this to your audience, but to those of an administrator, as your slander has grown out of control.
As if the fact that you re-edited past discussions to include your rebuttal in a more advantageous position and in doing so failed to indent my argument as to consume it by yours, that you re-edited specifically my last comment, breaking it up and interspersing your comments resulting in an incoherent argument of mine dominated by your responses (which to me constitutes vandalism), that you continued to engage in personal attacks and uncivil behavior :
after I specifically requested you not to ("Please avoid slandering me on wikipedia, and please lets keep this debate civil"), that you continue with your hopelessly misguided responses (see above) after, I, he who began the debate, declared it dead, was not enough, you specically devalued my opinion due to my age:
which is preposterous. I could insult your age in a multitude of ways. But because I have achieved a level of maturity you have as of yet been unable to, I will not go into those details.
Moreover, you wrote : "So go on, "continue the debate" all you want". After you sarcastically wrote this, I finished my postceding comment saying "I have been more than outvoted, and until anyone else comments on the issue, or I can find anyone to corroberate what I am saying, the Pacific Northwest as including BC, obviously stands", thus I did not "continue the debate" but ENDED the debate, ceding that I was outvoted and bring the matter to a close. Your sarcastic and contradictory manner in "continuing the debate" after i stated this, is bizarre to say the least. -- Gregorof 04:30, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
Could someone please summarize what the dispute was about? I, for one, am not going to read pages of personal rants. — Sebastian (talk) 19:28, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Gregorof, you will note in my recent post that I resisted my usual flair for back-country straight-talk; and did not attack you in my recent post; you here, however, have bleated in public again, and "not taken it in stride". If a little flippant langauge is regarded by you as an "systematic attempt my opinion due to my age...and my geographic location", you need to spend more time in .... oh, never mind, you'll just regard it as another "personal" attack. Point of fact is you were wrong, remain wrong, and now that you've changed your tune (in the face of what you would have found was overwhelming evidence) it would behoove you now to just shut up to not further engage the Big Nasty known as Skookum1. I'm actually a really nice guy, just with a taste for salty language and colourful metaphors. I'm from the Ma Murray school of writing/debating and it's just the way I am. And, point blank, the shots at you concerning your age and location were fair game considering the huge information gap between generations and (in Canada) parts of the country; that you happened to be in Montreal at present, and not in your native Burnaby or wherever, doesn't mean that your perception of BC as "Southwestern Canada" wasn't a Central-Canadian-influenced perception; underscored, perhaps, by your current domicile. And I restate my comments about the poor curriculum in BC schools (and universities) on history and other topics; whether or not you were a victim of those books or grew up befuzzled by the context Pacific Northwest because of your own initiative is a separate matter. Take all this as an insult if you need to (no doubt you will), but I'll point out that in my summary I was honest about your position, and made no personal judgements; if you were a grown-up, as you're exhorting me to be, you wouldn't have engaged in further attacks/complaints; or said I didn't summarize the issues, which on the other hand I did quite well and thoroughly, too. Maybe because I didn't write in point-form, which I know is the preferred mode of communications nowadays; I come from a time when people had more tolerance for longer sentence structures.... Skookum1 18:31, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Thank you, guys –I think I now see what the issue is. You disagree as to
But you also have a lot in common: Both of you care about Wikipedia and this topic. Both of you are well-traveled, culturally interested people. Both of you are skilled authors, as evidenced from your user pages and other contributions.
I would be happy if you could agree with me that this part of the world, across the border, has its own character that deserves a cohesive description in Wikipedia. The existing article already shows this. When several dedicated authors agree to collaborate on this interesting material we have a good chance to make this a featured article.
