When it comes to confusion about Northwest city names, it’s better to be safe than Surrey … er, sorry.
Local folks tend to smile when out-of-towners mix up our Vancouver with that other city to the north. A Columbian reader forwarded us another example recently: An online travel newsletter touted the bounty to be found in the downtown farmers’ market at Esther Short Park in Vancouver, B.C.
His reaction: “They got the two cities mixed up!”
That was a fairly harmless case of mistaken identity, since nobody will be driving to British Columbia to buy a couple of pounds of farm-fresh tomatoes.
But a few days ago, Susan Holton wanted to make sure that another version of that municipal identity crisis didn’t cost a Canadian family $150.
Holton is communications manager of the Fort Vancouver National Trust, which put on our Fourth of July fireworks show. This year there were special $50 tickets for seats in a prime viewing area. Holton received an e-mail from a man who wanted to buy three tickets.
“I saw the ‘.ca’ on his request,” Holton said, so it was a Canadian e-mail address. “I wanted to make sure he knew this was Vancouver, Washington.”
The customer lives in Surrey, a suburb of Vancouver, B.C., so Holton pointed out that he and his family would be driving more than 300 miles — one way — to see the show.
“Yes, we are traveling that far to attend your event,” he confirmed.
Later, Kevin Woo explained in an e-mail that his wife’s birthday is July 4, and “I’ve always talked about how nice it would be to celebrate her birthday along with Independence Day, so we decided to head out for the weekend,” he said.
“I thought Seattle would be too crowded, and we liked the fact that we could be up close to the Vancouver fireworks and have dinner there.”
He’s not really with it
The Woo family invested $150 and a two-day trip to celebrate the independence of a country they don’t live in. For another guy, $7 was too much.
Elson Strahan, president of the Fort Vancouver National Trust, relayed a story from a staffer working at a gate.
“Mike True is our chief financial officer and was assisting at one of the gates. A gentleman said Mike needed to let him in because he worked with the organization producing the event,” Strahan said.
“Mike said, ‘That’s news to me.’ The fellow walked away.”
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
