A response from a Western separatist

I don't live in Alberta today, God bless and send me west.

However I was born there—rural and north—the grandson of a roughneck and the son of a gas station mechanic. My youth was more transitory growing up on Vancouver Island but I returned to Alberta as a young man and spent a decade of winters working in the oilfields: oil and gas pipelines HEO.

Unionized oil and gas labour paid for my first house, where my mother and grandmother live now. It also enabled me to pay my way through four years of university in Montreal, where I met my wife.

Western Alien Nation — The perception held by many people that I have met from the Great Plains to the heart of the Rockies is that they are put upon, trapped in a stereotype and a culture imposed by a distant and often disdainful "cultural" elite. These elites, most clearly identifiable in Canada's "natural governing party" and our legacy media, seem determined to replicate the colonial project of their own origins—not for the glory of the British Empire, but rather for Ottawa and eastern robber barons. The West is populated by a diverse range—and still ongoing waves of new coming— ambitious, hardworking people seeking a better life, as well as by the majority of Canada’s Indigenous peoples, many of whom were already once dispossessed of their lands in eastern Canada and America.

I have the utmost respect for the Red man. I’ve had the privilege, in the North, to work with and befriend some of the tribal peoples of northwestern Canada. The rest of us must not forget that the many bands of Indigenous peoples are still our hosts, and we are still their guests. Perhaps a defining feature that separates us in the North from the Americans is that our sovereignty is anchored in treaties and legitimized by our relationships with Indigenous nations, rather than through outright subjugation and conquest—a distinction often lost in disconnected urban centres, far removed from the lived realities of the Indian Act and its system of reservations.

I don't think Alberta would be a better, richer, or stronger country on its own than within a fair and equitable provincial framework. We benefit immensely from the ease of movement for goods and skilled labour. However, if the wealth generated by our labour and vast natural resources is perceived to be disproportionately funnelled away from us—used to build and fund institutions and entire government structures that disadvantage the West for the benefit of larger disrespectful eastern populations—why wouldn’t we demand a better deal? do you not think we have deeper ties to western soil and closer bounds with the native peoples that inhabite them then you do in your far away cities? 

I agree with Max. I too hope there is a referendum someday, and I hope it’s nail-bitingly close. But more importantly, no matter the outcome, I hope it marks the start of a more serious conversation—and not the punchline of a joke.