When the Going Gets Tough. March 23rd. 2025

   Today the Prime Minister asked the Governor General to dissolve parliament and call an election for April 28th 2025.  On April 28th I will spend most of the day on a jet with Carol and our oldest Granddaughter.  We will be on our way to Paris.  The city of lights.  Our granddaughter  is finished University this year and being a few years older than the other 10 people who call us Granny and  Grandpa we have the means and the health to do this for her now.   I have never been to Paris.  I am so excited I can hardly contain the inside squirm.   And being the lonely Liberal here in this corner of my home and native land,  I shouldn't really have to worry about an election the day we go to Europe.  But if you think Carol and I are going to forego our vote because it doesn't matter anyway,  well I can only assure you you are wrong.   Voting in a Canadian general election has never been more important.  Mostly because of the outside interference in the form of the U.S. government.  

     Now we have been swimming in a deep deep pool of anger and divisiveness for the last few years.  A divisiveness employed by some for political gain.  In Canada, I honestly believe it isn't for personal gain.  Well at least nothing like we have seen south of the border.  But there has been some serious stuff that has gone on globally in the last decade that has made it easy for some to sway the feelings of those of us who don't get a lot of say in things like.....A global recession followed by A global pandemic followed by one natural disaster after another all over the world, followed by an invasion of a peaceful country by one of the worlds military monsters run by a criminal, only to see the good guys select the same sort of person.  No wonder we are all tired, scared, angry.  No wonder some see this as an opportunity to make a little hay.

    So after two paragraphs about that stuff, I want to change directions a little here.  This is all stuff I have said before, but I think the time is right to say it again in a way I hope people hear me.  So here goes.

    That picture up there was taken on September 30th last.  Those other two guys were from Nova Scotia.  We joined the RCMP at the same time and did our training in Regina together 50 years ago.  One of them went to New Brunswick out of training.  And after bouncing around that province for a few years, he went to Baffin Island (what it was called then, still in the North West Territories)  before coming back south to Nova Scotia.  The other went to Newfoundland out of training, where he spent almost all his service with exception to peace keeping duties in the former Yugoslavia.  Peace Keeping.  A Canadian term seldom heard anymore.  Something Canadians did so much better than anyone else.    I was in training with guys from right across Canada.  We lived in a long hall and did everything together.  Not by choice.  Not at the beginning anyway.  And there were days I am sure we hated each other.  But the bond was and remains strong with these two and the other 28 individuals that made up our troop.   And that is very much what Canada is.  A bond....of very different like minded people.  And that isn't the oxymoron it appears to be.

    I am an Albertan.  And there are days I have to say I just don't get my Province.  I don't get that although we are by far the most affluent province -  That we have more work than people to do it most the time.  That we have two top notch universities on the cutting edge of so many scientific discoveries including a cure for type one diabetes That  we have grass lands that produce the finest beef in the world.  That we have an endless supply of soft wood lumber that happens to be atop an almost bottomless supply of crude oil- that in spite of all those things we are certain we are some sort of victim.  That Canada is ripping us off.  That our lives are somehow really hard while people in Ontario and particularly Quebec are somewhere at a sugarbush or sidewalk cafe enjoying the fruits of our labours.   And for what ever reason, Albertan's seem satisfied to have the rest of the country and numerous parts of the globe see us like that.   Here's what I know about Alberta, and Albertans.

   When I was a kid, long before there was a Santa's Anonymous, there was a little Scottish lady in Drayton Valley Alberta.  Every Christmas She fudged the family food budget to buy a turkey, potatoes, fresh veggies, butter, milk, spices and usually made deserts herself such as pumpkin pie.  She would collect toys, and games, and  quality used clothing from neighbours and make up a parcel for a family we would never meet or know.  She would call the RCMP and ask the Detachment commander if they knew a family that required some relief at Christmas time.  It got to the point that the Detachment commander usually advised her there was more than one family.  And so the parcel became two.  As time went on neighbours got involved.  At first there were some toys that were broken and some clothes that were quite worn. They were refused.  But neighbours started to buy one or two new items for the parcels.  Neighbours started to drop off food stuffs and the offer of money was made.  It didn't take any length of time for a neighbourhood to react to the needs of some in an oil town in the middle of a rain forrest.  

   You didn't hit the ditch in the winter, or get stuck in the summer without someone helping you.  I hit the ditch one very cold winters day on a gravel road out to my friends house.  An oil rig passing by stopped, chained me up and pulled me out.  I am talking a whole rig.  The derrick.  And stopped on the road behind him was the tanker, the dog house, and the crew in a crew truck.  Cause although there was a job to do and a short time to get there, Albertans didn't leave someone stranded in the ditch in the middle of winter.  It is no different now than it was then.  

   I was working a back road in central Alberta one Saturday morning about 17 years ago when I came across a severely damaged vehicle in stopped in both lanes.  The operator of the vehicle was a little feisty and a lot intoxicated.  He wanted to take a run at me, and although I am no martial arts expert, I'd been around the block enough I knew how to handle him.  Along came a half ton. A company truck. A battery operator who saw what was happening and stopped to assist me.  A guy I never met ready to get his nose punched...for me.  

   I worked in the Oil field the year before I joined the RCMP.  I was on a construction crew building a battery. I was a labourer long enough to know it took a lot to be a labourer.   Labour is often very difficult to find in Alberta when oil is pricey and the economy is humming.  We had a new Canadian walk into our shop one morning looking for work.  They gave him a brand new hard hat and sent him out in our crew truck.   At noon we sat down with our lunch buckets.... except for our new employee.  I offered him a sandwich to which he respectfully declined.   It was ham.  His religion forbid him eating pork.  So others offered him soup,  hard boiled eggs, cake.  Things from their own lunch.  A lunch that was very much valued by its owner.  But a guys gotta eat and all those hardened physical labourers weren't gonna let the new guy go without.   

    You have to get to know Albertans.  In spite of this image we have given ourselves.  An image we seem to wish to perpetuate.  And when the chips are down as they are about to be, I think you will find the bulk of Albertans are pretty strong and proud Canadians.  But there is that chip, and that chip is not completely unfounded  Hopefully we can get passed it.  

    And the Kicker?  You may very well here almost the exact same stories in rural Quebec, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Newfoundland, Saskatchewan or the other four provinces  and three territories.  And in this moment, we have the opportunity to seize the day and band together as the one people we really are.  Let's face it, when you are less than forty million people spread across the second largest land mass,  there are certain to be differences.  Just like putting 32 young men from across the county in a room and ordering them to do everything in unison.   Either way, it will all come out in the wash.  We are Canadian.  A nation founded on the basic principle that we didn't want to be American.   We want health care.  We want affordable education.  We want respect from the world and one another. 

   It isn't gonna be easy.  But easy isn't being Canadian.  We have elements and distance and differing cultures.  And that's life.  We are all in this together.      ELBOWS UP!