Talk:Lower Mainland/Archive 1

message: I can't believe the amount I had to put back in order here.  Let's look at it logically folks: why should POWELL RIVER be in the Lower Mainland if Brittania, Whistler and Squamish aren't (though there's many Whistlerites new to the province who assume it's in the Lower Mainland, it's not - and no one in Squamish would ever claim this).  Sechelters and Powell River - ites don't consider themselves to be living in the Lower Mainland, but on the Sunshine Coast; if Victoria's current bureacratic overlords have decided to amalgamate administrative boundaries and abuse the public's use of language, that should have no bearing on the historical/cultural reality.  In other words, the government is not a valid source/cite here because their definition of the Lower Mainland would appear (to me) to have to do with the (semi-covertly) planned transformation of all the Lower Coast into a realty-speculation-driven megacity and also the gov's desire to cut costs and centralize decision making overall.  Latter-day arrivals in British Columbia might think the Sunshine Coast is "lower" mainland because it's coastal; no, the term refers to the Fraser-Burrard bottomland and adjoining hillsides, period.  In the old days, the Sunshine Coast was "upcoast", as was also Squamish (paradigm being Island(s), Interior, Lower Mainland, Upcoast and The North.  Latecomers to BC screw with that last one, too; I've heard Kamloops, Lillooet and even Whistler and Squamish referred to by newcomers to Vancouver as "up north" (a term we traditionally reserve for points from Prince George north)  Gag.  Just goes to serve my point that just because other Canadians haven't studied British Columbian culture/geography/identity doesn't mean they have a right to play fast and loose with it, and all the more reason someone's Dept of BC Studies (there isn't one at UBC, SFU, UVic or UNBC) should elaborate on all this.  Except it's too late - our academia is colonized to the point where any such studies would be in the terms of those "from away", as has become the case here in Wikipedia with things like this Lower Mainland business.Skookum1 17:29, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Ckatz that we should try to sort this out here and then align the article accordingly.  You have said a great deal, Skookum1. I am thinking about your various points and will reply within the next few hours, but have to go out for awhile first.  Sunray 23:19, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Looking at the article with fresh eyes, I have to say this: it's a bit of a mess. No offense intended to the people who have put in a lot of hard work on it, but the nebulous nature of the LM term certainly doesn't help. Skookum1 makes some good points, and sounds like he knows his BC geography and history. How to fix this article, then? In a sense, it appears to contravene several WP conventions, most notably the need to cite sources. (How do you source what may well be a popular concept rather than a strictly defined region?) Maybe, the thing to do is to run with that other Wiki maxim, that is, to be bold. Rewrite the article with the attitude that the Lower Mainland is a "state of mind". As mentioned already, it doesn't seem to be legally defined - so present the idea that it is changing. What did it originally mean? What does it mean now? How does it get twisted and manipulated? The ecoregion material could be spun off into a different page, if it helps for clarity, although it might be worth a mention here as part of the confusion factor. (I'm more than familiar with this sort of mix-up, being from one of the North Vancouvers, and living on the "North Shore", which also gets stretched/shrunk to fit whatever's convenient to the user.) --Ckatz 05:13, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

text: did a quick check after reading some of the above and since I have a copy of the Canadian Encyclopedia (effective doorstop, but not much use otherwise) - "Complete" and "Unabridged" - it goes from Lower Canada to Pat Lowther; not that I expected to find something but you never know; I'll browse what histories of BC I have here to see if I can find something (indexes are handy that way).Skookum1 07:10, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it would be hard to get at the folk aspect. WP:CITE and WP:RS outline the use of sources.  Good that you have some to check.  I agree that histories might yield something.  Failing that, I think we would likely come up with something in the Van Central Library, UBC or SFU (UBC has a public documents division).  Is anyone near any of these?  The question put to a knowledgeable reference librarian might just bear fruit.  Sunray 07:57, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Boundary/territory thing AGAIN

