Sarah Beley, who lives in Vancouver, reflects on her mother’s funeral in Edmonton and observes how people with diverse views about Alberta's future can coexist peacefully despite their political differences. The event took place nine days after her mother died on July 24, 2025, bringing together long-time friends and acquaintances from both sides of the separatist debate to support each other without letting ideology interfere with personal relationships.
Written locally by qwen2.5:14b on 2026-10-08,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event (that is the story summary below).
My mom’s funeral showed me Alberta is more complicated than its stereotypes
Turning neighbours against one another is not the Alberta I know
This First Person column is written by Sarah Beley, who lives in Vancouver.
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who → show → Vancouver
On July 24, 2025, nine days after my mother died, people with very different ideas about Alberta’s future stood together in a church basement in Edmonton.
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people → die → Edmonton
They cut lemon cake, poured punch and washed dishes.
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They → cut → dishes
Some had known my parents for decades.
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Some → know → decades
Some had watched me grow up.
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me → watch → ?
I had seen some of them post in support of Alberta separatism on Facebook.
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some → see → Facebook
But on that day, nobody stopped to sort the separatists from the federalists before deciding who would clear the tables.
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who → stop → tables
My father worked for Alberta Report, the conservative Edmonton newsmagazine founded by Ted Byfield that gave voice to Western alienation for decades.
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that → work → decades
After my father died, Ted and his wife, Virginia, stayed close to us.
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Ted → die → us
They took me on bike rides to church and quizzed me on spelling words.
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They → take → words
Years later, their son Vincent came to my mother’s funeral.
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son → come → funeral
So when I think about that political world, I do not think first about ideology.
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I → think → ideology
Alberta Report frequently adorned its covers with dramatic headlines and explosive imagery while also adopting the red border most frequently associated with Time magazine.
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Report → adorn → magazine
I think about people.
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I → think → people
My mother remained conservative her whole life, but she never thought of Alberta as something apart from Canada.
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she → remain → Canada
To her, they belonged together.
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they → belong → her
I inherited many of my parents’ political beliefs before I was old enough to decide which ones were my own.
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ones → inherit → beliefs
As a child, I marched with them in anti-abortion rallies.
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I → march → rallies
As an adult, I became pro-choice.
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I → become → adult
As I grew older, many of my beliefs changed.
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many → grow → beliefs
I moved to Vancouver, too.
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I → move → Vancouver
None of it stopped me from loving the people or the place that had shaped me.
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that → stop → me
Over the years, I watched political disagreements become harsher and more personal.
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disagreements → watch → years
It is easy to only know someone through the worst thing they have posted.
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they → know → thing
A person becomes a meme, a slogan, a flag beside a profile picture.
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person → become → picture
Online, it gets ugly fast.
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it → get → ?
I have read comments telling Albertans who oppose separation to leave and move east if they love Canada so much, while separatists are told to leave the country they seem to hate.
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they → read → country
People call each other traitors and argue who truly belongs.
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who → call → other
Then my mother died and suddenly we were all back in the same basement.
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we → die → basement
Some of the people taking care of me believed Alberta would be better off on its own.
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Alberta → take → own
Others saw separation as breaking apart a country they loved.
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they → see → country
Their kindness did not make our political differences unimportant.
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differences → make → ?
It did not make me agree with them.
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me → make → them
But I could not pretend they were strangers either.
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they → pretend → ?
Sometimes the person you strongly disagree with is also the person washing dishes after your mother’s funeral.
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you → disagree → funeral
That makes it harder to flatten people into categories.
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it → make → categories
Beley, third from the left, as a child attending her sister's baptism ceremony in the church her parents helped to found in Edmonton.
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parents → attend → Edmonton
After the funeral, my mother’s house and estate kept bringing me back to Edmonton.
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house → keep → Edmonton
I went back and forth between Vancouver and Alberta, carrying grief one way and paperwork the other.
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I → go → grief
When I tell people in Vancouver that I grew up in Edmonton, I sometimes feel Alberta enters the conversation before I do: oil, pickup trucks, cowboys, conservatives, anger at Ottawa.
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I → tell → Ottawa
…and 35 more, not listed.
The Aporia