Once we agree on this, we can search for a good name for the article together; I’ll add a section for that below. — Sebastian (talk) 20:24, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
See also #Better Map? above
The current picture seems OR to me. In particular, I can not see which definition includes half of Nevada; the article does not explicitly say which definition this is supposed to be, let alone sourcing it. Instead, I'm proposing a map that shows different definitions of PacNW and similar terms such as the one to the right. I'm not good at drawing maps; if anyone can improve this I'd be happy. — Sebastian (talk) 19:28, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
We have lots of personal statements but precious few sourced definitions for the term "Pacific Northwest". I would like to include all sourced definitions in this map. Unfortunately, I'm only aware of the following few sources so far:
BTW, I found another related map here: [4]. — Sebastian (talk) 20:10, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
i think most people wouldnt consider that much of california as part of the PNW. NorCal has a pretty arid climate and is a different biome, it suppors palm trees. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.121.247.116 ( talk) 04:10, August 26, 2007 (UTC)
Thats not very true, Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino, Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Lake counties and the Shasta Cascade region (which has strong cultural ties to southern Oregon ( State of Lincoln) have a climate that is much, much more wet than Idaho, or even Eastern Oregon and Washington. I think that the reason Northern California shouldn't be a Northwest state is not because of a reason invloving climate, geography, geology or culture, as Northern California shares almost all of these with Oregon and Washington, but because it was not historically part of the Oregon territory.-Anonymous
BTW an interesting map/boundary overlay to consider, if it can be found or made (I'm not good at maps either) would be of the Pacific Northwest Sprachbund, aka the Northwest Coast Sprachbund (whatever it is in German, the original coinage), which would comprise all the coastal peoples from the Tlingit south to the Salish, excluding the Athapaskans and, I think, the Chinooks (just a sliver along the Columbia from the Dalles on down); excluding the Shoshonians in southern Idaho, and the Ktunaxa, but otherwise approximating the same area, here including the Cariboo (because Shuswap, i.e. Salish) but not the Chilcotin or Bulkely-Omineca (Athapaskan); can't remember who it looks down towards OR-CA boundary but native linguistic boundaries are a bit of a patchwork quilt south of the Columbia; not sure where the Sprachbund runs out or if Kalapuya and Klickitat and Sahaptian and others are included in the Sprachbund; its context is largely coastal and penetrates inland only because the Salishan group does. What it means is that all those languages, despite being from many differnt language families, have related sound systems; there are only so many sprachbunds in the world (the term originated in the Balkans, where unrelated languages like Hungarian, Romanian and the various Slavic languages have related sound systems but are otherwise unrelated); I don't know if there's a wiki article on them so I linked that; there should be, although I'm not qualified to write it. Skookum1 00:36, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I thought “Pacific Northwest” was a good name, but it is not as straightforward as I thought. From your contributions in the summary I gather: The term “Pacific Northwest”...
I’d be very happy if we could find a less problematic name. I would rule out terms like BC+WA+OR because there is no need for our article to stop at state and province borders. For lack of a better name we could temporarily agree on “overall area” for this discussion. Alternatives for the article name include so far:
Note: The sole purpose of this section is Finding a good name for this article. Since previous sections with similar purposes have shown a tendency of getting extremely verbose and emotional I insist on a special rule for this section: Everybody has to stay on topic; in particular, nobody is allowed to personally attack another editor here. Since I have never met any of the editors of this page before, I volunteer as a mediator. If I have the impression a statement does not serve this purpose then I will, in this section only, deviate from general Wikipedia policy and edit it. Disclaimer: I do have an interest in splitting Cascadia into a redirect, but I will put this aside for the moment. I will not do any other work on the overall area until we find a name for this article. — Sebastian (talk) 22:07, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
