PatentGuy, that seems to be what's happening with me. I have the registry set to "All Pages the Same" off, and I can have different sized or oriented pages.

But all the pages have the same layers, and removing objects from a layer or removing the layer, removes it from all pages.

So, I guess I wasn't doing anything wrong. It seems the Name Gallery is what I should use, since I can have different names for different objects on different pages.