Talk:British Columbia Interior

Comments

A good start. The one subregion which stuck out as odd to me was 'Northeast Interior', I have never heard it referred to in conversation formal or informal, although granted, yes in the odd publication or report, mostly written from an outside BC persepctive. Seems most refer to the entire quadrant as Peace River country, excepting perhaps the area immediately bordering the NWT. Anyway, look forward to more discussion on all these. WOrking on tentative map sketches now of the three regions.--Keefer4 07:43, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I guess I picked up "Northeastern Interior" from modern-day media/govt stuff; I of course know the Peace River Block, aka Peace Block aka Peace Country (although that latter, older term, included lands now inundated by Lake Williston, and kind of including the Finlay and Parsnip Countries, which also don't exist in quite the same way anymore). Part of my reason in saying "NE Interior" was because of Fort Nelson and the lower Liard area - is that considered part of the Peace River Block? By extension certainly, but technically, or no?Skookum1 20:40, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I guess it should stay, as normally Fort Nelson is not included in most definitions of Peace Country or the like, I've heard the term Northern Rockies ballyhooed about before for that area. Same with 'Muskwa-Kechika'. Min. of FOR considers Fort Nelson its own Forest District, while Environment currently lumps it in with Peace-Omineca.--Keefer4 20:54, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

As with my comments on the Lower Mainland region thread re: Hope, I think it would be tolerable to include Pemberton within both Coast and Interior regions, for reasons you've cited in the article. Back to the maps... --Keefer4 05:48, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Tentative 'Interior'/Coast border sketchmaps here for south and here for north. Note gray area for upper Skeena Valley, I'm proposing an eventual inclusion for communities from Kitwanga-->Hazelton in both Coast and Interior regions when we finally get down to actual categorization. The northernmost community considered exclusively 'coast' thus would be Stewart, although unsettled resource/recreation areas in Coast Mountains bordering Alaska and fairly close to river mouths could be too, ie: part of Tatsenshini. So, the communities in multiple regions then would be: Hope (LM/Interior), Pemberton(Interior/Coast), Mt. Currie(Interior/Coast), Yale(Interior/LM?), Port Douglas(?) although you may have more to say about that one, Kitwanga (Coast/Interior), Kitseguecla (Interior/Coast), Gitanyow (Kitwancool) Hazeltons, Kispiox (all Interior/Coast). I don't think it's an unwieldy list for inclusion in both, eventually. For the most part I can only go on how people have self-identified (as mentioned in Talk:Lower Mainland) as well as a hodgepodge of maps, electoral districts etc over the years. I suppose, like the lengthy Lower Mainland discussion, these will have to be identified and cited, although possibly without as much controversy!--Keefer4 06:39, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Like your maps, and agree on the haziness of the Skeena areas, and maybe the line of the Lillooet River is the suitable one to use there, placing Pemberton in both zones. Hope is clearly Upper Fraser Valley, though, with Yale as the "bordertown" between the two regions, despite Hope's big sign as the "Gateway to the Interior" (NB in supposed "official style", other CanWikipedians would maintain that sign should read "Gateway to the interior" (cf Move discussion at Kamloops, British Columbia). The strip behind the Alaska Panhandle I don't think qualifies as Coast, though, certainly not Atlin....."the North" I've heard newcomers to BC refer to include Whistler and Lillooet and Kamloops ;-) but I'd start it at least at Quesnel, or from PG northwards anyway....but the far north, as in Atlin-Teslin, is virtually/culturally part of the Yukon in the same way that the Peace is virtually/culturally part of Alberta....; so the Coast ends, pretty well, at Stewart....there is a similar issue with the Hazelton Mountains, which topographically would seem to be a subrange of the Coast Mountains but in Holland's classification system are part of the Interior Mountains complex. Similarly farther parts of the North aren't really part of "the Interior" conceptually, and there's a sense that that term doesn't even include the Peace; it's more from the Omineca south to the border, I'd say, although in newspaper-speak the Peace is always included that way. But Telegraph Creek? Fort Nelson? Liard? They're in "the North"...likewise there's the Rainbow Range near Nimpo Lake/Bella Coola, which is in Holland neither part of the Kitimat Ranges or the Pacific Ranges but part of the Chilcotin Plateau. All this gets more complicated because of marketing-names, as with "Coast Chilcotin Coast" now (sigh) and the growing tendency to describe the mountains and region south of the Bridge River as the "Chilcotin Mountains" (officially there are the Chilcotin Ranges, but no Chilcotin Mountains), but with local businesses there now proclaiming Gold Bridge to be in the Chilcotin Mountains (despite my repeated objections) the rejigging of regional names gets weirder and weirder....Lillooet considers itself part of the Cariboo, but the Cariboo doesn't consider it so; and it's included in Thompson-Okanagan for various regional things, like weather forecasts. Damn 10 minutes warning on this library computer (Halifax) just kicked in and I haven't even gotten to the newsletter I intended to write today.....the flexible meaning of "the Coast" also is at issue, I'd say, as in the Interior "down on the Coast" refers to the Lower Mainland or at any rate includes it; but "the Coast" in a more general sense excludes it...sort of...."out on the Coast" in the Interior would more mean the Central or North Coasts, as I think I described on Talk:British Columbia Coast. "Up the Coast" from Vancouver/Victoria clearly means everything north from them; but if Victorians say "the Coast" they (at least subconsciously) are excluding VAncouver/the Lower Mainland......Would help maybe if there'd been some common sense in laying out government/geographic names long, long ago; the confusion is ongoing with newcomers; I corrected someone's webpage which put Princeton in "the Okanagan" (also Grand Forks has been called that, when not West Kootenay, and it's really neither). Gotta sign off or the library computer will trash this when the 5 min deadline hits and the Windows Vista automatic shutdown startsSkookum1 14:55, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

