Growing up in Burnaby, under the benevolent dictatorship of W.A.C Bennett and his vice-dictator, the Flying Phil Bert, it was pretty easy to swallow his view that British Columbia* WAS Western Canada (and would be better off as a separate country, but that is another story). Saskatchewan was Central Canada. And Manitoba was the start of Eastern Canada.
Alberta wasn't really a province, but simply a supplier of Crude Oil for B.C. refineries. They could burn off their natural gas as B.C. had enough of its own.
*in the late 1960s, he actually tried to outlaw the use of "B.C.".
I actually had to live in Fredericton, New Brunswick, for 3 months in 1987 before I truly realized that the Maritime Provinces are Eastern Canada. From the locals' point of view, it does make some sense:
- The four Maritime provinces make up Eastern Canada
- The four Western provinces make up Western Canada
- In between lie Ontario and Quebec, which make up Central Canada
- And the Territories are Northern Canada
On paper, it sounds so symmetrical when you don't have the relative sizes (Area even more so than Population) staring you in the face, as they are on a map of Canada.
Back to the original topic, as a Burnaby kid, the Okanagan was "The Interior". Prince George was certainly Northern B.C., perhaps even Golden was, too. I'm not sure about Kamloops. It certainly wasn't the Okanagan. And it was "past" the Fraser Canyon. It would be tempting to say so, but, No, I never thought of Squamish as Northern B.C., but, Yes to Ocean Falls (my father went there on business a lot in those years).