Is it really northwest?

November 2, 2023 4:54 PM

Canadians/Vancouverites: Does it bother you that Vancouver is referred to by Americans as part of the "Pacific Northwest"?

This is not a snarky question, I promise you. I grew up in Seattle, and I live in Portland; I've been a NW'er for 52 of my 54 years. And one thing that has always made me wonder is...looking at the map, Vancouver isn't anywhere remotely near the "northwest" of Canada. It's pretty much as far southwest as you can get, on the mainland anyway.

I get that Vancouver's geographically close to both the US in general and to Seattle, and that it culturally shares several traits with other cities considered part of the Pacific Northwest, but it seems like considering Vancouver to be part of something called the "Pacific Northwest" is a stretch at best, and overly America-centric at worst.

So, Vancouverites and Canadians: Does this bother you, or am I overthinking it? I love Vancouver and that part of BC, and I'm not asking in a way that means I want to exclude Vancouver from anything, nor am I going to be the WELL ACTUALLY guy, correcting people at parties about it. I'm just curious as to how those of you north of the US border feel about the "PNW" designation as it relates to Vancouver.

posted by pdb to Travel & Transportation around Vancouver, BC (28 answers total)

Best answer: Canadian here, but not from BC and I live in the US. It doesn’t bother us, but we may take a while to make the connection because we never refer to Vancouver or BC as PNW. People from Vancouver may be more accustomed to it.

Either way, I certainly don’t think it’s offensive. But I feel like the only reason I am aware of what PNW means is because I lived in the US for almost 20 years.
posted by ttyn at 5:19 PM on November 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Vancouverite - Pacific Northwest is fine. It refers specifically to the area west of the Cascades, north to Vancouver (including Vancouver Island) and south to San Francisco. Things that are actually north are referred to as “the north”.
posted by shock muppet at 5:24 PM on November 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: While there are cultural similarities between Vancouver, Portland and Seattle, I don't think Canadians generally would think or accept that Vancouver is part of the Pacific NW. We know what you mean, but no one in Canada is going around talking about Vancouver being part of the Pacific NW.

Are we bothered by Americans saying this? I can't speak for everyone, but not really. Americans being only dimly aware of the borders of their country and what lies beyond them is a cliche (obviously not true in general, but there's a reason for the cliche). There are a million jokes about Americans travelling to Canada and not even knowing they are in a different country. We're kind of used to the idea. Another important piece of context is that Canadians are way less overtly patriotic than Americans.

There was some talk about Cascadia a while back, but that seems to have dropped off.

Personally, I'm a lot more upset about Alaska taking a huge portion of our coastline.

For context, I live in a different part of BC that is more Montana than Seattle, though I grew up on Vancouver Island.
posted by ssg at 5:25 PM on November 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I am from BC and my family lives in Vancouver (though I am not from Vancouver) and no, that wouldn't bother me but at the same time if you were talking about the PNW generally, I would not in any way assume you meant to include Vancouver.

Within BC, if I wanted to refer to Vancouver broadly, I would have used the term "lower mainland". Here in Ottawa, I just "West Coast" or "Vancouver" because no one here cares about any part of BC that isn't Vancouver anyway.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:47 PM on November 2, 2023 [8 favorites]

Best answer: no, it doesn't bother me at all
posted by philip-random at 6:12 PM on November 2, 2023

Best answer: I’m from Vancouver (born lived there till my late 20s) and it doesn’t bother me but I’ve never really thought about hot it doesn’t make sense. I live in the US and find it an apt description of the general area as more people know where Seattle is than Vancouver. I f
posted by SpaceWarp13 at 6:15 PM on November 2, 2023

Best answer: We know what you mean, but no one in Canada is going around talking about Vancouver being part of the Pacific NW.

I live in Vancouver, and ok, maybe everyone isn’t, but plenty do. It doesn’t bother me, but I’m a naturalized Canadian and spent quite a bit of time in WA/OR. Honestly I feel at least as much kinship to the PNW states as the adjacent provinces, sometimes more so (looking at you Alberta)
posted by Jon Mitchell at 7:21 PM on November 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

Best answer: I won’t speak for Canadians (whom I’m geographically closer to than Seattleites) but (entirely joking here) if they exclusively get gas at our Costco the least they can do is not object to being called PNWers.

There was some talk about Cascadia a while back, but that seems to have dropped off.