message: :While the term has been recorded from the earliest period of non-native settlement in British Columbia, it has never been officially defined in legal terms.
Legal definitions in British Columbia are given by the system of Land Districts, which I've been meaning to write a short article on as they underlay the land tenure and title system in the province to this day, and their boundaries are what is cited in electoral district and also in ministerial boundaries, as well as in title and leasing of land.  As these have also served as the underlay to the machineries of government and constitutional process (electoral districts and the definitions of municipalities and RDs) and public land law and so on - because of all this there's been no need to make a legal description of a permanent boundary for any of the traditional regions, which were not in accord with the land system except in the case of their subdivisions; roughly, anyway.  Other boundaries used for all these, as needed or defined, were shorelines, rivers and range-summits, so even these were necessarily geographical because of the nature of the "sea of mountains".  The 49th Parallel was a case in point - why survey a straight line over mountain ranges if you don't have to.  Still, there's a few, including the northern and eastern boundary of that system's version of the Lower Mainland, the New Westminster Land District (and of course its southern boundary, the US border).
The area covered by the Lower Mainland, sans everything from Rosedale to Hope, was the New Westminster Land District (and still is); its northern boundary doesn't run up the "summit of the Cascades as you'll defined for administrative purposes" (as you'll find on govt topos and archaic maps of the Lillooet Ranges, which are the mountain spine between Harrison Lake/the Lillooet River and the Fraser Canyon) as does the MoE's boundary as cite-mapped above .  The New Westminster Land District boundary follows a straight line, which if I recall correctly coincides with the eastern boundary of the municipality of Chilliwack.  Somewhere in the lower third of the Lillooet Ranges it starts following a line of latitude due west, intercepting Howe Sound below Britannia (the SLRD-GVRD boundary) and then somehow northwest, a straight line I think, across the lower slopes of the Coast Ranges northwest to include the Sunshine Coast, but then down Georgia Strait to the border, including/excluding this or that island or channel.  I can't remember how the land district on the coast worked; the NWLD might go all the way to the Skeena; the north was originally in the Cariboo Land District and then the ... Stikine?  I'm not sure.  Atlin?  The Peace is its own Land District, I think.  Vancouver Island has the Alberni, Comox, Nanaimo, Cowichan, Esquimalt and Capital Regional Districts (the CapRD used to have a different mame).  I'll find the map that finally clued me in on the boundaries as I worked on the Canadian election wikiproject, creating riding entries and tabulating their returns over the various elections; hard to chart riding changes if you don't know where this is "to the northeast corner of the Lillooet Land District, thence along that district's southern boundary to the northern boundary of the aforeaid Yale Land District herein described, thence westwards to a point in Howe Sound north of Gambier Island etc." (that by memory, but typical; that's Coast Chilcotin, which I was researching a map for (in rough draft currently; need a good cartographic artist to make it look good).
Around to my point of discussing the Land Districts: the Land Districts are the terms of the legal, and hence the constitutional and administrative language, built into all successive legislation involving territorial units; core to the code, as it were.  They have nothing to do with the popular language, although it's true the RDs have become in some ways in modern terms what people think of themselves as being in, if they're not aware of the older local ties-that-bind, but the Land Districts were formal abstractions, needed for the laying out of municipalities and land allotments/surveys (othewise known as alienation, and known to the First Nations as appropriation-cum-theft).  They were likely among the first pieces of paper passed by the nascent colony/ies when they were created - and I'm reasonably certain they're colonial-era in creation - and were drawn in an age when there was only the roughest knowledge of what lay in the mountains of the gold colony - as the big blank spots on old maps from show, and farther north still later, although the outlines had been traced by George Black and J. (? John? James?) Campbell much earlier.  The Stikine Territory and Peace District were additions to the early colony prior to provincification (to coin a really ugly neologism) and that's reflected in some of those boundaries; all the Vancouver Island Land Districts in the MoE's system are just one region; so there's two government departments with conflicting uses; or one with an absence of use, and another including a well-known region that's its own thing: the Sunshine Coast, which was implicitly not part of the Lower Mainland (which, once you took either a ferry, the PGE or drove the Allison Pass or Fraser Canyon )to go "upcountry"), you were outside of it; and the Sunshine Coast you still have to take a ferry too.  Might as well be the damned Island; and Nanaimo's way more part of the eco-urban/megalopolis than the Sunshine Coast has so perilously evaded (e.g. Nanaimo's urbanization - or anywhere along the Island Highway, for that matter - vs. Sechelt-Gibsons and beyond).  Stepping outside my discussion of the traditional bo9undaries, I'd say the Sunshine Coast is more like the Gulf Islands and maybe Comox-Courtenay to Campbell River than it is like the Fraser Valley or Burnaby or the North Shore or Point Grey; despite the old close business and personal/family ties to the nearby city.  Back then it was "the coast", or "upcoast", and one of those places that was its own world, by necessity, like so may places in BC.  
Points of the whole Land Discussion above: 
*1. the New Westminster Land District is not an adequate description of the Lower Mainland; 
*2. there is no legal description of the Lower Mainland because the legal system was not devised for that purpose
*3. all other boundaries of all kinds of things are overlain over the system of Land Districts (the Loewr Mainland MoE roughly coincides with the New Westminster Land District, by the way)
**It may be that the term was not in common usage when the Land Districts were chartered (I'll wager by the Royal Engineers on their arrival, in setting up the colony's land system before they could even draw up the surveys for their new capital, which they named the land district after); and that it evolved irrespective of the language on people's property deeds and all that other paper government produces.  What I'm getting at is the Royal Engineers were new on the spot - there were no settlers in either the Lower Mainland OR the Sunshine Coast at that time, come to think of it, other than scattered priests and missionaries; the term would seem to have evolved rather than been coined as a capitalized, defined thing.  Same as "the Interior", with its "Central Interior" and "Southern Interior" and so on, which we instinctively know where they are; and know to capitalize that word )in your mind if nowhere else; Barmans' book doesn't; one of its many editorial horrors), or when I say "the Canyon" with a capital-C, I instinctively know I mean the Fraser Canyon and that it also means the Thompson Canyon up to Ashcroft-Cache Creek in the way most people use it and think of it, because of the main travel route from the ..... from the Lower Mainland to the Cariboo (granted today we might more easily say "from the Coast to the Cariboo".
At the time of the colony's foundation, and still when the province was formed, Yale was an important centre, one of the largest on the Mainland; Lillooet was the other pole of the Gold Rush, and so the Lillooet Land District (in old documents and diaries, you have to be aware that mention of a ranch in "the Lillooet District" might be anything over almost to the north Thompson, from Lac Des Roches south to the Ashcroft Subdivion of the Yale Land District etc (I'm working from memory so might hav fudged that) - but "the Lillooet Country", to anyone who uses that phrase knowingly (so to speak), starts somewhere around Hat Creek Junction on Hwy 99, ends somewhere around Duffey Lake in the other direction on that highway - in the old days somewhere below Alta Lake, and including the head of Harrison Lake.  And somewhere down between Lillooet and Lytton, almost at the Lytton bridge itself; and maybe at about Big Bar up the Canyon, and then against the Coast Mountains.  So there's a big difference between a usage of "the Lillooet District", "the Lillooet Country", and "the Lillooet Land District", the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District (which corresponds more closely to the historic/folk-cultural Lillooet District/Country than the Lillooet Land District and the accompanying sense of Lillooet District; I'm speaking as a "source" here (my home counry: http://www.cayoosh.net).  The Lillooet District had two subdivisions - Kamloops and Ashcroft. 
Yale's other subdivisions were the "Nicola/Okanagan Subdivisions(s) of Yale Land District"; Kootenay Land Districts was I think originally part of Yale, a subdivision of it, but was made its own Land District (for political reasons, what I did see written about it, but I'm not sure of the details).  The Cariboo Land District's administrative centre was, I think, Quesnel (the others were all obvious, by name).  So y'see, yeah, we do have a problem with common usage here; I'm trying to think if this kind of discussion is on either of the talk pages at Canadian English or Canadian slang or the like; but I'll do that tomorrow; I'm tired an so's my back.  G'night.
:Great stuff.  I think we could summarize some of the information about administrative districts.  I think it is more than passably interesting that the New Westminster Land District is similar to the MoE region in its boundaries (historical boundary, current administrative district).  It also makes sense that Lilooet was part of the interior. Sunray 15:37, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: legal terminology vs popular language

