Place Identity in a Resource-Dependent Area of Northern British Columbia

Abstract

Residents of northern British Columbia's resource-dependent areas have struggled to maintain the integrity of their communities as nonlocal firms exert ever-increasing influence over the region's resources and landscapes. Local leaders both construct and mobilize place as a vital part of their efforts to promote community well-being. This study focuses on the ways that the residents of three towns in the province's northern interior politicized place as a strategy for resisting the political influence and geographic designs of outsiders. The residents drew from their shared emotional response to powerlessness as a means of highlighting the inequities between insiders and outsiders, thereby generating a regional identity that calls into question the socioeconomic effects of resource industrialization in the north. In describing this dialectic between place making and economic restructuring, the article not only expands upon existing theory on place identity, but also contributes to a fuller understanding of the cultural geography of North America's resource-dependent communities.

Key Words:

• British Columbia
• place identity
• resource-dependent community
• rural development

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the following people for their valuable critiques, insights, and advice in writing this manuscript: James Shortridge, Audrey Kobayashi, Mike Robertson, Garth Myers, Peter Herlihy, Chief Marvin Charlie, Barbara Shortridge, Jason Dittmer, and the anonymous reviewers for the Annals. All remaining errors or omissions are my own.

Notes

1. BC Stats May 2003 Three Month Moving Average for Area E of the North Coast/Nechako District, http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/lss/lfs/ur0305.pdf (last accessed May 2003).

2. Stratified samples select a representative distribution of interviewees from the various segments of interest in an area's population. In this case, the segments were defined as ethnic or immigrant cohorts that possessed relatively coherent conceptions of group identity while sharing in the overarching regional culture described in this paper.

3. When British Columbia entered the Dominion of Canada in 1871, it did so with control of most of its lands, except for several significant tracts granted by the provincial government to the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Today, roughly 90 percent of the province is publicly owned Crown land.

4. During the postwar period, British Columbia's labor force became heavily unionized. The IWA recorded 48,000 members by the 1970s, which represented 47.5 percent of the work force and was 10 percent above the national average (Marchak 1986, 147).

5. Unless otherwise noted, all monetary figures are in Canadian dollars. For point of comparison, the 1952 exchange rate was 1.02145 US dollars for every one Canadian dollar; in September 2004, the exchange rate is 0.78 US dollars for every one Canadian dollar. See http://pacific.commerce.uba.ca/xr (last accessed June 2003).

6. Unfortunately, a lack of detailed records prevents an accurate count of the sawmills in the area. The estimates given by the sawyers ranged from 90 to 115 mills.

7. BC Stats May 2003 Three Month Moving Average for the North Coast/Nechako District, http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/lss/lfs/ur0305.pdf (last accessed May 2003).

8. Density calculation based on 2002 Statistics Canada figures for Area E of the Bulkley-Nechako Regional District, which is roughly isomorphic with the south side.

9. Large, internationally owned mills in the region average some 600,000 board feet per shift.

10. Situation recorded in field notes, Southbank, BC, 17 June 2000. All participants were subsequently consulted for permission and accuracy regarding the statements quoted here.