My maternal grandmother, my Oma, was the person I loved best in the world, and my own personal heroine. She’d been born in a German-speaking community in what we now call Ukraine, the daughter of a Lutheran schoolteacher. Passionate and beautiful, with a head of fiery red hair, she had trained and worked as a teacher herself, in Stalin’s Soviet Union. She made a somewhat unusual marriage, to a quiet, bookish Mennonite man named Jacob Dyck. They lived in a Mennonite colony called Felsenbach, where my mother and her two sisters were born.
The Second World War ripped their world apart. When the Germans marched into Ukraine, my pacifist grandfather was scooped up and forced to join the German army, where, it seems likely, he was killed on the Russian front. My Oma and her three daughters, caught in the bloodlands between Stalin and Hitler, fled west, through Czechoslovakia and finally into Germany, which was then under heavy Allied air bombardment.
My grandmother scavenged for food, found bomb shelters for her children, and somehow dragged them safely to the American zone of occupation. It was a lucky break. If they had stayed in eastern Germany, the area liberated by Russian troops, the occupying Soviets would have treated them harshly as traitors.
My Oma, a pragmatist, decided that bombed-out post-war Germany held few prospects for her and her little girls. When Mennonite relatives from her husband’s side of the family, who had immigrated to the Canadian prairies long before the war, offered to sponsor her to come to Canada, she snatched at the opportunity. She and her three children travelled by ship to Halifax, and then by train across Canada. They settled briefly in Saskatchewan, before ending up in Barrhead, Alberta, where a significant German-speaking population lived.
My sophisticated, educated, poetry-loving Oma, who spoke no English, found hard work as a housekeeper and hospital washerwoman. Their first Barrhead home was a converted chicken coop. But slowly, after years of struggle, things improved. Once her daughters grew up, my grandmother moved to Edmonton. She opened a boarding house, then started buying up rental properties, until she became a successful entrepreneur with a healthy real estate portfolio.
Growing up, I thought my grandmother’s story was a wonderful example of the Canadian dream in action: a hard-working penniless refugee takes sanctuary in Canada, learns the language, achieves economic prosperity and leaves a financial and cultural legacy that sustains her children and grandchildren.
So imagine how shocked I was when, decades after my Oma’s death, my mother announced bitterly that she wished her mother had never come to Canada.
As a refugee child who spoke no English, my mother had spent her Canadian childhood in poverty and social isolation. She was bullied at school. She never had the chance to go to university. How much better her own life would have been, she said fiercely, if she had grown up in West Germany, surrounded by extended family, able to speak her own language, able to pursue her own educational dreams.
I felt as though I’d been slapped in the face.
My first feeling of hurt was personal. In my mother’s alternative reality, she never would have met my father, and my brother and I would never have been born. It felt like a rejection of my very existence.
My second response was a retreat into logic. My grandmother, I argued, could have had no idea that Germany would rebound as it did after the war. She was part of a huge diaspora of post-war immigrants who moved to Canada in part because they could not imagine how Europe would recover. She took a huge risk and made the best choice she could, based on available evidence.
But as I lay in bed that night and turned over my mother’s words in my head, I realized why her remarks had bothered me so much. She hadn’t just rejected me or slighted the memory of my Oma. It wasn’t just that she had rejected my timeline of the multiverse. She had rejected my myth of the Canadian dream, and the ideal of Canada that I so cherished.
I started to wonder. Was she right? Had I bought into a romanticized sense of nationalism that clouded my view of what this country actually was? Especially for immigrants and refugees? For every newcomer who finds success, as my grandmother eventually did, how many others face poverty, bigotry, alienation and the frustration of their hopes and dreams?
Naively, perhaps, I had never questioned the notion that becoming Canadian had been, for my family, the best possible outcome.