It's not really workable to change the principal name, because it's such a well-known term and has an obvious history of its own; the issue is the vagueness of the boundaries, which don't coincide with state/provincial or national boundaries; a discussion of the variation in meaning is perhaps needed, but the "Southwestern Canada" thing is very rarefied, and only occasionally shows up in actual Canadian discussions, usually people in Letters to the Editor writing who want to enforce a Canadian perspective on geographic language; which like other Canadian perspectives in reference to BC is an imposition, not a reflection of historical or social/cultural fact. Anyway, such points aside, there's no viable alternate name; the Cascadia thing has its own connotations, and is also less circulated on this side of the border (though it has its adherents in the bioregionalist factions of the environmental movement, and also in the annexationist/independent BC movements which crop up from time to time, but always on the fringe). The Pacific Northwest isn't an invented or theorized region, and it's also not an invented/adapted name like Whulge (q.v.). Skookum1 23:32, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
In two days, this discussion has not yielded any new ideas. To be honest, I was hoping we could agree on "Cascadia", which is a clearly defined name as a bioregion and also used in cultural, economical and geological contexts. However, this term is obviously not established enough. Unless I hear an objection I conclude therefore that the name of the article should continue to contain the term "Pacific Northwest". Another question is if we need a disambiguation and a parenthetical addition, which I would like to discuss in section #Disambiguation. — Sebastian (talk) 22:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
There are currently 762 articles linking to this article. Numbers by namespaces are:
Counting only main and Template namespaces, there are 850 links that we need to care about. After looking at 35 of the articles that link to this page, I obtained
If this is a representative sample we have to assume that of the 850 relevant links,
For details see User:SebastianHelm/PacNW material — Sebastian (talk) 02:08, 8 November 2006 (UTC), rewritten 22:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Since there are about 275 links that were meant to refer to Northwestern United States, instead of the overall area, we need a disambiguation. If no one has a better idea, I will add a disambig link on top, saying something like
We then can rely on the Wikipedia ant algorithm to disambiguate them alki. Another option I considered was to rename this article to something like term "Pacific Northwest (international region)", but that looks like much more work. — Sebastian (talk) 02:08, 8 November 2006 (UTC) , rewritten — Sebastian (talk) 22:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Editors regularly clean out undiscussed links from this article. Please discuss here if you want a link not to be cleaned out regularly. ( You can help!) Katr67 03:07, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure how to word what needs to be added here, because while there are differences between the culture and politics of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest states, there is a common social history and shared political history and mutual awareness spanning the international boundary; no other Canadian province has as high a concentration of its population so immediately adjacent to a land boundary; the Lower Mainland-Whatcom County border crossings are among the busiest on the continent, and Lower Mainlanders cross the border more often than any other metropolitan population in Canada; similar familiarity exists between the Okanagan and West Kootenay to Spokane and Couer d'Alene. I think there's also an exteremely high rate of cross-border property ownership. There is also a shared ethnic makeup to some degree because of the heavy concentration of Scandinavians in Washington, which while present is to a much lesser degree and much more assimilated in BC (elements of Scandinavian culture and "Scandinavian pride" are much more evident in Seattle than in the GVRD); also the residual Asian presence in Seattle, though less than Vancouver and more Japanese than Chinese. The shared early history of the region also did not end with the Oregon Treaty of 1846, but continued due to mining, railway and ranching societies/populations; very pointedly in fact the union movement in the railways and mine workings both regions was very linked and there were strong similarities in the conditions of near-revolution during the Great Depression; likewise links between business and government - the Washington Group owned by Washingtonian Kyle Washington, for instance, is one of BC's most dynamic entrepreneurships/megalopolies (cf. Fast Ferries) - again to a greater degree than elsewhere in Canada except as concerns the Auto Pact in the central provinces, and the oil and ranching industries in Alberta. There's also the International Joint Commission, which governs the salmon fishery and other boundary-waters matters (the current Wiki page as I recall tends to focus on Ontario but the bulk of the IJC's work has to do with salmon, as well as water issues including the Columbia River Treaty - another major business/industry link. Then there's the parallels between the trendy/corporate/urban/ecotopian flavour of the coastal regions spanning the border, vs. the much more redneck/resource/conservative/native composition of the interior of both also are demonstrations of the shared cultural and political values, although the distinction from one side of the Cascades/Coast Mountains to the other is part of it. And there's the shared marine society of people living and working or recreating on Puget Sound and the Gulf of Georgia/Desolation Sound , and the similarities between the San Juans and the Gulf Islands as well. All those powerboats and sailboats moored in Seattle's marinas regularly come north, and likewise those from BC who at least go to northern Puget Sound, if not down to Seattle or Olympia so much. Sports circuits such as drag-racing, rodeos and horse races and also contribute to a collective awareness from one side of the border to the other; although only SFU ever competed in US collegiate leagues, in their case the NAIA (no longer). Skookum1 23:33, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
