8 hours ago
How voters in rural conservative heartland wrestle with Alberta separatism
Cam Davies asked the audience in the Three Hills community hall for a show of hands: who believes Alberta should give Prime Minister Mark Carney a chance to provide for their province.
Among the approximately 150 people at this pro-independence event, one hand went up. "There's always one," remarked Davies, leader of the Republican Party of Alberta, to scattered laughter.
The event in this central Alberta town of about 3,000 was pitched as a lecture series on the upsides of Alberta separation, but doubled as a campaign rally for Davies, running in the upcoming provincial byelection in Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills.
Electing a separatist here, attendees were told, would send a message to the federal and provincial governments. Gord Kesler was there to testify to that — he'd grabbed headlines 43 years ago for winning a provincial seat for another separatist party, during another stretch of heated anti-Ottawa mood.
"I'd love to brand you all freedom warriors," Kesler said, asking how many in the crowd would vote for Davies.
Most hands went up, but some noticeably stayed down.
Part of that may reflect geographical reality.
Some in the hall, including a local separatist and the town mayor, said they only recognized around one-quarter or fewer of the audience as Three Hills residents.
Several attendees visited from an hour's drive or more away — places like Calgary, or Ponoka County, or Westlock.
Three Hills resident Mike Litke and his partner paid $20 each for Republican ballcaps — his in camouflage, hers in tan — and believe Alberta would be freer and better off if the province became its own republic.
They'd travelled elsewhere before for separatist gatherings, but this was their first in their hometown. Almost the first time they've heard the topic come up in Three Hills.
"I haven't heard separation mentioned in this town at all," Litke said.
But if you talk to people in and around Three Hills, they've thought plenty about Alberta's place within Canada. You will hear how they hold out hope for a better deal (and a pipeline or two) from Carney, and how that big option to leave will wind up being more tempting if nothing changes.
CBC Calgary and the Front Burner podcast ventured to Three Hills because it's in Alberta's political crosshairs like no other place.
Residents vote not only in next Monday's provincial byelection, but also in the coming weeks in the federal Conservative stronghold of Battle River–Crowfoot, where the MP resigned this week so Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre can secure a seat after losing his own riding in Ottawa in the federal election.
Alberta independence may become its own ballot question here next year if a looming petition drive is successful in triggering a provincial referendum.
With support for separatism running below 30 per cent throughout Alberta and much lower in Calgary and Edmonton, activists will have to run up the numbers in places like Three Hills if they want Alberta out of Canada.
Like many other residents in the area, realtor Donald MacDonald uses marital analogies to describe the strained relationship between Alberta and Canada.
"In any marriage, there comes points in time where people do not feel respected, where we lose every sense of trust, and where things are dictated to you, where people vote with their feet," said MacDonald, who won a 1992 provincial byelection in Three Hills for a more conservative version of the Alberta Liberals.
"So, my hope, my prayer, is that we are able to resolve things. There is a reality that people get pushed too far and they say, 'Enough is enough.'"
Personally, MacDonald isn't there, certainly not yet. His dad served Canada in the Second World War, and he considers himself patriotic.
But he's convinced the status quo isn't working, and supports Premier Danielle Smith's push to demand Ottawa clear the way for new energy corridors to export more of Alberta's oil and gas.
"The separatist parties that are driving a wedge here, trying to drive a wedge right now, that we're gonna change all this overnight, that's naive," MacDonald said. "Any kind of change is a process. It's going to take time."
Ray Wildeman, the mayor of Three Hills, said he met Davies at a vintage car show downtown this month. He warned the separatist candidate he doesn't want to throw Canada into the crusher, "in the hopes it's going to be reshaped into some grand new design."
The mayor recalled Davies' response: Ottawa built the crusher.
Wildeman has perused the rosy financial pictures that separation advocates paint of a standalone Alberta that avoids equalization and federal taxes, and wishes more of them understood like he does how government and bureaucracies really work.
"That's what I see for an independent Alberta, a lot of frantic scurrying around trying to recreate what we already have in place," the mayor said.
He thinks most people in his town see it the way he does.
"They see confusion, they see chaos, are they going to see more dollars in their pocket? Maybe in the short term."
Even having a red Republican Party lawn sign for Davies wasn't necessarily a clear indication somebody was separatist.
