How anti-COVID activism injected life into Alberta's separatist movement
asserted
activism → inject → movement
They fought vaccines and public health restrictions.
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They → fight → vaccines
Then, their freedom fight turned to independence
Chris couldn’t serve diners in his café.
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Chris → turn → café
Mitch couldn’t sell hockey sticks or rifles.
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Mitch → sell → sticks
Nick couldn’t ride bulls.
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Nick → ride → bulls
Bonnie couldn’t walk without a cane, and blamed “the jab.”
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Bonnie → walk → jab
Art couldn’t help but recall his dad’s Second World War persecution.
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Art → help → persecution
The COVID-19 pandemic had myriad social, economic and political effects around the world.
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pandemic → have → world
But Alberta may be the only place it helped spawn a separatist movement.
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it → help → movement
Proverbially, it was the same radioactive spider bite that powered so many ordinary Albertans into becoming fighters for a cause.
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that → power → cause
Sure, there’s a long history of separatism that stretches back to Alberta’s founding in 1905, got inflamed anew by Ottawa energy policy of the 1980s, and then again by climate action more recently.
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that → ’ → action
The timeline of western alienation may be long, but for so many Alberta separatists their trajectories really began in 2020 and 2021.
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trajectories → begin → 2020
Polling ahead of the Oct. 19 referendum suggests the separatist cohort is a minority of residents now, just as the COVID policy critics and the vaccine-wary were in the minority then.
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critics → suggest → minority
But they’re just as riled up and disgusted by the mainstream Canadian status quo as they were five or six years ago, converting their personal disgust into political action.
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they → ’re → action
“Most people are like that,” reasons Chris Scott, leader of the sovereignist group Let’s Talk Alberta.
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’s → reason → group
“They ignore things around them until it affects them personally, until they have a reason to get involved.”
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they → ignore → reason
Scott’s COVID origin story might be the best known.
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story → know → ?
He defied indoor dining restrictions at his Whistle Stop Café in Mirror, Alta., then ignored a 2021 closure order, then got arrested after leading a protest outside his restaurant.
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He → defy → restaurant
Then, he fought a lengthy and successful court case against his charges.
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he → fight → charges
Chris Scott was arrested in May 2021 after leading this protest outside his café in Mirror, Alta., which health authorities had targeted over violating pandemic public health measures.
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authorities → arrest → measures
Before all that, Scott said his only political activity was casually talking smack online against progressives.
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activity → say → progressives
But he was jolted into doing more after the public health rules he didn’t believe in.
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he → jolt → rules
“It kind of shattered my illusion of what I thought a free Canada was,” he told CBC News in a recent interview.
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he → shatter → interview
Images from the 2021 protest show glimpses of the separatist leader Scott would become.
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Scott → show → leader
A blue Alberta flag flapped on the pole outside his restaurant, where a maple leaf might typically fly.
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leaf → flap → restaurant
Around the protest hung banners saying “Alberta strong and free.”
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banners → hang → Alberta
Before long, he became a key figure in Alberta Prosperity Project, the group behind the 300,000-signature petition that helped push Premier Danielle Smith to schedule this month’s referendum on holding a binding separatism vote in the future.
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that → become → future
Here is Scott’s logical bridge from his restaurant having to close to wanting an independent Alberta: “If Alberta was fully sovereign, and the federal government wasn't interfering, we could make sure that we have the rights and freedom that we thought we had before.”
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we → have → rights
It was, however, the provincial policies of then-premier Jason Kenney that forced restrictions on the Whistle Stop, albeit based on federal public health recommendations.
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that → force → recommendations
Among APP’s founders is Dennis Modry, the retired Edmonton surgeon who’d emerged in the COVID skeptic community with a prominent and contentious open letter in 2020 to Jason Kenney.
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who → emerge → Kenney
Chris Scott live-streams from the Let's Talk Alberta tour through small towns east of Calgary.
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's → let → Calgary
Scott took his Let’s Talk Alberta RV tour in mid-September to a banquet hall in northeast Calgary, where Bonnie Meikle worked the registration and pro-independence pamphlet desk, as she often does.
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she → take → desk
She used to work in foodservice at a Ponoka medical centre, and Alberta Health Service’s COVID mandate forced her to get a vaccine she didn’t trust, or lose her job.
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she → use → job
Meikle got what she derisively calls “the jab,” and lost her job anyway — because she says she soon lost much of the cartilage in her knees.
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she → get → knees
She attributes that, and co-workers dying, to vaccines.
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workers → attribute → vaccines
“Of course, you can't necessarily prove anything, but I was seeing these things happen around me,” Meikle said.
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Meikle → prove → me
She supported 2022’s COVID-related convoy protests in Ottawa and Coutts, Alta., but said the law-enforcement response to it “broke” her.
“I learned that the Canada I lived in wasn’t the country that I thought it was,” she said.
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she → support → that
Organizers at Scott’s Calgary event on a Tuesday night last month put out banquet chairs for 200 people, but around 50 showed up.
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50 → put → people
By show of hands more people told Scott they’d been to a dozen or more independence events than were there for the first time.
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they → tell → time
Nick Klinck, a heavy equipment operator, was impressed enough that when Scott sent donation buckets around, he pulled a $100 bill out of his wallet.
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he → send → wallet
…and 82 more, not listed.
The Aporia