"The rainy weather promotes an indoor culture; video game usage is higher per-capita than any other region of the country"
First off, the link doesn't provide a study of the correlation between rain and gaming. Second, it doesn't specifically mention the region, just Seattle. I move we at least remove the first statement, since it really goes against the nature and spirit of most northwesterners. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.168.187.240 ( talk • contribs) 06:59, November 16, 2006
Regardless which side of the border, we all need to emphasize the conservation of the Pacific Northwest as one of the last-remaining ecosystems in North America still relatively "free." -Jackmont, Nov —Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.20.13.41 ( talk • contribs) 12:36, November 18, 2006
This page is 94 kilobytes long... I created an archive for this page. I'd like to sort through the posts and add {{ unsigned}} templates to some of the comments before those get archived. Have we worked out the naming dispute enough to everyone's satisfaction that we can archive some of the older discussions about that? If anyone wants to check out some of the other comments and archive them if they've been worked out (chai anyone?), please feel free. BTW, I think the subsection under "Culture" in the main article about ethnicity needs to checked out; I tagged it for sources long ago. It all sounds fairly reasonable, but without sources, should probably be removed. The new additions on religion need to be checked out as well. Katr67 17:57, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
OK, I won't change something until I check to see if that was part of that apparent compromise solution here; but it's still wrong:
There is no equivalency in the terms; can't remember what went on with the Cascadia article, but it's NOT a synonym for the Pacific Northwest; different origin, concept. Might as well merge the Oregon Country article; just being sarcastic' (there's also Pacific Slope, which is a used but fairly uncommon term in Canada, small or large 's'). I'm uncomfortable with that as an opening line; any mention of Cascadia should only be farther down in the document, stating that they're not quite the same thing, although neither is well-defined. Cascadia has overtones of particular politico-cultural associations and isn't as broad or neutral (or old) in origin as Pacific Northwest. Pacific Norrthwest is more synonymous, if at all, with Northwest Coast, but it's not purely coastal in nature; Cascadia is much more coastal in definition/sense also. Skookum1 02:59, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Sebastian, it may be more common today, and to even be used in contexts which don't have New Age-Ecotopian-political sentiments attached; but it CAN'T be equated with "Pacific Northwest", as is the way the opening sentence of the article still reads. Cascadia more resembles Ecotopia; and even less so than Pacific Northwest it is a more identifiably American term that is only imposed to include British Columbia, which pretty much disdains the use of the term, except in the vague what-if about "what if we could only get rid of all the bastards on the other side of the mountains" which is shared on both sides of the border; those companies in BC using Cascadia in their names are partly doing that out of cross-border marketing profile. Geologists, geographers and other academics might have started using the word but it's just trend-following and, again, is NOT equatable with the broader concept of Pacific Northwest; that it was coined by a geographer in the first place makes this all the more a pointed critique - he created a perpsective/term now mimicked by other academics, but it always had a different meaning than "Pacific Northwest", even in his coinage. Many of your links above clearly have political baggage (esp. the Green Party), likewise the Cascadia Society, a Steinerite quasi-New Age education foundation), and the use of the term always has an implicit cross-border political implication; the cascadia.bc.ca domain name is/was very likely a separatist/regionalist movement site, but for all I know it could be someone holding onto the name thinking that it might become valuable - actually just looking at it it's for "Interactive Solutions", inferring the IT industry and therfore definitely somebody who's targeting Seattle-area investment/customers; and there's a tide of "if we use it enough, people will be forced to accept it". Indeed. But that still doesn't make it the same thing as "Pacific Northwest" and should have its own article because of that. Skookum1 20:32, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Which is why I haven't changed it, please note. But from my end of it, the merging of Cascadia and Pacific Northwest is the pushing of a point of view, namely that the two are synonymous, WHICH THEY ARE NOT. Cascadia-using people like to pretend that it is, but that's their