Talk:Strait of Georgia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is part of WikiProject British Columbia, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to British Columbia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.	British Columbia Portal
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as mid-importance on the importance scale.
	If you have rated this article please consider adding assessment comments.

[edit] Fixed link across?

Can anyone add more info on the possible plans of contructing a tunnel and/or bridge across to the other side? I am also quite curious as to whether any steps have been taken to decide to build infrastructure links across the:

• Strait of Messina
• Fehmarn Belt
• Cook Strait
• Palk Strait
• Strait of Tartary
• Irish Sea
• Strait of Bonifacio
• Surigao and San Bernardino Straits
• Hainan Strait
• Kvarken
• Chacao Channel bridge
• Strait of Magellan
• Bering Strait

Anyone with inside knowledge on any of these? I've posted similar requests elsewhere. Gruesome Twosome! 8v] //Big Adamsky 20:58, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

My guess is that the idea of a bridge or tunnel across the open part of the Georgia Strait is less likely than a year round manned station on Mars. However, there was once a plan, a hundred years ago, to bring make Victoria, British Columbia the pacific terminus of the railway by bringing it out to the coast at Bute Inlet, and then bridging across some of the Discovery Islands and Seymour Narrows to Campbell River, British Columbia. Fortunes were lost by investors who banked on that plan. There is some reference to it in E and N Railway amd in the Bute Inlet articles. Problem with it, is that it would lead to central BC rather than the Lower Mainland. But at least it isn't a completely ridiculous idea like trying to bridge the Gulf would be. KenWalker | Talk 08:57, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Untangling Georgia Depression, Georgia Basin/Salish Sea redirects re MERGE

The Salish Sea article I want to put a merge tag on, guess I'll have to do it to this page; this page being about the shores of the Gulf of Georgia (our other name for it, and including other straits and sounds than the Strait itself I think, e.g. Haro/Rosario Straits, Sansum and Trincomali Narrows. Georgia Basin should redirect here, as should Georgia Depression, but they both redirect to Salish Sea, which somewhere along the line got merged with an older article called "Whulge", which seems to be a trendily-pseudo-native name for the Lushootseed-speaking part of these waters and their shores. Salish Sea, to me, is bogus, and so was Whulge; they may have some currency on the US side of the line, in which case the {{globalize}} tag should be added; but even the title is USA-centric, if it's USA anything. That's it for now, the main merge discussion will be on Talk:Salish Sea.Skookum1 04:05, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

My bad, as Salish Sea is apparently an invention of hippie types from Saltspring and Cortes (cf. item in Heritagehouse.ca catalogue) but on the other hand it's also used in Washington schools and brand names. Whatever, it's still a dorky name and the real name, especially in the heritagehouse-cited context (Saturna to Cortes) the REAL and usual name is Strait of Georgia, or at best Gulf of Georgia (since the Strait of Georgia ends somewhat just shy of those islands). But I think maybe Gulf of Georgia either needs a separate section here, or its own page (as it includes Saltspring, which isn't on the Strait of Georgia).Skookum1 05:20, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Er, um, well, then again, here's a just-now quote from a friend's letter on this subject; he lived on Mayne Island until a few weeks ago, and lives in Cadboro Bay in Saanich now:

For the Strait of Georgia, I'd exclude Howe Sound and Haro and Rosario, but the Strait goes all the way up, beyond Texada, to the bottom end of Johnston Strait. The "Gulf" is (or was) considered that body of water we might now call the Southern Strait of Georgia, and the southern part of that is "The Southern Gulf," which is a designation that persists in "the Southern Gulf Islands," which takes in everything south of Saltspring, and also Galiano. Where I'm living now is still disorienting. Parts of the San Juans, like up at Friday Harbour, are almost to the north of me.

Sigh. It's like the "Lower Mainland" issue (cf. Talk:Lower Mainland and also Talk:Pacific Northwest; casual/colloquial usages that people don't use with precise definitions; more of a state of mind than a set of parameters....Skookum1 05:22, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh no no, it is not Courtenay/Comox they are two different places, our town ought not to be lumped in with those hicks

The Strait of Georgia is the official name used on all maps and textbooks. If you merged the title to Salish Sea, you would not be using the correct name. Mkdw^talk 07:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

The "official" name according to the government of BC? The aboriginal caretakers of the land don't count? That's not a neutral point of view.

Besides, the settlers' name was Georgia Strait until they tried to dissociate their name from the underground newspaper with the pun for a name, the Georgia Straight. I don't know if the name was officially changed or not. Korky Day 09:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

More to the point for Wikipedia, "Strait of Georgia" is the most common name by far in English for the body of water in question, with "Georgia Strait" second, and "Salish Sea" a distant third. From what I can tell by online usage, "Salish Sea" is used mainly by tour companies and bloggers, with the exception of one environmental conference held in 2005. Newspapers, governments, and other widespread publications seem to use "Strait of Georgia" or "Georgia Strait". --Delirium 00:34, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

And I'm unaware of any First Nations or Native American politician or press person or academic who's chosen to use it; what its name is in Straits Salish or Shishahlhalem or Halkomelem I wouldn't know, if it even has one - perhaps I should know it, but I'm unaware of any campaign to lobby for a change/reversion (different areas of it are more likely to rather than the whole, but I wouldn't know for certain) and there's that awkward issue of the Kwak'wala speakers at its northern end. There's no way the Kwak'wala name for this body of water, if there is a Kwak'wala name for the whole, is going to resemble any possible equivalent in the Salishan languages; except marginally by way of a loanword from Comox (the Island Comox were absorbed into the Southern Kwakiutl, now the Cape Mudge and Campbell River Bands in Indian Act terms) or by way of the Chinook Jargon - in which case "out on the chuck" suffices to mean anywhere on the straits ("hyas saltchuck" for the wide open sea east of the Island), and "the straits" here generally referring the larger agglomeration; and in the context of "inland waters" roughly synonymous with the Gulf of Georgia, a term which includes inter-island waterways outside the Strait of Georgia. But "Salish Sea" is a no-go, no-register, invented term that like certain others people insist on trying to supplant other terms with just doesn't work for me. And to my knowledge has no First Nations/Native American support, either.Skookum1 08:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)