I am officially in a game of Airline Pong:
-Cathay: "We can't touch the ticket, it's an Alaska booking".
-Alaska: "Cathay is responsible for reaccommodating since they cancelled the flight".
--Noting that Canadian law requires reaccommodation

Also, as a data point I'm back to CX, and I think it took three calls to get through the "high call volume" filter.

(For the record, lest anyone think I'm putting eggs in one basket I'm putting together a replacement ticket on Delta as we speak. Delta is just being...special...with some married pair logic (JFK-SEA-YVR is more expensive than JFK-SEA/SEA-YVR. Delta wins out on having a relatively generous CANX policy at booking.)