POV; and the term Pacific Northwest is a LOT OLDER and also doesn't directly have the ecotopian/separatist/regionalist flavour that Cascadia does; in fact most of the BC Cascadia links you cited were flavoured by that (why Scouts Canada calls itself that instead of the old Dogwood Region is a matter of taste/trend, but I'd bet that "Cascadia" for this Ottawa-based organization is thought to include Alberta, which definitely does NOT have much in common with the Evergreen Triangle (another more obscure name for the "ecotopian heartland" along I-5). I think the problem began here with someone questioning the entire validity of "Pacific Northwest" as a term and looking for a "better name" for it; it didn't need a better or different name and Cascadia is a NAME FOR SOMETHING ELSE. The cites you need a are ones proving that "Cascadia" means the same thing as "Pacific Northwest" - the burden of proof is on you, not me. Again, I repeat, the equation between Pacific Northwest and Cascadia made in the first line of the article is not verifiable and is in and of itself a POV "Cascadian" view/agenda. One may include part of the other, but they are not the same thing. Cascadia as an agenda has been trying to insert itself into academic literature/language for a while now; that they have a claque doesn't mean that they have a case. Skookum1 21:18, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Please provide a citation for:
If it was
Because of the alternative definitions/regions/names, Cascadia should not have pride of place. For hell's sake, it was ONLY INVENTED IN THE 1980s!!!! Even Ecotopia at least dates back to the '70s or '60s. Skookum1 21:21, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Page and sentence of the particular cite where: The name Cascadia, which is derived from the Cascade Range, is often used as a synonym to "Pacific Northwest" in geology, ecology and climatology, as well as by the Cascadia independence movement. Which geological, ecological and climatological papers define Cascadia as a synonym for Pacific Northwest? And is this a standard in geology/ecology/climatology and to what degree? Here again the issue of one of language; that the two are equated and synonymous and defined as such in a given cite. They cannot, for one thing, be used interchangeable: "Heavy rains and storms hit the Pacific Northwest all weekend" vs "Heavy rains and storms hit Cascadia all weekend". You tell me they're the same thing and it's you that's forcing a point of view, NOT ME. They're clearly different, and one is clearly an invented neologism that has only recently gained any currency at all, whereas the other evolved historically and is in much wider use in the general population. For whom "Cascadia" inherently has something to do with regionalist/separatist and maybe techno-ecotopian agenda. My issue is not with the parallel between the two, but with the language used that seeks to equate and synonymize them; but no one has defined that in clear terms, i.e. that they are synonyms. Even the original geographer, whose interview I remember from TV years ago, as he gestured at the map explaining the boundary he'd outlined (all the Pacific Slope drainage basins from the Columbia to the Stikine, maybe the Taku) and spoke glowingly about how "Cascadia" (a name he'd invented) was meant to describe that part of the Pacific Northwest that "cascaded" towards the sea, amidst other flakey New Age-y poetry/eco-doggerel; he also made the usual Yankee extension of "the Cascades" to include the Coast Mountains [admittedly in use in obscure frontier-era documents as in "summit of the Cascades as defined for administrative purposes" which you'll find on some maps). Cascadia's a concocted name, again, and not an organic, historical one like Pacific Northwest; and even its originator defined it as being part of the Pacific Northwest; or the language he may have used was "located in" or "spanning" the Pacific Northwest; but it is clear that he made a distinction between the terms and used them in different contexts...and he's the ultimate cite on this, the provenance; all I remember is that he was at U.W. or U.Seattle; don't think it was a state university). And while there may be a Cascadia Subduction Zone, that's not the same thing as a Pacific Northwest Subduction Zone, or that geologists use the terms Cascadia and Pacific Northwest interchangeably, as this article seeks to establish a standard for; there is no standard, the two terms have different histories, are not synonyms, despite overlapping geographies; one is at best an outgrowth of the other, but they are not the same. Like I said, there's no reason why Pacific Slope, Northwest Coast, Ecotopia and Evergreen Triangle shouldn't also be mentioned on equal terms; except that "Cascadia" is an agenda that, while it's manifested itself in some academic circles as fashionable (and there is often meant to have implications for the Cascadia agenda) this doesn't make it current in general use. It's more an overlay, such that if you asked someone on the street in the Pacific Northwest they'd immediately identify it with the separation thing, not with the region per se, which is the meaning of Pacific Northwest. This isn't "original research"; it's obvious. What isn't obvious in the cites you've mentioned again, is how they state that the two terms are the same; that it exists in academic literature and marketing doesn't mean it's a