My patriotism, no doubt, had been nurtured by the Canada in which I’d grown up. I came of age in the era of Peter Lougheed and Pierre Trudeau, when people thought seriously and debated fiercely about what Canada meant to them. I was a teenager when the first Quebec referendum happened, when the Constitution was patriated, when the Charter of Rights and Freedoms became law. My coming of age also corresponded to a coming of age of Canadian arts and culture, the era of CanCon and CanLit. As a teen I plowed through Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Alice Munro and Mordecai Richler—the first true Canadian canon. (Books, in fact, that were all introduced to me by my brilliant autodidact mother.)
Later, at university, I discovered the works of the western modernists and post-modernists who showed me my own western Canadian world through fresh eyes: W.O. Mitchell, Sheila Watson, Robert Kroetsch, George Bowering. Small wonder that I grew up with an enthusiasm for Canada and a sense of its verdant possibilities. We were a country finding its voice, feeling its power, breaking free of the last legal vestiges of British colonialism and establishing a separate cultural identity from the United States.
Of course, my teens and early twenties also coincided with the economic and political turmoil of the National Energy Program, the rise of the Western Canada Concept party, the election of Gordon Kesler as Alberta’s first officially separatist MLA. Alberta had plenty of historical, economic and political reasons to feel aggrieved. But separatists then had little political power. Provincially, they were kept in check by Lougheed, a fierce champion for a stronger Alberta within a united Canada. But those 1980s separatists also lost the battle of public opinion in no small part because many of their highest-profile members, such as Doug Christie and Jim Keegstra, were virulently antisemitic Holocaust deniers, which undercut their public credibility. For me, the child of a Jewish father and a German refugee mother, there was no appeal in the vision of an independent state constructed on a matrix of hate and historical revisionism.
There still isn’t.
That fight with my late mother happened decades ago. But in the last few months, I have found myself revisiting our long-ago quarrel. Every time another Alberta separatist talks about quitting Canada, I feel that same sense of anger and confusion. Every time another Alberta separatist blames his perceived problems on immigrants and refugees, I shudder.
A year ago Canadians across the country, Albertans included, stood united and “elbows up” against the threats to our sovereignty made by Donald Trump. We all felt flushed with patriotic pride. Now, an angry minority of Albertans—who fear the impact that growing public concerns about climate change and Indigenous rights might have on Alberta’s energy economy—are trying to bamboozle Albertans into quitting the country, based on the false promise that a separate Alberta might somehow resist the imperative of energy transition. To add insult to injury, it appears that at least some of those separatists are funding their campaign to break up the country with American dollars. And, somehow, the powers that be in this province are giving in to this nonsense while simultaneously stirring up xenophobia and blaming immigrants for Alberta’s problems, taking a page straight from the racist Trumpian playbook.
It’s unfathomable.
We are privileged to live in a country that values peace and inclusion and the rule of law. A country that encourages entrepreneurship and economic opportunity. A country that strives to balance individual rights and freedoms with the good of the collective community. A country where healthcare and public education are rights and gun ownership is not. A country where women control their own bodies and choose their own clothing, whether that’s a niqab or a bikini.
We’re not a country of polarization, but a country that values creative compromise, because we were born out of creative compromise.
There are lots of common-sense reasons to reject the separatist argument. Why would Alberta, a landlocked province whose economy is based on exporting commodities, deny itself free access to ports and tidewater and international export markets?
It would be equally absurd for our boom-and-bust economy, which relies on periodic influxes of large pools of labour, to cut itself off from mobile Canadian workers. Alberta has a population of just five million. How many would flee the People’s Independent Republic of Alberta, taking their money, their talent and their skills with them?
Then there are the legal, constitutional and treaty realities. Alberta can’t just quit Canada unilaterally. We’re bound by the British North America Act of 1867, the Alberta Act of 1905, the Constitution Act of 1982 and the Clarity Act of 2000. More fundamentally, the political unit we call Alberta is constructed on the traditional Indigenous lands that are subject to Treaties 6, 7 and 8. Those chiefs have made it plain that their treaties are with the Crown in right of Canada, and not with the province. To them, separation is a non-starter.