message: Oh, I'm really good at finding tangents; but yes, this one was your fault.  Archaeological stuff will have nothing to do with it; and the boundaries aren't exact, and they all overlap (tricky map to create; might be able to find a public-domain one - but it's not central to the article).  But thought I'd give you a rundown on local native history to give you an idea why it's not a simple thing to put into one map/paragraph.
Our immediate discussion has to do with the Lower Mainland's definition/boundaries, and whether or not we can make it cite-able.  I just wanted to add re all this that this "region" idea, without being connected to any government agency that defines their own regions according to whatever mysterious-mandarin motives they may have, is something that should be looked at BC-wide, as with all the local unofficial but traditional regions I've mentioned in this discussion.  Regional District boundaries change too much, as do ministerial/government regional boundaries, to be of any utility in writing about "BC's regions".  There's no equivalent here to the county system in the US - counties are immutable, permanent, and cannot be changed by bureaucratic/executive whim, only by vote of constituents; and while they may not be very natural/bioregional in origin/character (straightline boundaries rarely do that), they have a tendency to become strong focusses of community identity and personality.  That doesn't happen here, and as said we don't have an equivalent.  So I suggest that in this Wikiproject BC I keep on mumbling about we try and establish a "pattern" of BC regions that reflects the province's history and current reality, without slavishly trying to apply government/institutional divisions as though they were valid "cites"/references; they're not, partly because they're so changeable, but also because they're to do with government administration goals, not how things actually are.Skookum1 17:54, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You make some valid points, but still, I have not seen a better reference than the definition of the ecoregion by Environment Canada.  That is based on ecology and is fairly consistent with your lowland vs upland definition.  It, in essence, says that the lower coast on the mainland is one coherent ecoregion.  Whether the BC Ministry based its administrative region on the ecoregion or on administrative fiat, I have no idea (however, it is significant that both the feds and the province agree on something -- a rare occurrence in these parts).   I remain convinced that it should be possible to find a reference for the historical "Lower Mainland" you have described. Could we agree to find one?  Sunray 06:31, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Further thoughts