Pat Elliott, who works in the kitchen of the town's century-old bible college, said she agreed to let a polite door-knocker put it in the front yard outside her mobile home. She supported some of the party's ideas, like fighting for a better federal relationship, but insisted: "No, I am definitely not a separatist.
"I have a daughter that lives in P.E.I.," Elliott said. "Is she going to be needing a passport to come and see me? Or do I need one to go visit her? I should hope not."
Sonja Farrell is ready to take Alberta out of Canada, and sort out the consequences later. She moved from Ontario two decades ago to attend bible college in Three Hills, and found work in the town post office. When Canada Post mandated she wear a medical mask during the COVID pandemic, that was a sign to Farrell that Canada was headed in the wrong direction.
She was at the independence event, serving up coffee and cookies from the community hall's kitchen.
Her vision of Alberta separatism is less economically centred than others.
"To me I see Alberta being a bit of a beachhead, a place where we can keep that last refuge of freedom or at least start it so that there is freedom in Canada because I think that freedom is going to be a thing of the past."
Frustrations with the pandemic laws seem to have lit a fire for many independence backers. Litke said he'd been a support driver for the Freedom Convoy activists in Coutts, Alta., and wore a "resistance" sweatshirt with a tattered Canadian flag emblem in memory of the convoy.
Jacquie Bargholz said she began attending speaker events during COVID, events that sometimes flouted gathering limits. Some of those same speakers were advocating separatism this month in Three Hills, and she drove from Sundre, more than one hour to the west, to hear them again.
She wore a "More Alberta, Less Ottawa" sweatshirt she picked up at a UCP convention in 2023, though her stance has now evolved to "No Ottawa."
"We can be an independent province. Back then I didn't think that," Bargholz explained.
"I thought we were strong, we're going to stand up for ourselves within Canada. I don't think it can happen any more."
Her adult son Ryan Bargholz joined her in Three Hills. "It's time for us to stand up for ourselves and be on our own, make decisions with our own money and not spend it on Ottawa and Quebec and their happiness."
The mix of locals and visitors at the independence rally was dwarfed by a crowd that gathered earlier that week for a town hall with Premier Smith and Tara Sawyer, the grain farmer running for the UCP in the riding.
In front of more than 300 in the bible college's chapel, Sawyer appeared to warn about Davies's party without naming it. "Some forces are trying to divide us and split the [conservative] vote," she said. "We cannot let that happen."
That event's main draw was the premier, and attendees had many questions for Smith, on everything from health policy and education to wind power and Smith's appointment of Sawyer as a candidate. Fourteen questions in all — and none concerned separation.
In an interview, Davies called Three Hills his "toughest area in the whole riding," and said separatism gets more support in other towns. While some UCP insiders quietly doubt his assertion, there were noticeably more Republican party signs on lawns in the town of Didsbury, a 45-minute drive to the west, than in Three Hills when the CBC news crews rolled through last week.
A Janet Brown Opinion Research survey last month found that 38 per cent of rural Albertans would vote yes to separate in a referendum, compared to 28 per cent in the province overall.
MacDonald, when told CBC News hadn't found as many determined separatists as polls suggest exist in small towns, suggested a trip to Three Hills's agricultural outskirts.
At Harold Bayes's cattle feedlot, the third-generation farmer offered more marriage analogies.
"If we can't get from a contemptuous relationship to a collaborative relationship, at some point and time, the final separation happens, right?" Bayes said at his dining room table.
He feels if there isn't change, especially movement on interprovincial pipelines, "I'd be out the door."
Bayes said he'd likely sign a petition demanding a secession referendum, to "bring the thing to a head" and make the federal government pay attention.
The idea of having Poilievre as his riding's MP after the next byelection doesn't move Bayes much. "It's not like I would think there's a great big perk coming to our constituency just because he's the leader of the Opposition, right?"
Keith Doerksen, his grain farmer friend, said he's getting close to the "enough is enough" point as well.
"There's lots of us with one foot out the door, but we're just waiting for some leadership, federal leadership, to show which way we're going to go."
But Doerksen also believes that Alberta would never separate. Become more autonomous within confederation perhaps, but not leave entirely.
"What's to be gained by creating your own landlocked country?" he asks.
At the entry gates to his cattle farm, Bayes keeps up a Canadian flag and an ultramarine Alberta flag. He'd just replaced both that day, after the old ones had been tattered in the wind.
He's asked if he gives any thought to only keeping the blue one. Not at all, Bayes said.
"I still live in Canada."
