Alberta girds for ‘war’

My wife and I just visited another country — a

place called Alberta.

Now first of all, | defini-
tely believe that the vastness
of the prairie sky does things
to your head. Pd hate to try
to be more specific than
that.

But there's a difference.
The lack of any visible bar-
riers between you and the
distant edge of the earth —
the horvon — is slightly

People who live there all
the time can't help but view
the universe in a different
way.

It's funny. I spent the first
half of my life in Winnipeg.
and had a very definite sense
of being a Westerner. And
more specifically, a prairie
person.

I automatically mcluded
folks from Saskatchewan
and Alberta. The people
who lived on the other side
of the Rockies were always
miystesious — kind of crazy.

Visiting Edmonton - last
week, I was shocked to
discover that Albertans
think of people from

Manitoba as “Easterners.”
My gawd, them’'s fightuno’
words!

As for us British
Columbians. well, were an
odd lot, not amounting to
much in the scheme of
uhings.

We were im Edmonton
when Peter Lougheed made
his famous remark about an
Ottawa-imposed export tax
on natural gas being a
“declaration of war.”

A bit hysterical, I sniffed.

My host — an otherwise
perfectly laid-back camer-
man for CBC — exploded:
“That blanking, blanking
Trudeau oughta be shot!”
The tone of voice was
deadly.

It reminded me of the
surprise I felt while in
Toronto a year ago, when
fear and loathing about Rene
Levesque was bringing out
the patriot. in every
Torontonian.

To make even the slightest
joke about the separatist
crisis was to invite a punch m
the nose. People were ac-
tually waving Canadian
flags!

To a British Columbian,
accustomed to a more philo-
sophical mood concerning
the magnitude of events
Down East. the passion
seemed almost embarassing.

1 got exactly that feeling
again last week in Ed-
monton.

Everyone was up in arms.
Rebel yells echoed between
the new buildings. “To the
barricades,” growled
Lougheed. Astonishingly.
they all knew exactly where
the barricades were. 100.

The Saskatchewan  bor-
der. Would you believe thai
thousands of cases of beer
have been seized at the Sas-
katchewan border as thirsty
Albertans try to beat the
beer strike?

Borders between
provinces? I mean, that used
to be a joke. Somehow.
while nobody. was looking.
the borders seem to have
thickened — become places
where you can get busted for
smugghng beer.

The us/them feeling has
become much, much more

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pronounced than it was just’ Australian's, and generally
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of cultural balkanization has | my cousins. But somehow
occured at nearly lightning they didn’t feel much like my

Whew. it was good to get -
back to B.C. and hear about
Mt. St. Helens again. ,

speed. Gone is the unitary brothers any more. Too
sense of prairie identity, busy. Too macho. Too
from which everything else involved in their power

was excluded.
And if even the three

struggle with the old colonial
elite Down East.

prairie provinces have They talked of war. Of
evolved into distinct fortunes. of empires. Of
societies, consider how far rebellions.

down their separate paths
the other parts of the
country have gone in this last
couple of decades.

Its quite breathtaking.
The people I met in Alberta
this time had the feel of
being foreigners, at least in
the sense that they dressed
differently, worked at a
completely different pace,
expressed thoughts that
reflected a consciousness at
least as ahen as an

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