The last time a province tried to leave the country was on October 30, 1995, when a referendum was held in Quebec.
The “Yes” or “Leave” side won 2,308,360 votes, or 49.42% of the vote, and the “No” or “Stay” side won 2,362,648 votes, or 50.58% of the vote. A record 93.52% of eligible voters cast their ballot.
Whew.
I remember in the months leading up to the vote that our view in English Canada shifted from “Quebec will never leave” and “They’re just a small group of rabble-rousers”, to “Once Quebeckers realize what’s at stake, they’ll come around”, to “OMG, they’re going to destroy the country!”
Let us not put our faith in the gods of luck twice.
Today, Alberta’s threats to leave the country are at the “Alberta will never leave” stage. The Globe and Mail’s Andrew Coyne wrote a prescient essay on this last week.
Said Coyne: “In a world that seems to grow more unstable by the week, [Canada] stands as a beacon of stability, safety and sanity. For all of its imperfections it remains one of the highest achievements of human statecraft, among one of the most successful societies in all of history…and in a few months it could all be blown apart.”
Coyne went on to list the chancers pushing Alberta to leave and fend for its own which will very likely mean throwing in its future with America, thus doing for Donald Trump what he’s so far failed to do on his own.
On October 19, Alberta is planning a province-wide referendum that will ask Alberta should remain part of Canada, along with other constitutional questions.
So Canada has five months to work to keep Alberta in Confederation in ways that are better than it did with Quebec in 1995.
Back then, Ottawa tried to weaken the Yes side’s case by questioning the referendum’s framing and pushing a pro-Canada message. Jean Chrétien and his Cabinet also visited Quebec often, promising reforms like recognizing Quebec as a distinct society. On October 27, three days before the vote, over 100,000 Canadians, including four Premiers, gathered at Place du Canada in Montreal, to urge Quebeckers to vote “No” to leaving.
Looking back, it’s clear Canadians could have done much more to keep Quebeckers in the country.
So now, let’s look at what we can do to help our Albertan compatriots.
We can do the usual things, like reaching out to Albertans we know or are related to and …listening. Those of us who live in The Imperial City should avoid Toronto-splaining. We should also donate to, amplify or volunteer with pro-Canada groups in Alberta, and elevate Indigenous viewpoints from Alberta. Remember, their treaty relationships are with Canada, not Alberta.
We should also call out misinformation on the “leave” side. In 1995, there was no social media. Today, the leak of private information belonging to millions of Alberta voters signals that this campaign is already dirty and threatens to remain nasty. Failing to scream and point fingers when cheating happens is one of the biggest threats of all.
We should also prod Ottawa to do more deals like the pipeline agreement Mark Carney signed last week with Danielle Smith last week to create high-profile wins for Alberta.
Certainly this summer we should also visit Alberta. After all, visits by Americans to Alberta are already up by 9% over last year. Maybe they see something we don’t.
And finally, there are between half a million and a million people born in Alberta who are not living in Alberta. I’m one of them, born in Edmonton and left at age 12. We should raise our hands to join a sort of Alberta Foreign Legion of ex-pats who have a view of the province that those who have never left may lack.
Who knows what will happen if we strike up a face-to-face conversation with someone who calls it home?
Meanwhile…
1. We’ll never replace ourselves via babies. Canada no longer has a low fertility rate; it has an ultra-low fertility rate of 1.25 children per woman. The replacement level needed to sustain a population from one generation to the next is 2.1 children per woman. In the year 2023, the world’s total fertility rate fell below the replacement rate for the first time in 200,000 years. The fertility collapse is happening in places we likely don’t think of: Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East. What’s more, if Thailand continues at its current fertility rate for 200 years, its population will decline from 63 million to 2 million.
2. How to…turn a book into a best-seller…be a better panda…keep your brain from rotting… and get a free university education.
3. Hail and farewell. On Thursday, Stephen Colbert signed off as host of The Late Show, after 11 years and 1801 episodes. Here’s the full version of the worst of his shows.
4. Risky business. What occupations have the highest divorce rates? And let’s find out if Toronto’s Police are antisemetic…and should you trust the U.S. Department of Justice the most, or the least? Plus, an idea I’d not heard of: gynofascism. It refers to the perceived dominance of institutional “safetyism” and risk-aversion. Proponents argue it stifles traditional risk-taking, free expression, and masculine problem-solving approaches. Here are three of them: Gag me.
5. Write on, and on. If your similes are obvious and shallow (“as dry as a…desert”), it’s time to spice them up. Plus how one school is rebuilding education for an AI world.
6. Narrative gets its own museum. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens on September 22 in Los Angeles. Fabulous.
7. If summer hasn’t found you yet, we may have. Join us at The Canada Summit, the glorious, four-day, heli-hiking trip from Aug. 30 to Sept. 3, where four leading Canadians (Steve Paikin, Dr. Heather Ross, Ron Deibert, and Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux) will discuss where we’re headed around politics, healthcare, cyber and Indigenous relations. If you can walk around your kitchen table, you can heli-hike. Details here and register here.
Sir Simon Schama called the Kardamyli Festival “a nonstop glorious experience: brilliant talks; exhilarating company; glorious setting; nothing quite like it.” Join us at The Kardamyli Festival this Fall in Greece.
8. A train, not a bicycle. That’s what Tim Requarth thinks AI is, and that’s not a good thing. Requarth is the new breed of neuroscientist-writer who tries to explain brain science via brilliant writing.
Speaking of whom, Craig Venter died last month. Back in 2000, he won the race to map the human genome against much better-funded scientists who had White House support. This week, the Globe and Mail revealed that two and a half years ago, Venter donated blood to Sick Kids Hospital in hopes of sparking another leap forward. “In a study posted online last week and submitted for peer review, researchers at the hospital’s Centre for Applied Genomics revealed that they used DNA from blood donated by Dr. Venter for the newly developed method.”
His first of many prizes was a Gairdner Award in 2002.
9. You like Nike commercials? Try Adidas! Speaking of New York, check out its bodega cats. Plus the Milky Way Photographer of the Year. Plus 19 cities (including Toronto) where locals and tourists take photos very differently. Plus why birds really murmurate. And why “genocide”, a word we throw around too much, has a very precise meaning. Finally, her again,
10. Unmaking the grade. Last month I reported on the perilous rise of grades at universities. Harvard was the main culprit with 60% of its grades being “A’s”. This week, Harvard’s faculty voted 70% to 30% to limit the number of “A’s” it awards its students.