One of many Pacific Northwest’s most placing pure options has been misidentified for greater than two centuries. Hood Canal, a more-than 60-mile-long glacier-carved channel, is not any canal in any respect. A public marketing campaign to present due respect to this outstanding waterway and precisely describe its geography is lengthy overdue.
Panama. Suez. Erie. These are human-shoveled channels connecting our bodies of water. Hood Canal is concerning the furthest factor possible from such a synthetic assemble. Right here, freshwater from Olympic mountaintops clashes shoreside with saltwater that runs as much as 600 toes deep. Salmon journey right here to spawn, world-famous oysters dot the shorelines and octopuses inhabit a world deep below its waves.
In his journal, British Royal Navy Capt. George Vancouver, exploring these waters for his nation in 1792, named it “Hood’s Channel,” for Lord Samuel Hood. However he used “canal” on his charts. And it caught.
“Hood” — the identify of a British admiral at a time American relations with that empire had been lower than amicable — may be lopped off for a brand new title and identify. (If there’s any pity for Hood, simply bear in mind he’s the identical Brit immortalized with Oregon’s highest peak.)
Barbara Stark of Poulsbo recognized Vancouver’s error and just lately proposed “Salish Fjord” as a alternative to the state’s committee on geographic names (sure, its ice-sliced depths make it a textbook fjord). The concept did not advance on the board’s December meeting primarily as a result of way more outreach was wanted for such a big change.
The hassle can solely proceed following session with, and inspiration from, the tribes which have inhabited these shorelines for hundreds of years. The Skokomish Tribe, descendants of the Twana peoples, referred to as the canal tuwaduq sidaqʷ — the “Twana folks’s saltwater,” based on Tom Sturdy, the tribe’s vice chair and CEO. That’s pronounced “too-wah-duke SEE-dock.” That’s a becoming candidate for the renaming effort.
New names can work, and stick. An effort to embody inside a brand new title the saltwater in each Washington and British Columbia succeeded in 2009. The identify Salish Sea sparked worldwide collaboration between scientists, policymakers and others, uniting in the reason for the restoration and safety of shared waters over a global border.
Renaming a landmark might sound pointless. However the state is investing huge cash to revive the pure situations that existed lengthy earlier than it was branded a canal. A $100 million-plus project on the Duckabush estuary, for instance, will assemble a 1,600-foot-long bridge that restores circulation and reopens the river’s connection to close by wetlands and floodplains. This channel wants a reputation to match the state’s efforts.
The Hood Canal — from its entrance close to Foulweather Bluff, across the Nice Bend, to Lynch Cove in Belfair — has been misidentified as a canal lengthy sufficient. Time for reality in our waterways. If such an enterprise is profitable, simply consider the chances — maybe together with a long-overdue renaming effort for a sure mountain close by.
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