Depends who you talk to, plenty of anarchists and other assorted leftists are still in that boat. I like it as an explicitly cross-border (or no-borders) concept, as opposed to the more US-centric PNW idea. (Ditto Salish Sea region, which is more Tacoma-to-Vancouver localized.)

Also, sadly, some white supremacists have picked Cascadia up as an idea— ethnoregionalism instead of bioregionalism, enough that I’ve started side eyeing Doug flags on pickups.
posted by supercres at 7:38 PM on November 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: @shock muppet: " It refers specifically to the area west of the Cascades, north to Vancouver (including Vancouver Island) and south to San Francisco"

I'm not sure the "Pacific Northwest" name applies any further than the southern Oregon border, and I'm actually not sure that it stretches any further south than about Eugene, culturally or politically speaking, but I take your point.

Thanks all for your perspectives, I appreciate it!
posted by pdb at 8:11 PM on November 2, 2023

Just another lifelong metro vancouver person agreeing with everyone else. No one would ever refer to Vancouver as the PNW when talking to other Canadians, but its fine when talking to Americans. I’d be very confused if someone tried to take the words more literally and start referring to Alaska/Yukon/NW BC as the PNW, to be honest.

PNW has connotations that are unique to this region, and the name is fine. It could definitely be worse.
posted by cgg at 9:21 PM on November 2, 2023

Best answer: Adjacent to your question: this is like how Chicago is considered the “Midwest” when objectively, looking at a map of the US, it is on the eastern half of the country. Sometimes the meaning of words grows and expands beyond the original definition.
posted by samthemander at 12:46 AM on November 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure the "Pacific Northwest" name applies any further than the southern Oregon border, and I'm actually not sure that it stretches any further south than about Eugene, culturally or politically speaking, but I take your point.

You might be interested in reading the Wikipedia entry for Pacific Northwest, which disagrees with all those points.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 4:54 AM on November 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Interesting that Wikipedia includes us in PNW geographically. I think the thing is that typically Americans are thinking about portions of the US when using the term. There are not that many reasons, comparatively, to discuss geographic reasons of North America as a whole. And when in Canada, usually we'd just be talking about Western Canada or British Columbia when discussing regions of the country, similarly not as many reasons to discuss geographic regions of North America.

I also suspect Americans view BC/Vancouver as more culturally similar to the American PNW than vice versa. I do think there are some cultural affinities, but to me they're relative - American PNW is more similar to us than the rest of America, but Alberta is more culturally similar to BC, each taken as a whole, than any American state in my view (though metropolitan populations/coastal elite types share a lot). Depends on what dimensions you're concerned with.

But I do think there are situations where talking about the PNW in a cross border way is useful, including culture, climate, etc. So the meaning depends on context.
posted by lookoutbelow at 6:20 AM on November 3, 2023

Lifelong Vancouverite. I say PNW whenever I need to refer to the general Vancouver/Seattle/Oregon area, even when talking with other Canadians. Probably picked that habit up from Americans online though!
posted by ripley_ at 7:47 AM on November 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Vancouverite here, and it used to bother me when Americans do it (manifest destiny really pissed me off in high school and I am still not over it), but I have accepted it as a name for the global geographical region because it's just a fact. I do feel more affinity with my fellow Pacific Northwest Coasters/Cascadians than I do with the rest of Canada, since the climate is so, so different.
posted by urbanlenny at 7:50 AM on November 3, 2023

Cascadia is preferred, PNW is fine.
posted by no regrets, coyote at 10:00 AM on November 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Vancouver, and not bothered by it either.

Of historical note, all of what is now Washington State west of the Columbia River used to be British territory until 1846. Geographically, the two areas are very similar. Culturally, Vancouver:Toronto :: Portland:an eastern city (Seattle maybe, but whenever I'm there I'm always spending too much time stuck in traffic to get a sense of the place).
posted by morspin at 11:26 AM on November 3, 2023

*waves at fellow Vancouverite Mefites (Vanfites?)*

Agreed with Lower Mainland within BC, West Coast among Canadians, but PNW is fine among Americans (but when an American refers to the PNW, would have to specifically clarify whether or not that is inclusive of Vancouver BC, if it's important). We're inured enough to US-centricness that the bar is very low.
posted by btfreek at 11:45 AM on November 3, 2023

but when an American refers to the PNW, would have to specifically clarify whether or not that is inclusive of Vancouver BC, if it's important

As a Portlander, I don’t think I’d ever use PNW in a sense that excluded the Canadian side of the border. PNW is geography and climate and culture; if I wanted to indicate something bounded by state/national borders I’d just specify what state[s] I was referring to.
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 1:03 PM on November 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I’d be very confused if someone tried to take the words more literally and start referring to Alaska/Yukon/NW BC as the PNW, to be honest.

