Any chance you could have an itemized list of their assertions and the actual facts? I’m thinking you’re already doing the hard work but there’s no way in hell the separatists’ attention spans are up to the task of reading your excellent articles. A bullet point list might be something we can share on social media to try to stop the descent into madness. Thanks for doing this. A daunting task indeed!
Kudos to you for your patience in sitting through and listening to these sessions - especially when the stories continue to embellish the fairytales. But, it's good to document this to refute with the truth and let the hot air out of their fantasy balloon.
Perhaps a book is worthy ... AB Fairytales? All that mis-placed hate is not healthy.
This is stuff that has been repeated so often that it’s taken as fact in certain circles. There’s likely nothing anyone can do to change the minds of those who already believe it. I think what we can do with it is more understanding that they’re very much focused on the past and a “no” or “remain” campaign needs to focus on the future.
A note today from a life-long friend who has spent most of his life in third-world countries teaching how to purify contaminated water, et al, and is now retired east of Edmonton.
“I attended a meeting of the Alberta Prosperity Project last night to hear what they are saying about separation, etc. It was, to me, like listening to children playing in the woods and setting up a kingdom. Some partial facts interspersed with a great deal of hatred, hyperbole, and imagination. But ... of course ... they did open in prayer and the Our Father. Scary stuff though and no clue as to who is funding this.”
As for myself, I challenged Michael Wagner a couple of years ago for something he’d written “correcting” a personal friend and award-winning American historian whose academic record includes stints at Princeton, Columbia and now, Dartmouth. It had to do with my friend’s extensive work on the true origins of the Religious Right in the U.S. in which he suggests that racial integration in the schools, not abortion, was the actual trigger issue in 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education (Topeka) that sparked what ultimately led to the formation of the RR altho it wasn’t known as that in its early days. Wagner challenged, insisting abortion was what started the Moral Majority, Religious Right, and such. At one point I asked Wagner how much time he’s spent in the U.S. South to which he replied “none” completely failing to grasp that a textbook knowledge alone of the race issue in the U.S. is completely insufficient and unsatisfactory for anyone purporting to be an authority on such matters. I always chuckle to hear our son, who did an MA at LSU in Baton Rouge often say: “Face it, Dad, Alberta is the Louisiana of Canada.”
I often wonder how this lands to someone who has never heard it before. I grew up in smaller areas surrounded by rural, and it’s very familiar to me; not the individual stories necessarily, but the sentiment.
I’ve heard a few of the speakers before but Wagner was new to me. Just wow.
I wrote a doctoral dissertation on an aspect of Alberta’s religious history and also worked at Alberta Report during its last gasps (‘99-‘03). I retain some fairly politically incorrect views on religious/political matters in this province, some of which I shared on various occasions with our current Premier when she had her talk-show gig on Corus. Yes, the stories that could be told as I watch things play out today.
I just picked up the phone to one of those "polling" robo calls. The first question was something like 'Would you vote for sovereignty of Alberta if you saved $20k annually?' Yeah, right, sure....I voted NO. Thanks for the column, it is good to have background on the nuttiness.
Seems to me that right from the get go almost NO ONE has a clue as to the ACTUAL history of the creation of Alberta, the bail out of Alberta and Saskatchewan of the trillions of dollars spent over the years by Ottawa AND the other wealthier at the time provinces!
Or that the majority of Alberta’s complaints have NOTHING TO DO with the feds, and are ALL provincial responsibilities.
So we have a province that has had almost exclusively right wing governments who screwed up constantly and who then blamed the Feds. Now THAT’S one hell of a way to set up an absolutley FAKE history for the less well educated!
That history must be rather inconvenient to the Seperatists!
Always ignored, yes. It doesn’t fit with the narrative that Ottawa, or “the east”, hates Alberta. One thing I didn’t talk about is that the average age of the “fathers of de-confederation” as one audience member called them, is probably 70.
They’ve been pissed off for 50 years about the NEP they think caused a recession and they’re still pissed off. They want the billions they never had back.
That’s coming in Part III today, and I suppose I should do a final summary, and call it part IV lol
Born and grew up in Edmonton, educated there at UofA law school I cannot understand this “separatist” movement, never did. I am Canadian, yes, Alberta born, but Canadian. O&G is not going to last. Alberta could go solar, wind so fast yet the provincial government has shut these options down in deference to US corporations. Canada, all provinces, regardless of their premiers should be against the campaign to “annex” Canada by another nation.
Any chance you could have an itemized list of their assertions and the actual facts? I’m thinking you’re already doing the hard work but there’s no way in hell the separatists’ attention spans are up to the task of reading your excellent articles. A bullet point list might be something we can share on social media to try to stop the descent into madness. Thanks for doing this. A daunting task indeed!
