ABSTRACT
Unlike other contributors to this volume, I am less concerned with international borders, than intra-national ones. In particular, I am interested in communities and regional boundaries within resource-producing economies such as the one in which I live, British Columbia (BC), Canada. Resource economies, and their peculiar geography, are not a central concern of contemporary geography, however. Both are treated as peripheral to more important activities such as manufacturing or highorder service provision, and their associated geographical cores such as Orange County, CA, or world cities such as London. The derogation of resource economies, though, apart from being geographically blinkered is theoretically myopic, closing off the possibility that theories derived from experiences of peripheral places like resource regions have wider purchase. This is the entry point for my chapter. I will argue that a theorist of the spatial resource periphery, the Canadian economic historian Harold Innis (1894-1952), provides a suggestive theory of geographical boundaries and related community life with a resonance beyond the immediate context of its formulation.
