The Northwest Coast is the coastal region of the Pacific Northwest, and the Northwest Plateau (also commonly known as "the Interior" in British Columbia), is the inland region. The term "Pacific Northwest" should not be confused with the Northwest Territory (also known as the Great Northwest, a historical term in the United States) or the Northwest Territories of Canada. The region is sometimes referred to as Cascadia, which, depending on the borders, may or may not be the same thing as the Pacific Northwest.
The region's largest metropolitan areas are Greater Seattle, Washington, with 4 million people; Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, with 2.84 million people; and Greater Portland, Oregon, with 2.5 million people.
The culture of the Pacific Northwest is influenced by the Canada–United States border, which the United States and the United Kingdom established at a time when the region's inhabitants were composed mostly of indigenous peoples. Two sections of the border—one along the 49th parallel south of British Columbia and one between the Alaska Panhandle and northern British Columbia—have left a great impact on the region. According to Canadian historian Ken Coates, the border has not merely influenced the Pacific Northwest—rather, "the region's history and character have been determined by the boundary". (Full article...)
Hands Across Hawthorne was a rally held at the Hawthorne Bridge in the American West Coast city of Portland, Oregon, on May 29, 2011. The demonstration was in response to an attack, one week earlier, on Brad Forkner and Christopher Rosevear, a gay male couple who had been holding hands while walking across the bridge. According to the couple and the Portland Police Bureau, a group of five men followed Forkner and Rosevear along the bridge before physically assaulting them. The assault was condemned by Portland's mayor, Sam Adams, and its police chief, Mike Reese, and news of the attack spread throughout the Pacific Northwest and the United States. The attack prompted volunteers from the Q Center, a nonprofit organization that supports the LGBT community, to form street patrols as a means of monitoring Portland's downtown area.
Several LGBT and human rights organizations sponsored Hands Across Hawthorne in response to the attack, with the purpose of linking hands across the entire span of the Hawthorne Bridge to show solidarity. More than 4,000 people attended the rally, which had been publicized on a single Facebook page 72 hours previously. Forkner, Rosevear, Mayor Adams, and other community leaders spoke at the rally. The event received attention throughout the United States. On June 5, residents of Spokane, Washington, held a similar hand-holding rally called "Hands Across Monroe", crossing the Monroe Street Bridge in Riverfront Park. (Full article...)
Gary Larson (born August 14, 1950) is an American cartoonist who created The Far Side, a single-panel cartoon series that was syndicated internationally to more than 1,900 newspapers for fifteen years. The series ended with Larson's retirement on January 1, 1995. In September 2019, his website alluded to a "new online era of The Far Side". On July 8, 2020, Larson released three new comics, his first in 25 years. His twenty-three books of collected cartoons have combined sales of more than forty-five million copies. (Full article...)
Image 2Map of "megacity", showing population density (shades of yellow/brown), highways (red), and major railways (black). Public land shown in shades of green. (from Pacific Northwest)
Image 3Pacific Northwest Trail at Blanchard Mountain in Washington (from Pacific Northwest Trail)
Image 8None of the multiple possible definitions of the Pacific Northwest is universally accepted. This map shows three possibilities: (1) The shaded area shows the historical Oregon Country. (2) The green line shows the Cascadia bioregion. (3) The labeled states and provinces include Washington, Idaho, Oregon and British Columbia. (from Pacific Northwest)
Image 10Public transportation is used in the Pacific Northwest region. Vancouver's SkyTrain rapid transit system achieves daily ridership of over 500,000 passengers per day on weekdays and the overall transit ridership levels in the Metro Vancouver area rank third in North America per capita. (from Pacific Northwest)
Image 16The immense floods created channels that are presently dry, such as the Drumheller Channels (from Geology of the Pacific Northwest)
Image 17The Coast Mountains are heavily eroded by glaciers, including Mount Waddington (far background, center). (from Geology of the Pacific Northwest)
Image 36Magnetic anomalies around the Juan de Fuca and Gorda Ridges, off the west coast of North America, color coded by age. (from Geology of the Pacific Northwest)