Gee whiz, can you believe it, Canada! Premiers Scott Moe (Saskatchewan) and Danielle Smith (Alberta) want to play ball with the Mad King of the South. Alberta wants to continue drinking bourbon and keep selling its tar sands oil to the USA, and Saskatchewan wants to keep pumping potash into American agribusiness. So much for a Team Canada approach to dealing with Trump’s Terrible Tariffs.

Keep in mind that both Alberta and Saskatchewan are part of the original “western alienation” movement that sprang from the federal government’s stance on national control of natural resources when the two areas became provinces in 1905. Based on their oil and cattle economies, Texas and Alberta seem made for each other, while Saskatchewan matches the oil pumping and dry land farming culture of some of the Great Plains states.

The majority of these US States and two provincial populations also tend to be socially conservative and fiercely supportive of individual rights and local resources over the collective national good. Politically, the old joke about “What happens when you cross a Texan with a Dakotan? Why, you get a conservative voting white, Christian Albertan!” rings all too true.

However, stereotyping is not helpful to constructive conversation. And considering my wife and I were married in Kananaskis, Alberta on the banks of the Bow River under the gaze of the Three Sisters mountain peaks, separation does not include some of my best friends. That and the memories of Grasslands National Park in Val Marie, Saskatchewan as the most unique landscape on our cross-country trip for Canada’s 150th makes that province’s separation not open for discussion .

Canada is a unique coast to coast to coast experiment immersed in First People’s culture, colonial exploration and exploitation, resistance to American Republicanism, an outgoing, if sometimes superficial politeness, a sense of social justice, realization that we all “come from away,” and that “here” is where we choose to be. We are lobster, maple syrup, corn, wheat, beef and salmon. We are wood, hydro, uranium, aluminum, and steel. We are either paddling our canoe to safe harbours or dragging us back into the maelstrom.

To the fringe far right wing in Alberta and Saskatchewan, and the young protesters in Quebec, it’s time to decide if you are on Team Canada or time to get out of the canoe and sink or swim on your own. Swim south down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico!

This is no time for Lily dippers.The way I see it.

*****

Skid Crease, Caledon