re reqmap

I guess it's of course needed; but it's pretty well nearly all of the province, enit? i.e. other than the coastal strip. I htink if there's a map at all it might as well show the main geogrpahic subdivisions; either the "countries" I'm so fond of, which are kind of hard to map in fact (all at once, that is, as most overlap) or the formal geographic regions laid out in S. Holland's Landforms of British Columbia. There's a map included with the online PDF which maybe is public domain; aw, it won't be, the publication date on the book is 1976; but maybe Logan's 1912 map can be found, showing the Thompson Plateau, Fraser Plateau etc and teh various Interior mountain ranges.....I've made so many piped [[British Columbia Interior|Interior of Briitsh Columbia]] links (w/wo "Southern" or "Central" or whatever in the pipe) taht I wish I'd titled this Interior of British Columbia, since that's the construction we mostly say it as, or in combo forms; I guess if I wanted to change it there's a bot that could swoop through all the links in the hundreds of articles which link here, but for now....for now I'm trying to get enough done to get ready to take ano9ther wikibreak, in fact.....Skookum1 (talk) 02:51, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

A map is most likely needed to help explain what's being said in the article. I agree this article should be titled "Interior of British Columbia" per your reason. There's others, such as British Columbia Coast. I've made quite a few piped [[British Columbia Coast|Coast of British Columbia]] links. Black Tusk 03:12, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, at least in the case of hte Coast article it's fairly easy to break up into North/Central/South, which isn't so easy to do for hte Interior; i.e. North Coast of British Columbia is a natural enough title; as user:CindyBo and I struggled over re the PG area and Category:Northern Interior of British Columbia, the terminology's not so clear-cut; "Central Interior" to me means Cariboo, PG is "Northern Interior" but to people in PG it's "Central Interior", and I've heard the same term for Kamloops; confusing the whole schmeer is that Southern Interior is now the name of the federal riding spaning the Okanaga and West Kootenay (they could have just named it "Okanagan-West Kootenay" but that would be too easy...and stripping our regions of their identities is an old agenda, both federal and provincial....). Maybe blurred-edge colour-zones would work for Southern/Northern/Central; "Southeastern Interior" turns up more and more in the media as a syonym for the Kootenays, usually more the East Kootenay, and "Northeastern Interior" or "Northeast Interior" is a catchphrase which inclues the Fort Nelson Lowland (Nelson River Lowland maybe) as well as the Peace River Block (which isn't htes ame as Peace Country, a term which can include Lake Williston....). In general all location maps that use the RD basemap suck big-time, especially for stuff like your Anahim Hotspot article where RD boundaries are superfluous to geographic/geologic realities; t he basemap used on articles like Stikine River is available, and others like it also; terrain maps in other words; eitehr that or highway maps; nobody uses RD boundaries other than Wikipedia,i .e. forillustrative puruposes, since the bounaries just don't mean anything to most people (unlike their regional tax bills....). I've done a lot of South Coast of British Columbia, Central Coast of British Columbia etc; so if/when we make the namechange there's a lot of link-work to be done.....Skookum1 (talk) 04:13, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Ps shoot me an email like i said somewhere else (link at left) and I'll send you S. Holland's opus on landforms and geographic regions of Bc; I've been meaning to transcribe its contents to discussion/resource pages on the Geography and CanGeog WikiProjects, and also to go at the Physiographic regions page (whatever it's called; that should redirect to it....it has lots of errors re Canada/BC).Skookum1 (talk) 04:15, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I can email you. Can you add it on my talk page? Black Tusk 17:10, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I'll try and find the link again; easier that way; not sure that Wikipedia can accept PDF files....it's about 9.5 mb without the map which is 1.5 or soSkookum1 (talk) 18:11, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Wow, odd. Kamloops certainly considers itself part of the Southern Interior, as does Salmon Arm. The Shuswap is part of Thompson-Okanagan even though it's Columbia-Shuswap. North of the Thompson and Shuswap would be Central Interior, certainly including Williams Lake, and a lot of people would say Prince George is Central Interior too. Kamloops is also kind of Cariboo even though it really isn't. Many people would also call the Lower Mainland part of the Coast - even unto Yale. Megalophias (talk) 23:26, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

