When did standing up for what you believe make you a pariah? When did disagreeing with someone become a reason to question their intelligence, their character or their love for the place they call home?
You can love Canada and believe Alberta is getting a raw deal. You can feel deeply frustrated with Confederation and want substantial change. You can also recognize those frustrations and believe Alberta’s future is best secured by remaining in Canada.
There is room for those conversations. There has to be.
For some, the argument for leaving comes from a conviction that Alberta’s concerns have gone unheard for too long and that a different future would give us more control over our lives. For others, the argument for staying comes from a conviction that our shared country is worth protecting and that change can be achieved within it.
Both deserve a fair hearing. Neither should be dismissed with a sneer.
Wanting to leave does not automatically mean someone hates Canada. Wanting to stay does not mean someone accepts every decision Ottawa makes. People can arrive at different conclusions while caring just as deeply about their families, their communities and this province.
We should be able to challenge an argument without attacking the person making it.
The world feels so angry right now. Watching the riots in France, seeing beautiful streets and communities damaged, I wonder how we reached a point where destruction becomes an answer to frustration. Protests elsewhere in Europe, some accompanied by violence, raise the same concern.
People have the right to protest and demand better from their governments. That right matters. So does recognizing that the people and businesses left dealing with the damage have lives and livelihoods of their own.
Closer to home, spray-painting a sign does not answer the argument printed on it. Insulting someone does not explain why your position is stronger. Humiliating a neighbour does nothing to build a better future beside them.
We cannot keep demanding that people hear us while refusing to listen ourselves.
Then a tragedy happens, and we are reminded of the connections beneath all that anger.
The fire at CFB Wainwright brought terrible loss and suffering to Canadian military members and their families. Military and civilian emergency crews responded together.
Saskatchewan sent resources and offered more if needed. British Columbia offered assistance. When Alberta needed help, our neighbours answered.
That means something to me.
So does what happened within Alberta. Our hospital system mobilized to receive the injured. Ambulances, aircraft and helicopters transported patients, and hospitals in Edmonton, Calgary and Red Deer took patients from Wainwright.
Listening to Dr. Sayeh Zielke, interim chief executive officer of Acute Care Alberta, at the news conference, what stood out was her explanation of how the system responded to the emergency while continuing to care for other patients.
Our hospitals, emergency medical services crews, doctors and nurses rose to meet an extraordinary tragedy. The system mobilized, and its people stepped up.
We spend so much time talking about what is broken that we sometimes forget to recognize what works.
What I saw was a province that loves its people, with health-care workers ready to care for them in their darkest hours.
Why can’t we come together with that same sense of purpose every day? Why should it take a tragedy to remind us of our responsibility to one another?
It brought me back to a conversation over dinner in Calgary during Stampede with a lawyer.
She is not from Alberta. What she told me she loves about this province is its can-do attitude.
In her view, when things get tough, Albertans roll up their sleeves and get to work. She contrasted that with an attitude she has encountered elsewhere, where she feels more energy sometimes goes into dwelling on grievances than finding a way forward.
That was her assessment. I had not thought about Alberta in those terms before, but the more I considered it, the more I thought she had recognized something important about us.
I see strength in that willingness to tackle a problem, in people who believe they have something to contribute and the ability to make things better.
Surely we can bring that same determination to finding common ground.
This province feels so divided. Yet we want many of the same things: safe communities, opportunities for our children and a future in which our families can thrive. Those shared hopes give us somewhere to begin.
Whatever box you marked, the person who marked the other one is still your neighbour. Their children still matter. Their worries deserve to be heard. Their hopes for this province are no less personal than yours.
Unity does not require us to think alike. