Abstract
This paper addresses a narrow question that became necessary in live conversation: whether Arlington, Washington, located about 73 miles south of the United States–Canada border, may fairly be described as “near Canada” in ordinary speech. The dispute arose in Tacoma, Washington, after residents of Arlington objected to that description when it was used to orient out-of-town listeners. To test the claim, the author compiled a comparative dataset of 200 city pairs drawn from domestic and international settings, each falling within a broadly comparable distance band and each commonly treated as near for practical or orientational purposes. The results support a plain finding. A distance of 73 miles sits comfortably inside the range that speakers routinely use when describing one place in relation to another. The principal rebuttal offered by the Arlington objectors—that Arlington is “only 30 minutes north of Edmonds,” and thus not near Canada—is rejected as a reference-point error. That error is designated here the Edmonds Fallacy. The paper holds that Arlington is near Canada and that the dispute turned less on mileage than on civic sensitivity.
Keywords: proximity, geographic reference frames, Arlington, Washington, Canada, ordinary speech, comparative distance, Edmonds Fallacy
§ 1. Issue Presented
Whether Arlington, Washington, situated about 73 miles south of the Canadian border, may accurately be described in ordinary speech as “near Canada.”
§ 2. Facts Giving Rise to the Dispute
At a social gathering in Tacoma, Washington, the author described Arlington to out-of-town visitors as “up near Canada.” The phrase was used for orientation. It was not offered as a formal classification, a census designation, or a claim that Arlington is a border town.
Several residents of Arlington objected. Their objection was not modest. The statement was treated as geographically false.
The principal rebuttal offered in support of that position was that Arlington is “only 30 minutes north of Edmonds,” and that Edmonds is not near Canada. The implied claim was that Arlington, by extension, cannot be near Canada either.
That claim produced this paper.
§ 3. Geographic Setting
Arlington is a city in northern Snohomish County, Washington. It lies north of Seattle and north of Tacoma within the Interstate 5 corridor. The nearest practical border reference for this inquiry is the Peace Arch crossing at Blaine, Washington. The distance from Arlington to that crossing is about 73 miles by road. Ordinary drive time falls in the range of roughly 1 hour and 10 minutes to 1 hour and 20 minutes under routine conditions.
That figure does not exist in a vacuum. Arlington is materially closer to the Canadian border than it is to Tacoma. (See § 6.2.) The residents who objected to the phrase traveled farther south to contest it than they would need to travel north to reach Canada.
§ 4. Framing the Question
The phrase “near Canada” belongs to ordinary speech. It is map shorthand. It gives a listener a usable frame. It does not claim adjacency. It does not erase municipal identity. It places a lesser-known place in relation to a broadly known one.
That function matters here. The remark was made in Tacoma, to people from outside the region, for orientational purposes. In that setting, “Arlington is up near Canada” conveyed immediate geographic meaning. A more precise formulation would have been longer and worse.
Ordinary language does not operate by survey marker. It operates by useful approximation.
§ 5. Method
To test the ordinary-speech meaning of “near,” the author assembled a comparative dataset of 200 city pairs. The sample included domestic United States pairs and international pairs spanning North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Middle East. Each pair fell within a broad comparable distance band of about 34 to 100 miles, with a strong concentration in the 68 to 80 mile range most relevant here.
The selection standard was simple: the paired locations are commonly treated as near one another in ordinary speech, practical travel, cultural reference, or orientational shorthand. The exercise was not intended to prove a mathematical law. It was intended to test a social-linguistic claim against real usage.
That claim failed the test.
§ 6. Findings
6.1 Comparative distance
Arlington’s distance to the Canadian border sits squarely inside an ordinary range of nearness.
Representative examples include the following:
- Denver to Colorado Springs — about 70 miles
- Miami to West Palm Beach — about 72 miles
- San Francisco to Santa Cruz — about 73 miles
- Austin to San Antonio — about 80 miles
- New York City to New Haven — about 80 miles
- Milwaukee to Madison — about 79 miles
- Tucson to Nogales — about 70 miles
- London to Cambridge — about 64 miles
- Hamburg to Bremen — about 75 miles
- Beijing to Tianjin — about 75 miles
- Auckland to Hamilton — about 78 miles
- Dubai to Abu Dhabi — about 87 miles
- Vienna to Bratislava — about 34 miles
- Arlington to the Canadian border — about 73 miles
Arlington is not an outlier. It sits near the center of the comparison set.
6.2 Local asymmetry
The local comparison is even less favorable to the Arlington position. Arlington is closer to Canada than to Tacoma. The dispute occurred in Tacoma. (See § 2.) That means the Arlington objectors accepted a greater distance for social travel than they were willing to accept for geographic nearness.
That is not a coherent standard. It is a preference disguised as one.
6.3 Travel-time logic
A one-way trip of about 1 hour and 12 minutes falls inside day-trip range, commute range, and routine regional travel range. In the Puget Sound area, many workers spend that much time reaching a job site. A destination reachable inside that band is a normal candidate for ordinary language of nearness.
No one needs to like that fact for it to remain a fact.
§ 7. Counterarguments and Their Disposition
7.1 “Arlington is only 30 minutes north of Edmonds”
This was the core rebuttal. It fails at the level of reference point.
The question is not whether Arlington is near Edmonds. The question is whether Arlington is near Canada. Moving backward through a chain of intermediate places does not answer the stated question. It replaces it.
This paper designates that error the Edmonds Fallacy: the laundering of distance through successive local reference points until the original frame disappears. (See § 8.)
Stated cleanly, the fallacy runs like this:
Arlington is north of Edmonds.
Edmonds is not near Canada.
Arlington is not near Canada.
That reasoning is defective. The first premise may be true. It does not carry the conclusion. One place can be near two different places at once. Arlington can be near Edmonds in one frame and near Canada in another. Ordinary language handles that with no strain.
7.2 “Near means adjacent”
This argument was never stated with that level of precision, though it hovered in the background. It fails on contact with normal speech.
People routinely call places near one another when they are separated by 50, 70, or 80 miles. They do so in cities, suburbs, rural regions, interstate corridors, and cross-border contexts. The word does not mean “touching.” It means close enough to serve as a useful relational marker.
A rule under which only adjacent municipalities count as near would make most ordinary speech unsound. People do not talk that way. No one says New Haven is not near New York City on the ground that Connecticut intervenes with formality.
7.3 “Arlington is not a border town”
Correct. It is not a border town.
That point does no work for the objectors. The disputed phrase was “near Canada,” not “on the border” or “functionally Canadian.” A town does not need to sit at a crossing point to be near the border of another country. It needs to be near the border of another country.
Arlington clears that bar without difficulty. (See § 6.1.)
7.4 “The phrase is reductive”
This objection has emotional content and almost no geographic content. It is possible that some residents heard “near Canada” as a reduction of Arlington’s civic identity. The paper does not dispute the existence of that reaction. The paper notes that a feeling about phrasing is not a measure of distance.
The statement was orientational. It gave listeners a practical north-state reference. That is one of the standard uses of ordinary language. A town does not lose its local identity when someone locates it on a map.
7.5 “Thirty minutes north of Edmonds proves Arlington is still in the Seattle orbit”
That may be true in one sense and irrelevant in the present one.
A place can sit inside the broader Seattle orbit and still be near Canada relative to Tacoma, Seattle, or the state as a whole. These categories do not exclude each other. They operate at different scales. (See § 4.) A city can be near one place, tied economically to another, and culturally grouped with a third. The argument fails by pretending those categories are mutually exclusive.
7.6 “Seventy-three miles is too far to count as near”
The comparison set answers this directly. (See § 6.1.) Seventy-three miles sits well within an ordinary band in which speakers treat places as near. The proposition is not supported by usage, common travel practice, or comparative distance examples.
A person may prefer a tighter personal standard. Personal standards are not binding on the English language.
§ 8. The Edmonds Fallacy
The most efficient way to expose the defect is to carry it to its endpoint.
“Arlington is only 30 minutes north of Edmonds, and Edmonds is not near Canada.”
“Bellingham is only 30 minutes north of Burlington, and Burlington is not near Canada.”
“Blaine is only 30 minutes north of Bellingham, and Bellingham is not near Canada.”
“The Peace Arch is only a few minutes north of Blaine, and Blaine is not near Canada.”
“Canada is only a few feet north of the border, and the border is not near Canada.”
Under this framework, Canada is not near Canada.
A rule that produces that result is unfit for use.
§ 9. Discussion
The evidence points in one direction. Arlington is about 73 miles from the Canadian border. Distances in that band are commonly treated as near in ordinary speech across a wide range of places and contexts. Arlington is closer to Canada than it is to Tacoma. The phrase at issue was used for orientation, in a setting that called for orientation, and it accomplished that task with economy.
The objection rests on a broken reference frame (see § 7.1, § 8) and a visible degree of municipal defensiveness.
That does not make the objectors stupid. It makes them attached to the story they prefer about where they live. That attachment is common. It is not controlling.
The deadpan fact remains: Arlington is near Canada.
§ 10. Holding
Arlington, Washington, may accurately be described in ordinary speech as near Canada.
The contrary claim is denied.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks the Arlington residents whose unwillingness to accept a routine orientational phrase made this paper necessary. Their objection supplied the dispute, the framing, and much of the energy. Gratitude is owed to Interstate 5 for removing many factual obstacles, and to the common English language for remaining serviceable in the face of local resistance.
References
- Google Maps. Driving distance and travel-time estimates between Arlington, Washington, and Blaine, Washington.
- TravelMath. Distance calculations between Arlington, Washington, and border-adjacent destinations.
- U.S. Census Bureau. Population and geographic reference materials for Arlington, Washington.
- Public map, travel, and city-reference sources consulted for comparative city-pair distances.
Appendix A: Representative Comparable Pairs
United States
Denver — Colorado Springs · Miami — West Palm Beach · San Francisco — Santa Cruz · Austin — San Antonio · Milwaukee — Madison · New York City — New Haven · Seattle — Cle Elum · Portland — Tillamook · Baton Rouge — New Orleans · Tucson — Nogales
International
London — Cambridge · Hamburg — Bremen · Milan — Turin · Beijing — Tianjin · Auckland — Hamilton · Dubai — Abu Dhabi · Geneva — Lyon · Munich — Salzburg · Ljubljana — Zagreb · Basra — Kuwait City