Talk:Salish Sea
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[edit] Bad ethnography
- The khWuhlch was the primary waterway interconnecting the greater Lushootseed Coast Salish Nations. (Culture area languages and dialects had variations on the name.)[1][5]
There were more than Lushootseed-speakers even in Puget Sound, never mind northwards. Even using the Lushootseed name as equivalent to the Georgia Depression/Basin and the neologistic "Salish Sea" isn't right, as Lushootseed didn't have a priori naming authority anywhere north of Whidbey Island; I have no idea what was used in Clallam, Twana, Chehalis, Hunquminum/Hulquminum/Halqemeylem, Squamish, Shishalh, Comox and Pentlatch and whatever else in the way of languages there is in the region, but it's not very relevant, nor is the repetitive emphasis on Whulge (or khWulhlch) this article uses. And it's not as if the Lushootseed had a word for the whole basin from Olympia to Campbell River; more likely the term they used referred only to their local waters.Skookum1 19:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Merge
I support the merge proposal, with the rider that the primary article be Georgia Depression or Georgia Basin, or maybe better Georgia-Puget Basin (or Depression). Salish Sea is a fictional name - catchy, but without any local context or familiarity...too much like "invented geography" (which is one reason I got rid of the "defining" elements of "Cascadia", which has more than one "definition" anyway).Skookum1 19:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC) PS somewhere I've also heard Fraser-Puget Lowland; there's probably a few other terms kicking around. Whulge isn't one of them, and neither is Salish Sea.Skookum1 19:33, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the merge. Georgia Basin sounds right; however the Georgia Basin article needs to say that it includes Puget Sound. Never heard of Whulge. Use English. Kla'quot 07:19, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
- According to the book I have on the geology of the Pacific Northwest ("Geology of the Pacific Northwest" by Elizabeth L. Orr and William N. Orr), the Georgia Basin does not include Puget Sound. The book describes the lowlands from Puget Sound south to the Willamette Valley as a distinct geological unit, but always describes Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca as three distinct units that happen to all be below sea level right now. Nowhere does the book offer a term for the combined inland sea. I've searched for such a name for a long time, and have never found a good one. Pfly 04:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
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- Invented, but confined to a very few publications, and even less current than "Cascadia", which is another invented term. The google search, you'll note, only pulled up a handful of books using it in the described context. "Georgia Depression" is a term I've seen from geographers/geology people, but it may be a Canadian-origin term. The Portland-Seattle Williamette-Puget Sound axis does have a name, the Evergreen Triangle, or the Evergreen Corridor, but again that's mostly American in context and not used; it's one consequence of the partition of 1846 - a single area split by two different national/urban perspectives, reflected in how the land is described - as with the North Cascades and the Canadian Cascades as far as the Sumallo and Similkameen (North Cascades is the article, with Canadian Cascades a redirect) they'e the same range as the North Cascades topographically-speaking, as distinct within the larger Cascade Range - which itself is thought by many Americans to extend past the Fraser and include parts of the Coast Mountains. So while it's true there are separate and distinct bodies of water and subregions within the basin, there's no one term for it; the closest is as a natural geographic region is "Georgia Strait-Puget Sound (Basin)", which is in fact how you'll hear weather forecasters and others in the media describing the area; the issue for me is if Salish Sea should be equated with Georgia Basin; I think it's a spurious name, by and large, that doesn't deserve equal billing (I have the same problem with Cascadia re Pacific Northwest, although that has a more extensive set of emergent uses and is much more current).Skookum1 08:08, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
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- sub-thought on that - the geology context mentioned from the US side may be from a context which is natural enough, that being the "High Cascades" volcanic chain, which is very different from the area from the Snohomish-Skagit area on up to Hope and Chilliwack, and is definitely a region when looked at it from a geologists point-of-view, especially the time span. The different mountains, and the more open nature of the Georgia Basin vs. the Puget ("Georgia-Puget Basin" I've occasionally heard/seen, too but again probably only a Canadianism and unheard south of the border), do indicate a completely different geological experience up here, despite the continuation of volcanoes through the heavy mountain terrain that continues from here virtually to the Alaska Peninsula over by the Aleutians. In geological terms, no doubt there is some unity between the Williamette and the southern part of Puget Sound; somewhere around Seattle the marine nature of the space opens up and it's more like what's north of it, including in the type of mountains flanking it and similar climate to "Victoria and the Isles".
