Secede from Cascadia

Victoria, B.C. is a lovely city, with great harbor vistas, fine architecture and lively restaurants. It was much fun to spend an evening or two strolling around.

But if you do so, keep in mind that you will run across many homeless men who will panhandle you, both day and evening.

Not only will they panhandle you, but they do so quite agressively, more so than in any American city I have been in. If you deny them a contribution, it is not uncommon for them to push back at you, sometimes with loud profanity as they walk away.

There are street urchins as well, floating around in small packs of both sexes with battered punk clothes and sometimes toting musical instruments.  They are often found along the waterfront, which is less redeveloped than one might think, and along the storefronts of downtown where the upper stories of the old buildings are often empty with For Lease signs in the windows.

I was not surprised to see the panhandlers so numerous and direct in their approach. Vancouver had felt somewhat the same way, last November in certain quarters such as the West, but that metropolis has more things to distract one from this street-level phenomenon where it exists.

Red and I like to joke about how many folks from Portland seem to have "Vancouver Envy," in referring to the city on mainland British Columbia (not the 'Couve, of course!).

The perceived "diversity" of Vancouver, B.C.,  as well as its postmodern urban beauty, is sometimes cited as a reason that it would be splendid if we could all just drop the pretense of the international border and create a new Pacific Northwest nation encompassing (at least) Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

Last year I told Red abotu the Cascadia movement, which essentially promotes this concept. Surprisingly to me, the concept and even the name "Cascadia" were new to her, despite her having lived in Portland five years. I gave her a brief background history of what it about, including the influential 1972 novel Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach that helped promote a variation on this concept. I told her how I read that book in college in the 1980s in Salem, for my environmental ethics class. It was popular class, and many people on campus were often seen carrying it in the campus bistro.

The "Doug Fir" flag displayed at a professional soccer match in Portland.

Since then she has noticed the name mentioned not infrequently, including the movement's emblematic "Doug Fir" flag.

"Cascadia is an interesting concept," I said, " but would it mean that we in the current U.S. part would necessarily have to accept the sovereignty of the queen, or another British monarch?" I asked.

"No way," said Red.

"Never," I added. 

"But I don't think that B.C. would want to give up the queen, just to be in the same country as us, so that could be a big problem," I said.

Then after thinking about it a minute I had a thought.

"We should start a movement for Oregon to secede from Cascadia!" I said.