I Don’t Recognize Alberta Anymore

Since the day I was born, 46 years ago at the Foothills Hospital in Calgary, Alberta has shaped who I am. I can sing the words to “Four Strong Winds,” our unofficial provincial anthem. I’ve visited more rodeos than I can count. My first vehicle was an old pickup, and I taught myself to parallel park using two round hay bales. I’ve spent Saturdays on my family’s acreage, cleaning horse manure out of our barn and helping neighbours with their cattle. I know the beauty of a prairie sunset, and I’ve watched the sun rise in Alberta’s Rockies.

Despite my love for the Wild Rose Province, I’m Canadian first, Albertan second. The flag that hangs in my office is the Maple Leaf. When people abroad ask where I’m from, I don’t miss a beat in saying I’m Canadian. This national identity has taught me about the power of multiculturalism, the beauty of bilingualism and the idea that peacekeeping—and a willingness to understand one another—can move the world in a better direction. Alberta is imprinted on my heart, but Canada is part of my soul.

Related: Alberta’s New Separatists

In my childhood I cared little for political affairs, but that changed in my teens. I saw how Alberta understands itself within Canada. According to provincial doctrine, the greatest enemy to Alberta’s prosperity is the federal government. Any politician wanting to score political points has always known the easiest target was the “fat cats” in Parliament. Former premiers John Brownlee, “Bible Bill” Aberhart, Ernest Manning and Peter Lougheed all had their battles with Ottawa. But even during the darkest moments of the Ottawa-Alberta relationship, not a single premier gave any legitimacy to separation. Alberta was like a teenager angry at its parents, but it never went so far as to threaten to run away. 

In 2013, I left Alberta for a job in Saskatchewan. Two years later, I watched from afar as the NDP won a stunning victory to end four decades of Progressive Conservative rule in the province. When I moved back to my hometown of Stony Plain two years after that, I immediately saw that something was different in Alberta. Vehicles now had “Fuck Trudeau” and “Fuck Notley” stickers. I’d never seen messages like that directed at Jean Chrétien, Ralph Klein or Alison Redford. I couldn’t understand why people accepted this. Years ago, someone had smeared blood on a Liberal candidate’s sign, which made the evening news. Now here I was, driving in Edmonton, counting how many vehicles I saw with profane stickers. Eventually, the game became too depressing to play. 

In 2019, the United Conservative Party came to power, and Alberta’s brief experiment with left-leaning politics ended. Like the snap of a rubber band, the province leaned to the far right. The “Fuck Notley” stickers were gone, replaced with even more that said “Fuck Trudeau.” With Alberta now more aligned with their political views, a fringe minority began to poke its head out of the dirt. COVID-19 could not have come at a worse time. 

With vaccination requirements and masking rules, the extreme right-wing fringe of Alberta society found an issue to rally behind and, with the power of social media, they coalesced into a political base. Anyone who didn’t agree with them was the enemy. I watched one man at the grocery store scream at a young person making minimum wage, simply because she’d asked him to wear a mask. Driving in town one day, I saw a group of people holding up signs that said “Plandemic.” It was idiotic and sad. The province did little to condemn this. So the fringe took their show to Ottawa in early 2022 as part of the so-called Freedom Convoy, in an attempt to overthrow a democratically elected federal government. When that failed, they redirected their attention to the Confederation itself. And thus the current Alberta separatist movement was born.

Premier Jason Kenney wasn’t going to go along with this, so they turned to a new leader who would: Danielle Smith, the former leader of the Wildrose Party who, after losing the 2012 election, crossed the floor to the Progressive Conservatives. A political chameleon, she saw which way the wind was blowing and harnessed the fringe to become premier in late 2022. 

This base shouted, and Smith listened. People I’ve known for years now stand in line to sign a petition to destroy the country I love. These are people I’ve seen at Remembrance Day ceremonies singing “O Canada,” who cheer on Team Canada at the Olympics, who’ve encouraged me in my work as a Canadian historian. Supporters of separatism say there will be no taxes and a booming oil industry without Ottawa’s meddling. What they call a golden age, I call quixotic. They ignore the immense challenges of independence, the loss of federal parks like Banff and the rights of the First Nations in Alberta. Are they so lacking in self-awareness that they can’t see they’re making Alberta look like a laughingstock to the rest of the country? Do they think about how it looks when separatist leaders meet with Trump officials to request help with Alberta’s independence, while Trump openly talks about annexing Canada? I want to yell from the sidewalk as people sign the petition that they are being played by people who are destroying the country for their own gain.

Related: A Sovereign Alberta Is a Treaty Violation

I understand their belief that Alberta does not matter in Canada, because Ontario and Quebec have so much power and can dictate national policy in the House of Commons. I also know that those two provinces have over half of the Canadian population. They have more seats because that is how proportional representation in a House of Commons works. When I ask why Alberta should leave Canada, separatists tell me that the Canada they knew is gone. Was that the Canada that prevented same-sex couples from marrying, or allowed children to go through harmful conversion therapy? Was it the Canada that denied a person the right to choose when they ended their life, or dictated what a woman could do with her body? That Canada they knew is not gone; it just got more inclusive and welcoming. Rather than adapt to change, separatists want to live in the past.

What angers me more than the separatists is our premier, and her refusal to take a stand against the issue. She seems to have even paved a road to an independence referendum. She could end this separatist talk by voicing her opposition to it like former premiers Peter Lougheed, Ernest Manning or Rachel Notley would have. Instead, she uses political speak to say she supports a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada. What does that even mean? She dances around the subject because she painted herself into a corner by aligning with that fringe base. She needs them. The lunatics are now running the asylum, and we lack a premier with conviction.

I used to say I was Albertan with pride, but now I fear we all look like separatists and traitors to the nation. It’s a tragedy because so many Albertans love Canada. 

Do I think that the referendum will have enough votes for separation to begin the process? Not a chance. The fringe is just yelling louder than the majority. Most Albertans are like myself: Canadian first, Albertan second. However, I do worry what they will whisper in Danielle Smith’s ear next. 

Craig Baird is the host of the podcast Canadian History Ehx.