Long live Cascadia -- Our home and native land

By GERRY WARNER

Cranbrook DailyTownsman

May 23, 2008

"There's a land, oh it beckons and beckons" and I want to go back and I will . . .

And so spake Canada's greatest bard, Robert Service, more than a hundred years ago in his famous elegy, "The Spell of the Yukon."And Service was right. The Yukon is a stunningly beautiful and unspoiled place as anybody knows who's been there.

But there's another incredible land, not as unspoiled as the Yukon, but just as spectacular and not nearly as remote. It too casts a spell; so much so that some seriously suggest it should become a new country. It borders the Salish Sea, or the Pacific Ocean as it's more prosaically known, and all of us know it well because we live there -- Cascadia -- or the "Republic of the Pacific" as it's sometimes known.

Don't laugh.

Cascadia, as a concept at least, if not a country, is being taken quite seriously in parts of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. There's also interest in Montana, Idaho and even the Yukon. The term was first coined by Scottish botanist David Douglas, who coined it for all the water falls he saw as a naturalist exploring the area in the 1820's and the man for whom the mighty Douglas fir is named, the forest giant that could well serve as the National Tree of Cascadia. Google Cascadia and you'll come up with all sorts of interesting links such as Cascadia Community College in Bothell, Washington, the Cascadia Centre in Seattle, the Cascadia National Party and the wildest of them all, the Republic of Cascadia website.

The folks at the Republic of Cascadia website are not fooling around. Their slogan is "Independence now! Help us liberate our nation from the tyrannical forces of the Amero-Canadian despots." They have a flag (a green and orange sun setting against a backdrop of blue waves), commemorative stamps featuring some of the prominent mountains in the region, a special "Cascadia Blend" coffee, "free Cascadia" bumper stickers and the like. They even have a Bureau of Sasquatch Affairs and a Sasquatch Militia with plans to annex northern California because historically and spiritually it's really part of Cascadia.

And they're not stopping there. The movement is working towards creating a "Cascadian Commons" that will work towards creating an eco-friendly society and restore the bio-region before the end of the 21st century. The Cascadian Commons is dedicated to defending the region's great temperate forests of fir, spruce and cedar and will make clearcut logging a criminal offence. The sockeye salmon is the national fish of Cascadia and the new republic will work towards restoring all wild salmon stocks and create an independent subnation of piscine brothers and sisters within the borders of the nascent nation. Cascadia is seeking United Nations recognition and is supported by the famous Lonely Planet travel guide.

Promoting tourism is big in Cascadia's economic development plans because we (oops, did I say we?) believe tourism, especially the eco-friendly kind, is the key to developing an environmentally appropriate and sustainable economy in the future. Historically, the resource industries of logging, mining, fishing and farming gave Cascadia a strong economic foundation. But as Cascadia evolves into a post-industrial economy tourism, high-tech and the service industries will take over. The success of such Cascadian companies as Microsoft, Starbucks and "Hollywood North" in Vancouver shows the entrepreneurial and artistic skills of Cascadian residents who can compete with anybody in the world.

A progressive political party is also forming in Cascadia with the specific intent of promoting Cascadian independence and liberating the land by subverting the oppressive political control of Ottawa and Washington DC and stamping out Eastern influences. There's even plans to rid Cascadia of the pernicious effects of negative technology like cell phones, Blackberries and IPods . We (did I say we again?) in Cascadia prefer more natural entertainment like the acoustic guitar and the zither. Already politicians in Victoria, Olympia and Salem are panicking at the prospect of this new nation aborning. But let me assure you that reports of a Cascadian paramilitary organization advocating guerilla war in the rainforests of Cascadia against the Evil Empires of Ottawa and Washington DC and employing catapults and hang gliders (invented in Seattle) to carry out their nefarious schemes - well - those reports are highly exaggerated.

Now, if I may have a moment to remove tongue from cheek, what appears above is not as zany as it sounds. Visioning the Pacific Northwest as it's normally called as a land unto itself like Cascadia makes more than a little sense. We do share in common our great forests, rivers and valleys which tend to run north/south as do our main transportation routes. Most of us are more familiar with Vancouver, Seattle and San Francisco than we are with Toronto or New York. Based on the Pacific Rim, our business connections are increasingly Asian and we share a distinctive, nature-venerating life style that big city Easterners have difficulty appreciating. We even have a rudimentary language of our own - Chinook - which was spoken up and down the coast when the first fur traders and aboriginal peoples started trading.

So let's hear it for Cascadia - the rising Republic of the West and our true home and native land. -- 30 --