The idea that we could become the 51st state is even sillier. Legally and politically, how could we function as a chunk of America embedded within Canada? From a national security perspective, how could Canada allow such a thing, at a time when the US government is threatening our sovereignty? Besides, if Albertans actually understood how much less power and autonomy American states and governors have than Canadian provinces and premiers do, they’d realize we would have far less self-determination and political leverage as one of 51 states than as one of 10 provinces.
As for those who say we need the threat of separation, to better our bargaining position, consider how economically ruinous it would be to frighten away investors and capital by creating political chaos and uncertainty just to prove some ill-defined point. Never mind the dangers of alienating our fellow Canadians in this time of crisis. Posturing and threatening to separate could turn other provinces against us, making it harder to do things like build pipelines or power lines—or transition to a new economy that transcends the combustion of carbon.
However, enumerating the downsides of separatism isn’t enough. It’s like telling someone to stay in an unhappy marriage because it would be too expensive and legally complicated to divorce. We can’t stay just because leaving would cost too much and make the rest of the family angry. If we want to make the case for Canada, we can’t just rebut the economic arguments. We have to stay for love—and the promise of something better.
I still love Canada, or the ideal, at least, that Canada at its best represents. I try to be clear-eyed about it. To acknowledge the pain and injustice of colonialism, the calculated starvation and dispossession of First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples, the centuries of intergenerational trauma.
Similarly, we need to learn and acknowledge the stories of successive waves of immigrants and refugees who faced racism and rejection on their arrival here—the stories of the Chinese head tax, the First World War internment of Ukrainians and Italians, Canada’s refusal to admit pre-war Jewish refugees, the internment of Japanese people during the Second World War, the post-war immigration policies that discriminated against applicants from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, the post 9/11 Islamophobia, and the discrimination against Black Canadians that dates from the time of slavery and persists to this day. As we begin 2026, how many new Canadians, facing economic struggle and rising xenophobia, will wonder—as my mother did—whether the sacrifice was worth it?
Happily it is the genius of Canada to accept our mistakes and learn from them.
We are a unique social experiment.
Many other countries around the world have an ethnic homogeneity that gives them unity.
Many other countries around the world have their own creation myth, an origin story that defines them.
Canada has neither.
Blood and soil ethno-nationalism doesn’t work here, because Canada has been multicultural since our very beginning, long before the first traders and colonizers and settlers arrived, home not to one single Indigenous culture but to hundreds of distinct languages and traditions.
To make the case for Canada, we can’t just rebut the economic arguments. We have to stay for love.
Our colonial roots were both French and English—not to mention Scottish and Irish and Welsh, so we’ve been multilingual since the first Europeans landed.
No other country has been as successful at creating a truly multicultural nation of tolerance and inclusion. And it’s not some elite “liberal” notion that Laurentian Canada has imposed on Alberta. Far from it. Multiculturalism as national public policy was first championed in 1971 by Harry Strom, the Social Credit premier who preceded Lougheed. Back then, multiculturalism was pushed hardest by Alberta’s Ukrainian community, who chafed under the limitations of the old “two founding nations” bicultural paradigm. You might well call official multiculturalism Alberta’s greatest gift to Canada, since it has enabled us to become a global powerhouse ideally equipped to compete in a global economy.
It’s even more miraculous because we have no unifying mythology to hold this huge nation, diverse not just in culture but in geography, together. In a country this enormous it’s natural for the “regions” to feel cut off from the economic and political power of the centre.
Alberta isn’t alone in feeling this. Ask anyone from Whitehorse to Windsor, Rimouski to Glace Bay. It is a constant struggle simply to manage a country as vast as ours, where regions have competing interests and where some of the stale structures of Confederation are no longer fit for purpose. Yet we do it all without a vapid rah-rah narrative to bind us.