message: BTW useful map: http://www.cayoosh.net/british_columbia_1896.png which I'm going to use in various articles, and also because boundary descriptions of things like RDs use the LD boundaries and they're not on another map in any useful fashion.  Have to think about where I got this (online) before I can add it to a page, because of citability and GFDL ad all that.Skookum1 16:40, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I note that the one described as "SW Mainland" includes the Sechelt Peninsula :-) Sunray 21:45, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

text: That was because I cropped it from the main image http://www.cayoosh.net/british_columbia_1896.png and a rectangle necessarily includes the Sunshine Coast; the reason I enlarged on that area was for people to be able to see the placenames, some of which are archaic ("Cisco" for Siska, for example); the SW Mainland map also includes the Fraser Canyon towns of Lillooet and Lytton, which are not in the Lower Mainland - nor, according to the Vancouver Sun, is Hope, which they assign to the Fraser Canyon (see other note farther below).Skookum1 21:49, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Land District map

message: Jean Barman, The West Beyond The West, p.7: "Hope to the Sechelt Peninsula" (i.e. the lower Sunshine Coast, but not including the Malaspina Peninsula/PRRD).  She makes no mention of Howe Sound and can't even bring herself to capitalize the term ("lower mainland" - although she capitalizes Sunshine Coast quite gladly, and Lower Fraser Valley; similarly "interior" and "central interior"; the latter she describes as a "transportation corridor", which points in the direction of my review of this book: unadulterated garbage backed up by a few degrees and a Toronto publisher; hopelessly out of her depth and despite 30 years residence in BC she still finds a need to rewrite our geography for us, as recently with "Kanaka Ranch" vs. the proper "Kanaka Rancherie".  Point is with her definition of the "lower mainland" (which she does not cite) she's not an authority; she's an Ontarian and has spent most of her time on Point Grey, well insulated from the rough-and-tumble of how ordinary people actually think and talk; the book is full of gaffes and misperceptions and bad cites for faulty analysis; to me it's proof that a doctorate sometimes isn't worth the paper it's printed on.  The book is not worth buying, by the way; you'd do better buying Ormsby, the Akriggs or Bancroft; Bowering sucks - glib and trite, and full of the usual politically-correct cliches and really nothing new in his analysis, such as it is; haven't read Woodcock; didn't like that "Pacific Province" thing either (McLennan? no, that was the publisher; Hugh something I think; more of a collection of essays than a history per se).  I had a look in Morley's Vancouver: Milltown to Metropolis and Bruce McDonald's Vancouver: A Visual History this morning but can't find anything in the way of a definition; lots of usages, though.  
Barman sucks, and although I found a quote she's no more reliable than the MoE.  She's also very vague at times, without specifying something after bringing it up, as on p. 8 where she avers that the "lower mainland" is one of the province's ten regions, but she doesn't name the others.  Editorial excess perhaps, but that editor would do better to have paid attention to capitalization than cutting out what he/she saw as irrelevant descriptions of BC regions (which, after all, aren't important to Toronto readers, so why stop to define them?).  That's just my guess at why, if she'd had ten regions listed in her MS., the publisher/editor cut them out; unless she was just slack, which is more my view of it, given the similar vaguenesses and gaffes elsewhere in the book (much worse).  It may even be that she shied away from defining them, not being sure what they are (please note it wouldnt' be bioregions, in which case there would be a lot more than ten).  On a separate topic, she admits to writing the whole chapter from newspaper coverage for lack opf academic writing; she should have criticized academia for being too ideological/irrelevant during this period, and since she's been living here for 30 years she should be woken up already to the fact the newspapers here are in the business of inventing and manipulating news, not trying to provide a meaningful record of society or history; especially for stuff like BCRIC, the MoF, Solidarity, Oka/Seton Portage/Gustasfen Lake, Expo and so on, they're not reliable at all; not that they ever were in BC, that isSkookum1 18:33, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Barman's definitions (nixed/useless)

