We have seen the last generation of Albertans that can prosper with only a strong back and a high school diploma.

You can see the backlash to that now; it’s called the UCP, it’s the anti-lockdown crowd, it’s the “Freedom” convoys getting stuck on the High Level Bridge.

We are going through the same sort of upheaval that Atlantic Canada knows so well.

Working men, with no work left to do; living in a world of hurt and sacrifice and broken promises and busted bank accounts.

There’s a great Stan Rogers song “The Idiot” that describes a Maritimer coming out west to work at a refinery.

(You Morris dancers will already know what I’m talking about.)

“So I bid farewell to the Eastern town
I never more will see
But work I must so I eat this dust
And breathe refinery
Oh I miss the green and the woods and streams
And I don’t like cowboy clothes
But I like being free and that makes me
An idiot, I suppose”

Stan was an incredible poet and in that song he captures the pride of men who will do whatever it takes, work as hard as they must, to make their own way in the world.

It also captures the despair when livelihoods are taken away by forces outside their control.

We all know those Maritime diaspora.

They’re our neighbours and friends and coworkers now.

So first the cod, now this...

Alberta is creating its own diaspora now.

Some of it is beyond any control.

Some of it is a result of bad policy choices. (Doctors of Alberta we will miss you).

Some of it is in response to the frenzied political atmosphere of our province.

We are in a dark time, let’s make no mistake about that.

Those GED ready jobs are vanishing, killed off by cost cuts and automation, buried by low commodity prices.

Add to that the dead loss effect of Covid 19 and I’m not surprised that people are really angry.

I’m also not surprised that in that anger some people appear to have lost all reason.

Some may never have had any to begin with.

But many others are swept up in the waves of anxiety and resentment that are perfectly reasonable and easily amplified.

Too bad that anger is not going to solve a God Damn thing.

Alberta without oil is Saskatchewan with bad agriculture.

Saskatchewan struggles with 1 million people.

Alberta has 4.7 million.

If we carry on down the course we’re on - milking the Province for extraction companies, throwing away our education sector, picking fights with the inevitability of the move away from non-renewable fuels - we’re fucked, plain and simple.

I wonder about the “Idiot” in Stan’s song, if he had maybe gone back to school, learned to code, if he wouldn’t be retired now; living near the water in his home town.

And I wonder for my kids, whether or not there’s a future for them here or if they’ll be part of the great Alberta diaspora, wearing their Oilers and Flames jerseys on Granville or Bloor.