been called Ecotopia, Ernest Callenbach's fanciful name for part of the region in a novel that imagines northern California, Oregon and Washington breaking away from the U.S. to form an environmentally integrated country. Cascadia was further defined in a more continentalist way by Joel Garreau, whose book The Nine Nations of North America saw the region's common traits as based in market and lifestyle. The idea seemed to take on more concreteness in the early 1990s, when the region's leaders even formed PNWER. That is not unlike some international regional blocs, such as APEC, except that it exists within a continent. Cascadia, however, has never really caught on as a mainstream concept. Its states and provinces don't always share the same agendas or the same national interest. They compete for Asian trade, they exist within different nation states. Yet, there are undeniably increasing examples where there is cooperation. Consider a few of them: n After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, B.C. teamed up with Washington and Oregon to press the U.S. government to loosen its demands for passports when crossing the Canadian border. That fight is continuing, but both Ottawa and Washington have taken note and contemplated ways to shift border policy. n Alberta and B.C. have recently teamed up with an unprecedented agreement to create a common market by 2009, one that essentially eliminates economic barriers. Called the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility agreement, it seeks to create an integrated regional economy within Canada, a first that