Cascadia Redux: chronicle of a return to the West

In the early pages of The Arbutus/Madrone Files: Reading the Pacific Northwest (2002),1 Ricou feels compelled in a book about place and story to explain his own connection to the region: though a native of Brandon, Manitoba, he had been living on the West Coast for almost two decades at the time of the books publication and thus claims, albeit rather sheepishly-though I can't see why-"insider'Tlocal" status. A shared regional consciousness, a regionalism of place, a "local life aware of itself," as defined by Ricou and others earlier in this text, would, for me, in the context of the Pacific Northwest, necessitate acknowledging and/or taking into account the "other," the socio-political reality that is Canada, lying on the other side of the US' northern border.