I agree that the further one gets from the northern end of the Cascades the less applicable the PNW label seems but it does frequently get applied to Alaska - less frequently, I would assume, to the Yukon and northern BC.

As a resident of SE Alaska for the past 20 years I'm still a bit fuzzy on when the PNW label applies to Alaska. Certainly we are Pacific, and north, and west. And parts of our state share similar climate and biome to western Washington and Oregon. Other parts are obviously hugely different. Were it only about geology, topology, and ecology Alaska probably would identify separately but there are also significant economic and sometimes familial ties to the PNW region. The bottom line is that whether Alaska belongs to the Pacific Northwest or is its own thing is, as far as I can tell, highly context dependent, depending on the speaker, the type of connection being contemplated, and also sometimes the intended audience.
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:36 PM on November 3, 2023

like @btfreek, i’m here to wave at my vancouver area mefites (hi!)

+1 the sentiment of no-offense. i also read PNW as a US-centric term. when i (occasionally) hear the term used locally to include vancouver, it’s usually in reference to the significant precipitation, or the prevalence of IPA beer or espresso.
posted by tamarack at 4:01 PM on November 3, 2023

One example of a situation where clarification might be needed on whether PNW includes Canada: when someone (American) on this very site asks for travel tips in the PNW, I would not automatically assume that they've got their passport, etc ready and were willing to cross the border unless they specifically say so.
posted by btfreek at 5:24 PM on November 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I grew up in Kansas City (midwest, btw St. Louis is not), then went to college in southern Minnesota, (sort of midwest, but bordering on the northern plains), and have lived in Seattle now for like 30 years.

Places that are cool, and just over the border, are pretty much considered by USians to be just a suburb of america.

And PNW, like the midwest, high rockies, mississippi delta, most of our regional designations, to me, are based on feel. Climate, what trees and weeds grow there, what wild animals.

Alaska feels like PNW (hard mode), but lots of the coastal parts feel totally PNW. Vancouver? Mountains! Ocean! Inlets! CONIFERS! FERNS! Feels PNW to me. Silly borders and compasses.
posted by Windopaene at 1:08 PM on November 4, 2023

I grew up in Seattle, and the term was everywhere in media in the 80s and 90s. I remember having a class discussion about what a silly term it was, because if you look at a map of the Pacific, its "NorthWest" part was clearly Japan or the Petropavlosk or something.

This has always been a marketing term, and you can object to it partly because it's being used to sell a conception of the area to people outside and in. I used to get frustrated at my mother, because she was a sucker for those "We do things differently here" puff-pieces that coffee vendors or outdoor gear companies would write for local columnists.

Of course xkcd once highlighted the eurocentrism of our notions of "Western" vs "Eastern" cultures. I was in a university class with someone who objected to the term "Middle-East", because it described the region her parents came from as a broad territorial conquest: a stepping stone to lands further East.

Now I live in London, and occasionally ride a bike to the Eastern Hemisphere.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:36 PM on November 4, 2023

The "PNW" is a place though. It's an interconnected crazy ecosystem. Where the boundaries only matter in an ecosystem sense. And as mentioned above, many mefites are from the US.

And no matter how much I think Vancouver is better than Seattle, (and I think most of Vancouver is pretty awesome), YOU ARE PART OF THIS ECOSYSTEM!

We are one. Embrace the ecosystem
posted by Windopaene at 7:26 PM on November 4, 2023

Best answer: Psst, my fellow Americans: the OP wanted to hear from Canadians.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:54 PM on November 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Another (imported) Vancouverite here (technically Burnaby, but I can literally see Vancouver from where I'm typing (helps that I am on the 24th floor)). If someone said Vancouver and PNW to me, I would automatically think they were talking about Vancouver, WA. I wouldn't take offence if they clarified they meant Vancouver, BC, but it would take a clarification...
posted by birdsquared at 11:08 PM on November 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Pro-tip from a Portlander: unless we’re speaking to someone located no more than one town away from Vancouver WA, we’re never going to mention Vancouver WA without specifying the “WA” (and even then, there would need to be context clues that make it clear we’re talking about our Vancouver). I’d imagine it’s a lot like not expecting residents of London ON to be telling US residents they’re “from London” without causing some serious confusion.
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 11:53 AM on November 6, 2023