Separation.
In some ways, it’s a nice word. If the neighbour’s dog won’t stop barking, it’s a good word. But if you like winter and don’t like being separated from it by a hot summer, then it’s a bad word. For a country, it can be both.
You may have heard about some separation talk coming out of Alberta since the recent federal election. Albertans have had a pretty frigid relationship with the federal Liberal Party ever since Pierre Trudeau put in the National Energy Program in 1980. It was called the NEP, but it was not that at all. It was really the Eastern Canada Stealing Oil from Alberta Program.
And it wasn’t the first time that that sort of thing had happened. If you are younger than 65, you won’t remember the NEP or this story: when the Canadian Pacific Railway was built, it certainly opened up Western Canada, but freight rates were different depending on which direction your freight was going, and the receiving party usually paid the freight.
So, for example, if, in 1934, you had a 300-pound barrel of honey that you wanted to send from Toronto to Calgary, it might have cost $37.00. But if you wanted to send a similar 300-pound barrel of honey from Calgary to Toronto, it might only cost $22.00.
Why should there be any difference? The difference was in who set the rates, and they were set in the East, to the advantage of the people in the East. So the prairie farmers paid high freight bills on the farm machinery that was made in Ontario and Quebec, but those eastern provinces paid lesser amounts on beef and lumber from the west.
The NEP story is even worse, but I don’t have the space to tell you here.
This kind of stuff has gone on for most of Canada’s history, and the West has always been aware of it, and since the Liberal Party has been in power more than the Conservative Party, most of the Western hate has been directed at the Liberals. And it has simmered just below the surface ever since the early years of Canada being a country. And not very far below.
So, after ten years of Justin Trudeau being at the national helm, and with a hope of getting rid of the Liberals but failing, some Alberta residents are ready to throw in the towel, and are now, again, talking of separating from Canada.
The idea of separating will, of course, not go very far. There are too many people with vested interests, such as pensions, to take a chance on splitting, even in Alberta, despite the anger. Alberta has been down the separation road before.
In the early to mid-1980s, when the NEP had fuelled the separation fires, a political party called the Western Canada Concept, or WCC, took root to a certain extent. But while they generated a lot of discussion, they had very minimal success in elections.
We are, of course, a nation of immigrants, and immigrants are usually so appreciative of getting into a new land that they reward the party that was in power when they arrived with their vote. It’s kind of a natural thing to do. So the WCC eventually faded out.
Then, Preston Manning, a son of Premier Ernest Manning, who had been the premier of Alberta for twenty-five years, started the Reform Party in the early ’90s, but all he accomplished was to damage the Conservative Party to where it almost disappeared.
And any story about separation, written in a place as close to Alberta as we are, must include our story of political separation. It had taken on life a little before the above situations, but it was, nonetheless, a story of separation, in this case from B.C. and over different issues.
It was called ‘Alberta Bound,’ and some of the people involved in that movement are still in Golden and remember it well. In those days, there were two newspapers in town, the Golden Gazette in addition to the Star. Both carried front-page stories in their February 20, 1974, issues, as well as later ones, but my family and I arrived here in May of that year, and the fire had gone out by then.
Some of the media coverage of the current discussion in Alberta is critical of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith for providing some opportunity for even discussing the possibility of separating. But Smith is right.
To stifle discussion on any subject doesn’t end it. Sometimes it encourages it. Alberta should have the conversation, and, in all likelihood, it will end there. If separation didn’t get anywhere in Quebec in two tries, it won’t in Alberta either.
But achieving separation is not the whole reason for separation talk. Even a discussion about separation could have some smack when it comes to dealing with Prime Minister Mark Carney. He was born in the Northwest Territories and grew up in Edmonton, and will certainly have a listening ear when it comes to issues that affect Alberta.
If talk of separation seems totally foreign to you, that’s understandable. But it wasn’t too long ago that folks in Golden talked about separating from BC to secede to Alberta. See the historical article here.
Duane Crandall is a retired newspaper publisher, having owned and operated The Golden Star from 1982 – 1987, and the Golden News from 1992 – 2003. He served as MLA for Columbia River-Revelstoke from 1986 – 1991.
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