Posted on 6 April 2018

Last year, I started contributing a column to a biannual arts and culture magazine for northern B.C. titled ‘Thimbleberry,‘ created by Rob Budde and Kara-lee MacDonald. Volume 2 was launched this week and so I am publishing my piece from Volume 1 here. 

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When he visited the city of Prince George on the occasion of its 100th anniversary, the late Canadian storyteller Stuart McLean called those of us living here frauds.

“A hundred years of passing yourself off as B.C.’s northern capital,” he said. “When any second-grader could glance at any map and point out that you are indisputably positioned in the southern half of the province.”

His barb was good-natured but not inaccurate. Geographically, Prince George is far more central than northern. It’s a fact I am I reminded of not infrequently as I write stories about “northern British Columbia” for an audience whose members extend to the upper reaches of our province. “Prince George is not northern!” reads more than one email in my inbox.

But what exactly is “north”, anyways?

Like so many things, being northern is less a matter of geography and more a matter of culture and psychology: the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.

‘What matters here is obviously not the latitude. What really matters is where we’re positioned relative to centres of power.’

“#WeTheNorth” proclaim the Toronto Raptors, despite the fact both the Minnesota Timberwolves and Portland Trailblazers occupy latitudes one and two degrees higher. What really matters is that the Raptors are a Canadian team in an American basketball league and, in our shared psyche, Canada is north of America and much of the rest of the world, even when the geography says otherwise.

The futility of using geography alone to define “north” becomes clear once you look across the country. Prince George, at a latitude of 53.9° N, is defined as part of northern B.C. while Edmonton, at 53.5, is not in northern Alberta. Saskatoon, 52.1°, is classified as central while at 53.8 the Pas, Manitoba is in the province’s north. Then there’s Sudbury: 46.5, further south than even Victoria, and the largest city in Northern Ontario.

What matters here is obviously not the latitude. What really matters is where we’re positioned relative to centres of power. Edmonton is a provincial capital. Saskatoon is the largest city in Saskatchewan. They can’t be north. Sudbury, meanwhile, sits firmly in the southern half of the province, but north of Ottawa and Toronto, the political and economic centres of our country. Once you get beyond those points, you’re in the north, regardless of what a map says.

A corollary of this is the expectation that relative to southern neighbours, the north will simply have less; our institutions will be a little less grand. The word “north” can act as an asterisk: Victoria is B.C.’s capital, Prince George is B.C.’s (northern) capital. Vancouver has the University of British Columbia, we have the University of (Northern) British Columbia.

‘One word may be undermining Prince George’s marketing efforts’

Given that reality, realtor Dean Birks worried our self-classification as northern may be more hindrance than help to our efforts at attracting new residents.

In a 2014 blog post titled “One word may be undermining Prince George’s marketing efforts,” he wrote:

“For the past year… I have asked when talking to people in other major centers like Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa and from out of country if they had a choice to live in the South, Central or North of somewhere what would they choose, given no more explanation than just that,” he wrote. “The choice is almost always South and Central and rarely North.”

Birks suggested that branding Prince George as central rather than northern could help the city become a more attractive location for people whose image of the north is that of a place with harsh climates and few services. Certainly I’ve heard visitors express surprise upon discovering that Prince George is more than a small cluster of buildings in a frozen tundra.

So why do we cling to the designation? In part, I think, because while “north” can be an asterisk it can also be an authenticator.

“The North” occupies a mystical place in our national psyche: the northern lights, the true North strong and free. “Canada’s greatest dreams are to be found in our highest latitudes,” said Governor General David Johnston in 2013.

‘Our authenticity increases with each kilometer we move away from the equator and towards the Arctic.’

Our authenticity increases with each kilometer we move away from the equator and towards the Arctic.  We scoff at our fellow countrymen, all sixty-six percent of them, who live within 100 kilometers of the contiguous United States. They may represent the most Canadians but they are not the most Canadian. Being “north” is a mark of our ruggedness and resourcefulness surviving a harsh and unforgiving land, even if that only means we know how to plug in a block heater. It may also be why people in even more northern climes resent Prince George, with its regional hospital, university headquarters, and six-screen movie theatre, trying to pass itself as northern when, compared to them, it is clearly not.

We could give up the word “northern” in an effort at geographical accuracy and to attract more doctors, more students, more retirees, but what would we be giving up? Are we willing to disassociate ourselves from the great Alaska Highway, the North Coast, the generations of stories of Canada as a northern land and us “northerners” as its truest representatives? What work of art was inspired by the central part of anything?

“We sing about the North but live as far south as possible,” wrote journalist J.B. McGeachy over fifty years ago. Like Mr. McLean he recognized the truth of who we are: frauds, but honest ones. We’re torn between the power of the south and the poetry of the north. Neither is quite right, but somewhere between those two we may find our truest selves.

Filed under: Canada, ideas