The Rimrock Echo
CascadiaMonday, July 07, 2008 By Burke DeBoer
Ever heard of the Free Cascadia movement? Neither had I, but upon discovering it, I found an underground fight older than the states and provinces which currently stand in the region of this proposed republic. British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon (excluding Curry, Josephine, Jackson and Klamath counties, which are already wishing to leave Oregon and form the State of Jefferson with a few northern California counties), some (or all) of Idaho, some (or all) of the Yukon, part of Alaska, part of Montana, part of Nevada, part of Alberta, and sometimes even a corner of western Wyoming have been included. Some maps include only Washington and Oregon. But, let’s stay with Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia for now. This is an area of the world that generates more than $323 billion worth of goods and services annually, which would place Cascadia in the top 20 economies of the world. Microsoft would become a Cascadian corporation. The Republic of Cascadia would be a nuclear power with the ability to process weapons-grade plutonium and also advanced missile technology. The area has the facilities and technical expertise to produce a wide range of fighter, support, and commercial aircraft, as well as space vehicles. The capital of this prosperous nation would be a city not yet formed, the city itself being named Cascadia, and located deep in the Cascade Mountains in British Columbia. The population would have over 14 million people, and have an official language of “Cascadese”, a dialect of English that I could find nothing about in my research. The official keeping of time would be in Metric Time, a system first proposed during the French Revolution, during which there are 10 metric hours in a day, 100 metric minutes in a metric hour, 100 metric seconds in a metric minute, and 10 days in a metric week (called a dekade). Roman calendar, eat your heart out. Reasons for a Cascadian Republic are just. It does feel as if American and Canadian governments are becoming centralized in Washington, DC and in Ottawa, and this reporter feels that this is the way counties should be… smaller, where centralized government is not a risk and citizens are cared more about, and a war between superpowers that can destroy the earth is not feared. It was Thomas Jefferson, after the Louisiana Purchase, who first suggested a Republic of the Pacific. There was resurgence in an independence movement in the Northwest during the Civil War, some people wanting Oregon to join the confederacy, some wanting it to become an independent nation. The subject returned during the Great Depression, then was put aside for World War Two. The idea of Cascadia was struck in 1975, by Ernest Callenbach in his book Ecotopia, but Cascadia did not start gaining steam until George W. Bush’s election via Electoral College vote in 2000, and the Cascadian National Party was launched with a full political platform. But then after 9/11, a new sense of patriotism overtook the nation, and Cascadia was put aside until 2005, when the Cascadian Independence Project was created. Currently it remains the only organization seriously promoting the idea of Cascadian Independence. |