Alberta will hold at least one referendum on our possible separation from Canada, and maybe two. Rather than ask Albertans if we want to separate from Canada, the UCP government’s first referendum, to be held this October 19, will ask if we want a second referendum. The second one, should it happen, would ask if Albertans want to leave Canada.
I’ll admit it’s a little hard to get my old Canadian-born Alberta-born noggin around why any of this is happening. Are Danielle Smith and crew softening us up, as one might their opponent in a boxing match? She pulls her first punch and, just when the other guy’s thinking that’s all she’s got, Kaboom! It could be that.
The shocking thing is that we’re having referenda at all. We’d part ways with what people all over the world say is an excellent nation? There are Albertans still alive who fought the Nazis under the Canadian flag, for cripes sake!
Sorry. No sense getting emotional over a referendum on whether to have a referendum. And that right there is the probable reason for having two referenda. For the first one, we’ll all be telling ourselves to calm down. It’s just a referendum on a referendum. No sense upsetting yourself over something that might not happen. But if enough people are hypnotized by the daffiness of the first referendum, the UCP could very well get their desired (and actually dangerous) second one.
Meanwhile, since we’re just sitting here waiting, there is something I want to tell you. I have a book coming out this fall. I know: off topic. It’s not a book about separatism or separation or referenda. It’s a novel set in a small town near the Rockies in southwestern Alberta. Its title is the name of the made-up town where most of it takes place: Carpenter Creek. I swear it’s not Pincher Creek, the town where I live. The fictional town and my real town are somewhat alike. They would be near one another on a map. It’s sort of like the two referenda. Similar—but not the same.
The thing about my new book is that I’ve been trying to think of some way I could put the novel into people’s heads in advance. That’s all you want, really—to have people thinking about it so that when the actual book arrives, people might think, Heh, I’ve heard of that. I might just buy it. In fact, it’s not unlike holding a first referendum to butter people up for a second one.
Separatists prove you can go around saying any number you like. I can say millions of people are raring to read my new book.
When premier Smith was asked why there’s going to be any referendum at all on Alberta separating from Canada, her answer was that 700,000 Albertans asked for it. That number is a shocker: one heck of a lot of Albertans! But, in fact, considerable evidence exists that the number is either distorted or simply made up.
Of the people Danielle Smith is referring to, over 400,000 signed Thomas Lukaszuk’s anti-separation, pro-Canada petition, a petition that asked if Albertans wanted to stay in Canada. Mr. Lukaszuk’s goal was a vote in the Legislature on separation, so that Alberta’s provincial politicians would have to come out of the weeds and identify themselves as separatist or not. What his petition did not ask for was a referendum—let alone two of them.
As for the remaining 300,000 of Smith’s 700,000 Albertans “demanding a referendum,” these names come from a separatist organization claiming to have collected that many pro-separation signatures. The thing about their list, however, is that the separatists’ process of gathering names raises questions. Some people even wonder if these names might have been taken straight off the Alberta electors’ list after it was stolen and loaded onto a separatist website. (Sadly the stealing of the electors’ list is not a fantasy. It happened.)
But the more I think about premier Smith’s claim, the more it sounds like a cracking good strategy for selling a new book. Why don’t I just tell everyone that 700,000 people are raring to buy Carpenter Creek…?
It’s not true. I can only think of about 30 people I’m fairly sure about. But Alberta’s separatists have proven that you can go around saying any number you like. I could say millions of people are raring to read my new book, except for the apparent lunacy involved.
Forget I mentioned it. Forget that I have an upcoming book (named Carpenter Creek). It was a selfish thing to do given the crisis we’re facing as a province. I’ll leave you with these words from 19th century British novelist Samuel Butler: “How plausibly she told her tale, and how many ages was it before she was so much as suspected! And then when things did begin to look bad for her, how she brazened it out, and what a desperate business it was to bring her shifts and prevarications to book!”
Fred Stenson has published 20 books. His new novel, Carpenter Creek, is forthcoming from Thistledown Press this fall.
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