synonym; nowhere does it say that. If you happened to ask certain bureaucrats on either side of the border, they may speak of the regional trade/business agreements that the PacNW states and BC as well as Alberta are working towards; but that includes Alberta and I think also Alaska and Yukon as well as Montana and isn't purely Pacific Northwest, or Cascadia either; but they'd likely use or apply that term without its regionalist-separatist overtones. But even if they did, it's still not synonymous; nor should the syntax of the opening line suggest that they are, either. What do I need? Stylebooks from the newspapers and TV stations, every mention of Pacific Northwest (with no mention of Cascadia) in the estensive academic, popular and journalistic literature covering the region), a quotation of "Cascadia is that part of the Pacific Northwest that drains/cascadces towards the Pacific flanking the Cascades" (sic, as here Cascades is used to mean other ranges than the Cascade Range). A definition which is very different from the emerging marketing/government usage, which as mentioned takes in Alberta and is on equal terms in Idaho and Montana, which the ecotopian agenda/version of its meaning is not. This whole discussion reminds me of the effort to establish "the Whulge" as if it were a commonplace term for the Georgia Depression/Georgia Basin or Georgia-Puget Basin or whatever it properly is; equating Cascadia with Pacific Northwest is a neologistic definition of a very deliberately invented (if fashioanble) neologism. Even "sometimes used as a synonym" doesn't cut it with me; again, even the existence of a Cascadia section when the other names for the area don't have theirs speaks to me of the Cascadia agenda. That may not be your intent, but to my that's what's been pushed into the content of this article as a result of "compromises" settled upon in previous discussions; I'll poll some of my author and reporter and blogger friends, although I realize the poll result is O.R., although some of them may be able to cite their own stylebooks or published works; it's an incredibly obscure splitting-of-hairs, but I also know even asking is going to get some rolling-of-eyes.... Skookum1 02:06, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
You forgot to stick a /font tag after your first link. May want to do that, so the entire rest of the page doesn't show up as green. LeviathanMist 22:31, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Here's what there is:
Here's what there should be:
If it was put THIS way, without any direct equation being made between Cascadia and the Pacific Northwest, I could deal with it. To me the vandalism is the forced inclusion of Cascadia, especially relative to other much more historically-valid options (though none with exactly the same meaning, including Cascadia). Likewise if the article made equal-time references to other parallel areas as listed in the new version above. But without that, the article is "Cascadia POV" and I'll continue to dispute it. For the fifth, sixth, seventh and nth times. The two terms are NOT synonyms, CANNOT be used interchangeably, and Cascadia is clearly an upstart (if a trendy one) on the scene relative to other terms. Skookum1 19:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
The presence of "or Cascadia" in the opening line really bugs me; it's saying something as if it were the case which it's not, despite the selective cites "proving" that it is. I could just delete it again but because of the obstinacy of the Cascadia faction here (sorry guys, but it's what it boils down to) I'm up against two deletions - "vandalism" - and I'd be blocked. The evidence presented to supported your case doesn't hold water, and has no overall substance except academic speciousness. Too many words for you again? I'm the one trying to be clear, instead of allowing vaguely-made logics and conclusions to go unchallenged. You don't have to repeat yourself for the fourth or fifth time; it's pretty obvious you have no intention of listening to common sense. And would seek to punish me for correcting what needs to be corrected (and Cascadia can go to its section or article or wherever else it belongs; it shouldn't have a special section here IMO, unless all other parallel region-concepts are also included. I'll have to figure out which admin or arbiter to consult on this; perhap the "expert" template should be called in, but it's such a nonsensical issue I still can't get over it (others in my web circle in BC just shake their heads about it, as if it's "what do you expect from Wikipedia?"). Skookum1 06:55, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I have made preliminary edits to edit out most references to British Columbia (except for the historical part) since British Columbians do not see themselves to be part of the Pacific Northwest. The Cascadian Institute (of Washington) may have a political project of including British Columbia as part of the region, but this does not constitute British Columbians accepting BC to be part of the Pacific Northwest. Again, has been mentioned by several people, the term Pacific Northwest comes from a US-centric spatial reference. For a British Columbian, areas like Seattle and Oregon are in the south. North, for Canadians, imply areas more towards the Yukon and Northwest territories. So please do not include British Columbia as part of this U.S.-centric spatial reference.
