“Says here that Alberta wants out again, Barnaby,” Cecil informs me from behind his newspaper.
Yes, we are of that vintage. Sitting at our breakfast place, discussing current affairs from behind our respective newspapers. At least, Cecil is. I’ve joined the kids in the modern age and now get my information from my phone.
I bite down hard, and disturbingly noisily, on a piece of granola, immediately checking to see if I’ve managed to crack another tooth during the basic process of eating. Nope. Everything’s still intact but nothing seems without a certain peril these days.
“Just a bunch of sore losers if you ask me,” Cecil continues. He’s taken a safer route, at least in terms of dental threats, what with his hard-boiled eggs this morning. He peppers up a slice and spreads it on a piece of toast, a simple whole grain choice, nothing too crusty or chewy.
Normally, I might assume the role of the devil’s advocate here and challenge Cecil’s political views. Get some back-and-forth going, explore the issue from multiple sides. Drill down into the core of the matter. There’s nothing more boring than falling into the rut of agreement.
But honestly?
I cannot muster the interest.
“They’ve been threatening us since Peter Lougheed left the scene,” Cecil says. “I mean, as premier, left the scene, not him dying, left the scene. Peter Lougheed’s dead, isn’t he?”
I would imagine so. I think. Although, I’m not entirely sure. He would be very old if he isn’t dead.
“Well, certainly Peter Lougheed’s Alberta is long since dead, Cecil,” I respond.
Look.
I think of myself as a reasonable man. A fair and open-minded person willing to entertain thoughts and views that I don’t necessarily agree with. But this idea of Alberta ‘sovereignty’? Sovereignty in quotes because Sovereignty without quotes gives the idea too much legitimacy.
“I didn’t agree with the idea of Quebec separation back in the day,” Cecil says. “I didn’t want to see it happen. But at least I knew where they were coming from, you know?
I think theirs was a just cause.”
“What do you think the difference is between them?” I ask, managing a little satanic advocacy. “Between Quebec and Alberta separation?”
Cecil cut more from his egg, applies pepper and smooths it out over his toast. Takes a thoughtful bite. Keeps his mouth closed as he chews over the question. It’s been a long, table mannered journey to get him to this point.
“For me, Barnaby,” he replies, mouth not quite empty but so, so close, “Back then, with Quebec, Levesque and… what was the other one’s name?”
There were a few to choose from.
“Lucien Bouchard?” I offer.
“No, not him. The other one.”
“Gilles Duceppe?”
“No. Before him,” Cecil says. “The pure laine one.”
Ah! Right him.
“Jacques Parizeau!” Cecil remembers. “Whatever else they were saying about it, it was a matter of culture and language. A distinct society! Isn’t that what they called it?”
“I believe so,” I say.
“What’s so distinctive about Alberta, I want to know?” he asks.
Exactly.
My point.
Why I find it so difficult to even try and understand the concept.
‘Sovereignty’.
“One of the guys I was playing pickleball with the other day told a joke,” Cecil whispers at me.
Cecil is an avid pickleballer. A sport I haven’t embraced as of yet as it signals my time as a tennis player has come to an end. I know, I know. The irrationality of eternal youth.
“What’s the difference between an Albertan and a Texan?” Cecil delivers the set up, still at a whisper. I shake my head. “About 1500 kilometres!”
He laughs and goes back to his breakfast.
“Or about 950 miles,” I add. “Since they’ll probably ditch the metric system if they go.”
Yes, I think, carefully chewing through another granola mouthful. This isn’t some existential struggle over culture or a distinct society. It’s politics, pure and simple. Petty politics, at that. A temper tantrum at the fact that a majority, or a solid minority to go by the election results, of the ROC doesn’t share Alberta’s political point of view. A sovereignty of sore losers, as Cecil put it, masking as bona fide grievance. We didn’t get our way, so we’re not going to play with you anymore.
“And what gets my goat, Barnaby,” Cecil says as he flips through his paper, literally turning the page on this particular news story, “It isn’t even independence they’re talking about. Not really. They want to join the U.S., don’t they?”
It’s difficult to argue with that line of reasoning even if I were inclined to.
“I heard that somebody out there has even started the Republican Party of Alberta!” Cecil blasts, catching the attention of our fellow patrons. “Why adopt the name of an American political party if your goal isn’t ultimately to be annexed by the U.S.?”
“And the premier certainly does love to hang out with the President down at his Florida gilded pile,” I add.
“I know, right!” he thunders in response. “With the guy who keeps harping on about Canada as the 51st state! Annexation or bust!”
His second outburst reverberates throughout the café, garnering our table not looks of hostility, but more something between curiosity and pity. You two old men still on about that? Time out, maybe, and elbows down for the moment.
“What would you say, Cecil,” I begin to think aloud, “to the notion of secessionist Albertans being akin to Canada’s Confederacy?”
Setting aside his newspaper and finishing off the last of his eggs and toast, Cecil ponders the idea. Not a perfect analogy, to be sure. The southern Confederacy planned to go it alone as their own nation rather than eyeing a neighbouring country to join. Still. Some similarities exist, I think.
Fed up with having to compromise with the rest of a country that didn’t share their values, they wanted out. And despite all the highfalutin talk of states’ rights and protecting traditions and a certain way of life, it ultimately, the Confederacy’s drive to secede, came down to politics, and its right, and absolute economic necessity, to own slaves.
“I mean,” I attempt to explain to Cecil, “like the Confederacy, Alberta’s claims to uniqueness and independence are really about one thing. The South, it was slave-owning. With Alberta it’s oil.”
Cecil is either unconvinced by my argument or is dealing with some sort of digestive issue, given the uneasy look on his face.
“Just like the antebellum American South was economically dependent on one industry, slave-owning agriculture,” I continue, offering up a distraction if Cecil is waging some sort of internal war with his eggs, “Alberta is inexorably tied to resource extraction. Talk of Alberta independence comes straight from the oil patch.”
“The Republic of Oil?” Cecil offers, indicating that he was wrestling with the question at hand and not breakfast.
The Republic of Oil indeed.