Unfortunately, they’ve more than likely already bought into much of that; it’s old rhetoric. The fact-checking is for the rest of us.
My biggest hope is that we can stop it from sucking in new people.
Kudos to you for your patience in sitting through and listening to these sessions - especially when the stories continue to embellish the fairytales. But, it's good to document this to refute with the truth and let the hot air out of their fantasy balloon.
Perhaps a book is worthy ... AB Fairytales? All that mis-placed hate is not healthy.
This is stuff that has been repeated so often that it’s taken as fact in certain circles. There’s likely nothing anyone can do to change the minds of those who already believe it. I think what we can do with it is more understanding that they’re very much focused on the past and a “no” or “remain” campaign needs to focus on the future.
A note today from a life-long friend who has spent most of his life in third-world countries teaching how to purify contaminated water, et al, and is now retired east of Edmonton.
“I attended a meeting of the Alberta Prosperity Project last night to hear what they are saying about separation, etc. It was, to me, like listening to children playing in the woods and setting up a kingdom. Some partial facts interspersed with a great deal of hatred, hyperbole, and imagination. But ... of course ... they did open in prayer and the Our Father. Scary stuff though and no clue as to who is funding this.”
As for myself, I challenged Michael Wagner a couple of years ago for something he’d written “correcting” a personal friend and award-winning American historian whose academic record includes stints at Princeton, Columbia and now, Dartmouth. It had to do with my friend’s extensive work on the true origins of the Religious Right in the U.S. in which he suggests that racial integration in the schools, not abortion, was the actual trigger issue in 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education (Topeka) that sparked what ultimately led to the formation of the RR altho it wasn’t known as that in its early days. Wagner challenged, insisting abortion was what started the Moral Majority, Religious Right, and such. At one point I asked Wagner how much time he’s spent in the U.S. South to which he replied “none” completely failing to grasp that a textbook knowledge alone of the race issue in the U.S. is completely insufficient and unsatisfactory for anyone purporting to be an authority on such matters. I always chuckle to hear our son, who did an MA at LSU in Baton Rouge often say: “Face it, Dad, Alberta is the Louisiana of Canada.”
That’s good to know!
I often wonder how this lands to someone who has never heard it before. I grew up in smaller areas surrounded by rural, and it’s very familiar to me; not the individual stories necessarily, but the sentiment.
I’ve heard a few of the speakers before but Wagner was new to me. Just wow.
I wrote a doctoral dissertation on an aspect of Alberta’s religious history and also worked at Alberta Report during its last gasps (‘99-‘03). I retain some fairly politically incorrect views on religious/political matters in this province, some of which I shared on various occasions with our current Premier when she had her talk-show gig on Corus. Yes, the stories that could be told as I watch things play out today.
I just picked up the phone to one of those "polling" robo calls. The first question was something like 'Would you vote for sovereignty of Alberta if you saved $20k annually?' Yeah, right, sure....I voted NO. Thanks for the column, it is good to have background on the nuttiness.
Same question and same answer here.
Seems to me that right from the get go almost NO ONE has a clue as to the ACTUAL history of the creation of Alberta, the bail out of Alberta and Saskatchewan of the trillions of dollars spent over the years by Ottawa AND the other wealthier at the time provinces!
Or that the majority of Alberta’s complaints have NOTHING TO DO with the feds, and are ALL provincial responsibilities.
So we have a province that has had almost exclusively right wing governments who screwed up constantly and who then blamed the Feds. Now THAT’S one hell of a way to set up an absolutley FAKE history for the less well educated!
That history must be rather inconvenient to the Seperatists!
Always ignored, yes. It doesn’t fit with the narrative that Ottawa, or “the east”, hates Alberta. One thing I didn’t talk about is that the average age of the “fathers of de-confederation” as one audience member called them, is probably 70.
They’ve been pissed off for 50 years about the NEP they think caused a recession and they’re still pissed off. They want the billions they never had back.
That’s coming in Part III today, and I suppose I should do a final summary, and call it part IV lol
Born and grew up in Edmonton, educated there at UofA law school I cannot understand this “separatist” movement, never did. I am Canadian, yes, Alberta born, but Canadian. O&G is not going to last. Alberta could go solar, wind so fast yet the provincial government has shut these options down in deference to US corporations. Canada, all provinces, regardless of their premiers should be against the campaign to “annex” Canada by another nation.
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/programs/federal-transfers/equalization.html
https://substack.com/@calluramichael491850/note/c-119418969?r=1ii73h&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
https://substack.com/@calluramichael491850/note/c-119430245?r=1ii73h&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action