If the Alberta Prosperity Project hoped to hold the largest public protest in Alberta history yesterday, as some organizers of the “independence rally” that took place in front of the Legislative Building in Edmonton boasted on social media last week, they came up short.
The turnout at the late-afternoon separatist rally was clearly smaller than last Thursday’s huge demonstration of support of Alberta’s striking school teachers. I can say that with confidence because I wandered through both crowds at their busiest times.
Still, at its height, APP’s demonstration Saturday nevertheless attracted a significant crowd. So a tip of the blue independence ball cap to the organizers, I guess.
Thursday’s protest, while focused on the United Conservative Party’s underfunding of education and refusal to budge in negotiations with the striking Alberta Teachers Association members, also had plenty of evidence of Canadian patriotism – with many Maple Leaf Flags, plentiful petition gathers from the Forever Canadian campaign, and home-made signs condemning the UCP’s focus on fighting with the federal government. Most participants dressed in red.
Yesterday’s demo, of course, had a strong anti-Canadian vibe, with any mention of a Trudeau, father or son, generating automatic catcalls, shouts of No! any time a speaker asked rhetorically if anyone there wanted to remain in Canada, and the usual flags suggesting a need to F this or that Liberal prime minister. Most participants dressed in blue.
Both events’ organizers bused in supporters from out of town, although by the look of the crowd yesterday, almost everyone there came from outside Edmonton.
The speeches yesterday are not really worth trying to quote – passionate claims that Alberta is getting a raw deal from Canada followed by pie-in-the-sky promises that everything will be just grand and we’ll all be big winners if only we set up our own country, become the 51st state, or whatever.
In other words, exactly what you’d expect from a movement drenched in the same post-pandemic MAGA ideology beamed north into Canada as we heard during the 2022 convoy protests that wracked the country. Judging from the homemade signs, COVID-19 vaccination rates were probably pretty low in that crowd too.
Still, I’m surprised and disappointed Edmonton media seems to have paid so little attention to the event – lending some credence to the signs held by many protesters that proclaimed “We are the Media Now!”
The contrast was interesting: Thursday’s red-clad crowd, while angry at the UCP and upset about the dire underfunded state of public education, was upbeat and hopeful. These are people, after all, who by definition value the benefits of education. There were lots of smiles. There were no counter-protesters.
The blue-hatted crowd skewed older, whiter, more rural, more pessimistic, and angrier. There were almost no smiles. And if there had been, none of them would have been directed at the group of counter-protesters who showed up. There were two guys with rude flags on horses, lending a stereotypical Alberta touch to the separatist rally.
On Thursday, a dozen or so Legislature security officers wandered through the crowd.
On Saturday, there was a heavy presence of Edmonton Police and Alberta Sheriffs, with a group of a couple of dozen apparently assigned just to keep the crowd away from the counter-protesters.
It’s pretty easy to deduce to which group law enforcement assigned the greatest potential for trouble.
It’s important to remember that many of the complaints and fears voiced by members of Saturday’s crowd – as illustrated in this short CBC news clip, the only media coverage of the event I could find last night – are real and legitimate. There were many there yesterday who are not faring well economically under 21st Century neoliberalism, Alberta-style.
They are being told by the people on the steps of the Legislature that everything will be better if only Alberta becomes a landlocked petro-republic or a 51st state of a United States on the verge of civil war – and Donald Trump is anxious to help them. Readers can be the judge of how likely that is to work out well.
Well, at least someone was making bank selling dark blue Alberta flags. So things may not be copacetic in rural Alberta just now, but the entrepreneurial spirit is apparently still alive.
