15-05-2025
The oil-rich Canadian cowboys who want their own kind of Brexit
Many of the Albertans who have concluded the province must secede from Canada contemplate the potential breakup of their country with regret, if not outright grief.
Not so Ron Robertson.
The retired police detective and leader of the Independence Party looks forward to the day Alberta, an energy powerhouse often compared to Texas, is unshackled from the rest of the nation.
His quixotic vision, sketched out to The Times over lunch at a Thai restaurant in a small prairie town, is not as outlandish as it once seemed.
Discontent with Canada's political elite has long festered in the western provinces, where residents complain of neglect from the establishment back east, but the oilmen, cowboys and cattle ranchers in Alberta's secessionist movement have been invigorated by
