'People are polarized': Families, friendships strained as Alberta's referendum enters final days

Across the street, the federalist crowd that had lingered after the event ended in hopes of catching another glimpse of Carney began to dissipate.

“Carry on,” one man said to Flewell as he walked on past. 

“Oh, don’t even,” a woman shot back after he commented on her enthusiasm for Carney’s visit.

The former oilfield worker seems unfazed. He is used to getting middle fingers from passersby when he drives through town in a truck decked out with pro-independence signs and Alberta flags.

“Us independent people, we’re not violent,” he told the Star. “We love Canada, but, it’s kinda crazy — I love Alberta more.”

Divides over whether Alberta ought to stay in or leave Canada run deeper than the campaign signs dotting its highways and boulevards. It has opened gulfs between community members, relatives and friends and leaving uncertainty hanging over what those relationships, let alone the province itself, will look like after Monday’s vote.

“Oh my heavens — I’ve unfriended several people off Facebook because I can’t stand their posts,” said Sharon Miller, a lifelong Red Deer resident who turned up to see Carney. 

“It’s broken up families, friendships. It’s sad.”

While Miller proudly wore her Canadian pride to see the prime minister, the referendum isn’t an issue she feels she can talk openly about in the community. 

“People are polarized. They are either for or against and they’re passionate.”

For those drawn to the cause of keeping Alberta within Canada, the battle over the province’s future is an emotional one, fuelled by existential questions about what it means to belong and call Alberta home.

It is those feelings that Carney is counting on to help deliver a vote in favour of the country staying together as he prepares to make his final pitch to Albertans at a second rally later Friday in his hometown of Edmonton.

But even while doing so, the prime minister has acknowledged the grievances that fuelled the separatist movement and prompted Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to put the question of independence to a province-wide vote. Speaking at Friday’s gathering in Red Deer, Carney alluded to opposition to the province’s lucrative oil and gas sector, and policy decisions that Carney said made Albertans feel like they didn’t control their own resources. 

“The threads that linked us as a country, some of them frayed because of that. And, you know, what we’re facing on Monday is part of a reflection of that,” Carney said. 

Smith, who appeared alongside Carney in Red Deer, highlighted what she sees as policy progress under the Carney government. She pointed to rollbacks of climate policies her government opposed, Ottawa’s support for the new Pacific Link oil pipeline to the West Coast, and collaboration on housing construction and projects like high speed rail. 

Yet she also raised how she and Carney are at odds over the nine other questions on Monday’s referendum ballot, including initiatives to give the province more say over immigration and judicial appointments, and a demand to abolish the Senate. 

“We don’t always agree on everything. We often disagree quite publicly on several things. But today we can all agree that, on Question 10, we are voting for Option 1: to remain in Canada,” Smith said, referring to the referendum question on whether to hold a future binding vote on Alberta separation.

“This is now a time, a moment in Canadian history, where we are going to be able to work side by side and feel for the first time in a long time Alberta and Canada are walking together,” she said. 

At the federalist rally Thursday night, some spoke of how the referendum campaign had nonetheless unearthed deeply personal rifts within the province.

“I see divisions in families,” said Jacqueline Sheridan, a lifelong Calgary resident who was among the crowd of more than 7,000 that listened to Carney speak at the first of two “Forever Canadian” rallies.

“Some of the cousins I can’t talk to because they’re so separatist and they’re not willing to entertain any other point of view.”

Decked out in a hockey jersey with a Canadian flag draped over his back, Robert Gray left little doubt where he stands. Having lived in Alberta for 50 years, he nevertheless described his surprise, even bewilderment, at seeing neighbours and friends support separation.

“It’s unfortunate, I’ve actually … we’ve backed away from each other, for sure,” he said, before adding, “I don’t know if I call them friends anymore.”

Jonathan Angevine, a fourth-generation Albertan born in Calgary, describes the experience of living through the past several months as one of pain.

“It’s been very divisive. I live in a rural area and it’s very divided. There’s way more division since the referendum came about than even before.”

Carney, like speaker after speaker at Thursday’s rally, focused not on the economic arguments against independence but on Alberta as home.

Angela Saclamacis, who was among the first in line to see the prime minister speak, arriving more than three hours before what would be her first political rally, recalled her father’s pride in the country.

“My father came and immigrated to Canada when he was 13, from Greece, and he was always so proud to be able to say that he was Canadian,” she said.

“To think that would go away for our family, it’s really upsetting.”

If concerns about growing divisions and what it would mean to no longer call themselves Canadian have spurred Albertans to campaign for the country, on Thursday they united around a desire to hear from the prime minister they see as a champion of their cause.

Michelle Senkow has worked as a nurse in the province for more than 40 years. She recalled spending the past winter standing on street corners collecting signatures for the original “Forever Canadian” petition drive launched by founder Thomas Lukaszuk to counter the separatist push.

Despite having undergone two knee replacements, Senkow waited more than two hours in the front row at Calgary’s BMO Centre to hear Carney speak.

And when he was done, she shook his hand.

“I caught him as he was walking through, and I told him, I said, ‘For our grandkids, Mark,’ and he said, ‘Yes, for our grandkids.’ He said it to me. He looked at me sincerely and said that,” she told the Star.

“We’ve got to preserve Canada for everyone.”