- On the Evergreen Corridor, Williamette-Puget Sound definition, that's also a US-oriented perspective, with the automatic mental exclusion of geography outside the US; it's one definition of a region, but not this region, that "Salish Sea" and "Whulge" presume to describe and be legitimate labels for. Their existence can be mentioned, but not with pride-of-place in the opening, or equated to in the same way that "the Georgia Strait-Puget Sound basin" works, when heard in the media, for instance (or Puget Sound-Georgia Strait if heard on US media, perhaps; Bellingham is often described as being on Puget Sound but technically Rosario Strait, like Haro Strait, isn't part of either the sound or Georgia Strait; while they and the San Juans is, I'd venture, in the Gulf of Georgia; though also, from the American perspective, in Puget Sound....Skookum1 08:12, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
- Support the merge. Can count on one hand how many times I've heard the term used in my life growing up here. Don't really care if it's merged with Puget Sound/Georgia Strait or both. Needs to be mentioned, but own article is IMO unjustified and based on few scant references. But then admittedly I'm not as familiar with American perspective on this.--Keefer4 21:03, 29 January 2007 (UTC) (repost, my comment here removed).
- My understanding is that the San Juans separate the Strait of Juan de Fuca from the Strait of Georgia. To look from Deception Pass toward Victoria is, from everything I have seen, to look across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. On the other hand, people who kayak from the north coast of Orcas Island to Sucia Island are kayaking in the Strait of Georgia, as I understand it (although one could argue that the strait really begins north of Sucia). Puget Sound is well-defined as the waters south of Admiralty Inlet. I think the usage of Puget Sound for things like the Bellingham area bays is a symptom of the lack of a term for the whole inland sea. I'm still looking for one, but without great hope. Oh and hey, is there a difference between Georgia Strait and Gulf of Georgia? Also, my maps all say "Strait of Georgia" rather than "Georgia Strait".. difference? Pfly 21:18, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
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- Invented, but confined to a very few publications, and even less current than "Cascadia", which is another invented term. The google search, you'll note, only pulled up a handful of books using it in the described context. "Georgia Depression" is a term I've seen from geographers/geology people, but it may be a Canadian-origin term. The Portland-Seattle Williamette-Puget Sound axis does have a name, the Evergreen Triangle, or the Evergreen Corridor, but again that's mostly American in context and not used; it's one consequence of the partition of 1846 - a single area split by two different national/urban perspectives, reflected in how the land is described - as with the North Cascades and the Canadian Cascades as far as the Sumallo and Similkameen (North Cascades is the article, with Canadian Cascades a redirect) they'e the same range as the North Cascades topographically-speaking, as distinct within the larger Cascade Range - which itself is thought by many Americans to extend past the Fraser and include parts of the Coast Mountains. So while it's true there are separate and distinct bodies of water and subregions within the basin, there's no one term for it; the closest is as a natural geographic region is "Georgia Strait-Puget Sound (Basin)", which is in fact how you'll hear weather forecasters and others in the media describing the area; the issue for me is if Salish Sea should be equated with Georgia Basin; I think it's a spurious name, by and large, that doesn't deserve equal billing (I have the same problem with Cascadia re Pacific Northwest, although that has a more extensive set of emergent uses and is much more current).Skookum1 08:08, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
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"Gulf of Georgia" never made the maps, except maybe old ones, but it's been in BC parlance since the old days and obviously is still around; the sense I get of it is from "out on the gulf" (as also "out on the chuck" or "saltchuck" still...), which would include the inland waters between the Gulf Islands and between them and the Mainland, which aren't really part of the Strait of Georgia. The term is never applied or defined in that exact sense, but by saying "out in the Gulf of Georgia" you're referring to Saturna and North and South Pender as well as the "Gulf of Ganges" or whatever it's called (Ganges Bay? BTW HMS Ganges needs a good write-up - it's there, needs more BC detail. Any takers?). I think you may be right on the usage including Bellingham in Puget Sound is, admittedly, from growing up on KVOS-12, which was one of only two stations we got (in b&w) where we lived; the other was CHEK-6 in Victoria, it had to do with the terrain where we lived, between Mission and Maple Ridge. Media slop things around all the time - increasingly so, gratingly ("Kootenay Rockies" is awful, especially when used for Rossland and Nelson.....) - so maybe in maritime usage and charts you'd never see "Puget Sound" in the waters off Bellingham Bay, which are after all just southeast of Tsawwassen and our not-quite-the-border causeway. The scene, by the way, of one of the ship/ferry blockades during the Salmon War, which I haven't had time to dig up research on but's an interesting story. I think Evergreen Triangle was originally coined to mean Vancouver-Seattle-Portland, maybe even originally Vancouver-Victoria-Seattle or even just Everett-Seattle-Tacoma. I guess this talk page should have Wikiproject Seattle on it - {{tl:Wikipedia:Wikiproject Seattle|Wikiproject Seattle}} - as this is a regional geographic issue; or {{tl:Wikipedia:Wikiproject Washington|Wikiproject Washington}}; to get some US-side input, although pfly's from stateside, or not? Someone or two is...gotta go have a nice day.Skookum1 23:56, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
