The Pacific Northwest and Other Misnomers

The term “Pacific Northwest” is an attempt to include the 3 contiguous states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho as a geological or geopolitical entity, while excluding the state of Alaska and the province of British Columbia, Canada. Often, it is an attempt to refer to the similarities of climate of these three American states. Thus, geopolitical entities with common boundaries and a similar climate are aggregated.
However, Canada is not a part of the United States.
Thus, any inclusion of the Southwest portion of Canada in the term “Pacific Northwest” is wrong. Naturally, this does not stop the mentally lazy or geographically stupid from including BC as part of the U.S.
If one wishes to stress the similarities of climate between Canada’s West Coast province of British Columbia, and the American West Coast states of Washington and Oregon, then one can refer to the West Coast of Canada and the US, or our common Temperate Rainforest climate, although one must then throw in the Alaska panhandle and Northern California as well.
One cannot say “The West Coast of North America”, because everything North of the Panama Canal bordering the Pacific would be included, and would include many different climates indeed.
Let us examine the phrase “Pacific Northwest”.
If one is referring to the Pacific Ocean, as indeed we are, then the Northwest must refer to the quadrant bordering countries from Singapore to Siberia. This area, I need hardly point out, does not include any part of the contiguous 48 states of the continental U.S.
The “Pacific Northeast” would of course refer to the entire strip of coast from Ecuador to Alaska. Closer, but no cigar.
I call on all Canadian writers and broadcasters to refer to BC simply as BC, and not as part of some wrongly-defined Cascadia.