All true, esp. the bit about the Lower Mainland being "the Coast", - "right up to Yale" (although I'd kinda say Hope....); Yale's definitely not part of the Interior, y'see. Thompson-Okanagan and Columbia-Shuswap are post facto constructs made out of separate regions; and while those designations have become identified/used their roots are really in electoral districts; usually federal (where there's a need to "combine" regions that are underpopulated by national standards). Okanagan-Similkameen's yet another, and Boundary-Similkameen also, which includes Osoyoos, though maybe not quite the rest of the South Okanagan (Oliver, kinda...). "Central Interior" gets used in weird ways, including the Kamloops area, which as you note is also sometimes described as being part of the Cariboo; ditto Ashcroft-Cache Creek even though at Clinton there's of course that "Gateway to the Cariboo" sign (as also found at Lytton and/or Cache Creek); the Boundary is also often named as being part of the Okanagan in some contexts, and part of the West Kootenay in others; yet it's by far the older region of the province, and until WWI was more populated than the Okanagan although it's mostly abandoned now. "Central Interior" is, yes, how PG identifies itself but the Cariboo and Chilcotin can't be described as "Southern" (even though they are in purely geographic Vanderhoof-as-the-centre terms; yet PG is also "the North" - years ago, I don't know if so now, it used to be called "the Queen City of the North". This is why the long exegesis in the article, trying to account for all this, and I regret not coming up with cites; it was written "on the fly" and can be amended of course, but this time around hopefully we can cite it all. There's also further issues in the North, as in the Stikine and Atlin areas not being considered "the Interior"; and some people wouldn't count the Peace River Block as being "Interior", a term which also has the connotation "inside the mountains" which of course the lower Peace isn't ("Peace Country" used to include the Peace Canyon up to Finlay Forks...). Yet I still can't call the Shuswap part of the Okanagan (although national columnists sometimes put it that way), and certainly not Kamloops (although again Lower Mainland/national media will put it that way. It's because of all this that it seemed easier to make "single" regions rather than any of the doublings (Shuswap-Okanagan, Thompson-Okanagan, Thompson-Nicola, Nicola-Similkameen, Boundary-Similkameen etc); which is why the breakdown within Category:Interior of British Columbia - not yet complete and of course there's overlap (Lillooet Country, or teh eastern part of it, being part of hte Fraser Canyon, and the northern part of the Fraser Canyon being part of the Cariboo - including Lillooet, which sees itself as part of the Cariboo even though the Cariboo doesn't see it that way; Quesnel gets called North Cariboo but in the Quesnel mindset it's the "heart of the Cariboo" (historically true); South Cariboo is mostly 100 Mile-Interlakes plus Clinton; yet Ashcroft-Cache Creek sees itself also as South Cariboo; and the Cariboo considers the Chilcotin to be part of itself, which the Chilcotin doesn't; likewise thet Skeena Country is part of the coastla cultural area (aboriginally) yet is really part of hte Interior, and so on; there's no cut-and-dried definitions for any of this; I've seen thet Queen Charlotte Strait described as being "South Coast" when it's clearly Central, and so on. Anyway, let's try and find citations for any/all of this stuff, and try and straighten this article out, at least in North/Central/South sections; btw Fraser Plateau and Basin complex I'm about to break up into Fraser Plateau and Fraser Basin; the latter term as it turns out has, like "Fraser Valley" no basin-wide meaning; "Fraser Basin" in physiographic regions is from Williams Lake or Quesnel northwards; it's always grating to me to hear Boston Bar referred to as "the Fraser River Valley" or "Fraser Valley" as in many Canadian-national writings; but coming from Mission it's also weird to hear Port Coquitlam and New West describeed as "towns in the Fraser Valley"; likewise Delta and Richmond; all a horrific muddle I guess, but terms we use all the time, with shifting meanings....thoughts/responses?.Skookum1 (talk) 00:51, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I might be able to clear up the 'North' and 'Central Interior' usages for Prince George. Prince George is part of the North due to it's physical connection to it.. with highway 16, and the railways, it's part of the North, because getting North you must run through Prince George, and things spread out only after you travel through there first. It's part of the Central Interior because Prince George is odd geographically. The city itself is in a bowl, with ridges pierced through by the Fraiser and Nechako rivers, but the ridge on the north side is higher and more abrupt. Usually, it's considered that the Northern Interior starts after you cross this ridge, with the divide running north of the nechako river west of Prince George, and it encompasses the relatively flat terrain north of Tabor Lake and east to Purden Lake. That said, I suspect there might be a simpler reason, and they call it the Central Interior because it's neither east nor west. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.5.30.47 (talk) 19:37, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Citations issue

Many of these do have names in the provincial gazette/BC Names, some do not but are well-known usages where histories and geographies and tourism/travel publications mention them; I'll try and add all the ones I know are in BC Names soon......others are gonna take more complicated legwork.Skookum1 (talk) 04:41, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

No map in 2020

Why would someone even create an article on a geographical area, and not include a map right from the beginning? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 17:47, 24 March 2020 (UTC)