So many other nation-states have their stories of revolution and their revolutionary heroes. We have, instead, the promise of peace, order and good government—hardly stuff to stir souls. As for charismatic heroes? Something in the Canadian character seems allergic to them. For whatever reasons of history and culture, the dominant Canadian world view is a sardonic one. Our Indigenous mythologies, coast to coast to coast, are full of trickster gods—Raven and Coyote, Napi and Wisakedjak, Glooscap and Amaguq. I think perhaps their mischievous, irreverent spirit lingers in this land.
Canadians are anti-romantics. We take a darkly impish delight in cutting our public figures and celebrities down to size, and in quietly mocking our own icons and institutions. Maybe it has to do with weather and geography. Wherever you go in Canada, it’s hard not to be humbled by the vastness, the scale, the wildness of this place. It’s hard to nurture delusions of grandeur here, and harder still to indulge such pretensions in others. Irony is our idiom. And Alberta—which invented improv theatre sports, and produced Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, The Irrelevant Show, two-fifths of the Kids in the Hall, Andrew Phung and the best years of SCTV—certainly shares that ironic irreverence.
Canadians likewise get quietly embarrassed by performative parades of patriotism. So when we defend “Canada” against the zealotry of Alberta separatists, we often take refuge in economic and legal arguments instead of emotive ones.
So I’m calling on us to do something un-Canadian: to put aside our habitual self-deprecation and stand up for the country we love—and reject the idea of a sovereign Alberta whose founding principles seem to be miserliness, xenophobia and transphobia. We need to raise our voices to denounce the dark fantasy of a landlocked, petulant petrostate dedicated to hoarding wealth, denouncing immigrants, denying climate change, spurning vaccines, protecting patriarchy and endangering queer kids. Because Alberta’s current crop of separatists don’t just want to leave Canada. They seem to want to opt out of the 21st century entirely.
But Albertans aren’t quitters. So let’s not quit Canada. Let’s fight to make it better, fairer and more prosperous for everyone, Albertans included.
On Canada’s coat of arms you’ll see the Latin motto Desiderantes meliorem patriam. In English: “They desire a better country.”
To me, there could not be a better, or more Canadian, motto. Canada isn’t a perfect country. But it is made up of millions of people, like my Oma, who came here because they were looking for a better country, a place to make a new start. And it’s home to tough-minded, unsentimental millions who see Canada’s shortcomings and failings and needs, and work hard to make it a better country. Because Canada is a work in progress, a country of aspiration. We’re not looking to be “great again”—we’re striving to be a little bit better every day.
Alberta’s current crop of separatists don’t just want to leave Canada. They seem to want to opt out of the 21st century entirely.
I love Canada because it accepted my paternal Jewish grandparents as immigrants and allowed them to escape the poverty and pogroms of the Russian Pale. I love Canada because it accepted my German maternal family, despite the fact Canada had just suffered through a brutal war against Hitler’s Reich. I love Canada because it protects the rights of my queer family members, including the beloved daughter I named after my beloved Oma. I love Canada because its Charter of Rights and Freedoms has protected me throughout my career as a journalist, allowing me to report the truth even when it hurt. I love Canada because it has repeatedly found the honesty and courage to confront its faults and worked to make life here more fair.
And I love Alberta, because the Alberta I love is open, adventurous, brave, energetic and undaunted. I will not allow hatemongers and traitors and bitter quitters to speak for me. What do I want for my Alberta next? For us to embrace our full potential, to charge into the future, without leashing ourselves to some false vision of the past.
In his song “Anthem,” Leonard Cohen, one of my favourite Canadians, sang:
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
Canada has its fair share of cracks. But instead of exploiting those to tear the country apart, let’s work with our fellow Canadians to mend them. We can’t be a perfect country—or pretend to be one by papering over the cracks. We must let the light in to see our way ahead
Appointed to the Senate in 2018, independent senator Paula Simons has been an Edmonton Journal reporter and columnist and a CBC radio producer. Her podcast is Alberta Unbound.
____________________________________________
Read More: On the Trail of Alberta Separatists