Someone else with better editing skills I hope can continue to edit the more difficult items like the map and so forth so that BC is excluded from this entry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.146.50.237 ( talk • contribs) 13:39, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I have lived in british columbia my entire life and have always thought of it as part of the Pacific Northwest. Its a matter of geography and common usage, not what province or state you're facing when you look north. There certainly is enough inclusion of BC as part of the Pacific Northwest by both Canadians and Americans to merit its mention here, to excise it from the article is to misrepresent how this term is thought of by a significant number of people. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
BC-er eh? (
talk •
contribs) 23:49, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
i was linked to this page through the Civilization page about the tribes of the pacific northwest and find the history of the area here officially starts with white men "discovering" the area. it'd be nice if there were some information on the peoples who lived successfully in the pacific northwest for thousands of years.-- 74.97.142.249 05:34, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
seems reasonable
From the article, 3 June, 2007:
It is often claimed that the region also has a shared political culture and/or common cultural values. The region is referred to by some as Cascadia as part of a modern-era rebranding effort, that is also associated with the perception of shared cultural and political traits.
Claimed by whom? Referred by which some? Rebranding effort? Perceived by whom? Why am I leaving the article with more questions than answers?
The above questions are somewhat rhetorical. The article demonstrates (or at least implies) "shared political culture and/or common cultural values" in the Pacific Northwest (regardless of what it's called or what its boundaries are). As far as I know, "Pacific Northwest", common though it may be, has no " official" standing with Statistics Canada or the US Census Bureau. Also, as far as I know, USGS invariably uses the geometric boundary between California and Oregon to separate California from the Pacific Northwest. NOAA also seems to make this distinction. (Why are lower Klamath River issues at NMFS governed from Long Beach, California?) Needless to say, neither agency has jurisdiction in British Columbia. Disclaimer: I work "in the field" for United States government contractors in "the far southwest" and know coastal California and the lower Columbia well, but I don't know the northern areas (British Columbia/Colombie-britannique and Alaska) nor the regionalization schemes of other U.S. and Canadian agencies. Doesn't Pacific Nowthwest, historically, refer to the region around the presumed Pacific outlet of the Northwest Passage? I might have gotten that from U.S. Navy archives, but I'll have to dig around for it.
I don't object to most of the article, and I can tell from the talk and talk archives that much effort has gone into it (Bravo!), but the fact that the borders are not fixed allows for all manner of "interpretation". If any particular "interpretation" is to be characterized as " rebranding", that requires a source. This looks like an inadequate wiki- compromise--a "cascading" paragraph of weasel words. Since the shared values and Cascadia concept are adequately covered in the article, this non- NPOV paragraph is subject to prompt deletion if it is not sourced.
Consider a Pacific Northwest example of regional rebranding-- King County, Washington rebranded ahistorically a few years ago, and this is non-controversial in the King County article. King County has little historical connexion to Martin Luther King, Jr., but its rebranding was a public process and can be verified through local government and media archives.
[NOTE: Minor edit for clarity 30 June, 2007]
.s
X ile 12:46, 3 June 2007 (UTC)