message: Found this by googling: http://www.lmma.bc.ca/pdf/04_20_05.pdf It's the minutes of one of their meetings, listing representatives by muni/RD; the SLRD is represented, but no sign of Sunshine Coast/Powell River.  And I also noted in searching the government directory that no other ministry has a Lower Mainland region; none that have maps anyway; other terms are used Skookum1 20:55, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Lower Mainland Municipal Association

message: Here's a map that backs up the definition I've been advancing (HelloBC is the Ministry of Tourism site):
http://www.hellobc.com/NR/rdonlyres/94212952-34DC-4D05-B2FC-74A0F93A18CF/0/LowerMain.pdf
But again, no specific definitions available; the area of the MoE cite is described by HelloBC as "Vancouver, Coast and Mountains"; the realty Multiple Listing Service map http://www.mls.ca/map.aspx?AreaID=6242 shows a Lower Mainland that conforms to the MoE, but realtors have bad habits about rearranging geography to suit themselves (they include Pemberton, for instance, which definitely is NOT in the Lower Mainland).  Another map from an airphoto co. website http://www.globalairphotos.com/lower_mainland.html ends at Abbotsford and Horseshoe Bay.
One thing I do know for certain is if you were to say in Sechelt or Gibsons "I'm going over to the Lower Mainland today", no one would bat an eye; but if you said that same thing in Surrey or Abby, they'd look at you funny.  Similarly people in Pemberton and Whistler do not consider themselves the Lower Mainland, and I doubt you'd get a majority of respondents in Squamish who would differ from their up-corridor cousins.  Ask someone in Powell River or Lund if they were in the Lower Mainland and you'd get laughed out of the bar.Skookum1 21:05, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: However, they are on the mainland and it is the "lower" part of BC.  "Hello BC" is not what I would consider an authoritative source.  Sunray 21:48, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's the Ministry of Tourism.  Why is the Ministry of Environment a valid source, and the Ministry of Tourism is not?????Skookum1 22:12, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, good.  I think that both are authoritative in their own way (with appropriate qualifications, such as we have discussed at length).  I'm proposing (see below) that we go with the Ministry of Tourism boundaries and get a map drawn similar to the "Hello BC" map.  I think I know someone who could do that.  Sunray 22:54, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Consider this: the MoT is only intending to be descriptive, to give a close-up map of the Lower Mainland, same as on the BC Highways maps (the ones you get in truck stops, or used to); closeups were either "Lower Mainland and Sunshine Coast" or "Lower Mainland" (without the SC, like the MoT map linked).  But the MoE is defining its OWN administrative region, and taking the name of the Lower Mainland, its largest component, and applying it to the administrative region built around it.  So while the MoE's Lower Mainland Region includes the Sunshine Coast, the Lower Mainland as a geocultural abstraction/concept does not (traditionally).  There's come to be flex in the meaning because of the abuse/misuse of the term by media and/or newcomers, but the distinction has to be drawn between a ministerial region using the name, and the place the name was coined for in the first place.  There is a difference (nb as before also the Okanagan Region of the MoE, which is a lot more than the Okanagan; ditto Cariboo).Skookum1 14:41, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Hello BC map of Lower Mainland

message: The Historical Atlas of Canada has a map called "Lower Mainland 1881" which shows the boundaries as extending from Lions Bay to Boundary Bay and eastward between the north shore of the Fraser and the U.S. boundary.  Unfortunately it ends at about Abbotsford/Mission area.  However, what it does show is just about a lock with the "Hello BC" map.  (I'm starting to like the latter more now).  We should get someone who can draw maps to reproduce that map for the article.  Sunray 22:33, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Found somthing!

message: I've had a go at reformating the article based on the above.  See what you think.   I will see if I can get someone to produce a map based on the Ministry of Tourism (Hello BC) map. Sunray 15:06, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Revisions to article

message: Whew.  Glad we got that sorted out.  Now you can add carefully written wordings about how some administrative divisions, government and organizational/corporate, may include adjoining regions - the Sunshine Coast, Fraser Canyon, and Sea-To-Sky Corridor/Pemberton Valley - in their use of terms such as "Lower Mainland Region", but such should not to be confused with the Lower Mainland proper. Gotta go; late for leaving for work.Skookum1 15:35, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Looks a lot better