The Salish Sea

What is, and where is, the Salish sea? you ask. Well, although we live right next door to it here on Vancouver Island, when I asked my coffee buddies in the Flat Earth Society that question the other day, no one was able to give me the correct answer. So if you didn't know that either, don't feel too terribly bad about it.

In March 2008, the Chemainus First Nation proposed renaming the Strait of Georgia, which lies between Vancouver Island and the mainland, the "Salish Sea". The BC Provincial Government agreed with the concept, and a formal application was made to the Geographical Names Board of Canada. A parallel American movement promoting the same name south of the 48th parallel had a different definition, combining the names Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound with that of the Strait of Georgia. This latter definition was almost made official in November of 2009 by the respective geographic naming bureaucracies of the governments, however they agreed to replace the names of the Strait of Georgia, Puget Sound, or Strait of Juan de Fuca, with Salish sea as a collective term for all three waters, but to leave the three historic names intact.

 Across the Georgia Straight to

Mount Tantalus in the Rocky Foothills

So now you know where the Salish Sea is, and that it really doesn't matter whether you do know this or not, or even whether or not the name appears on your map, which it probably doesn't, because when we look east from our Island, we are still looking across the Georgia Straight... which believe it or not, was once known as "Gran Canal de Nuestra Señora del Rosario la Marinera". I guess anything is considerably better than that.

Wow! And I thought "Eyjafjallajökull", the name of that Icelandic volcano that has been causing the airlines so much trouble by spewing gigantic plumes of ash into the atmosphere recently... was a mouthful!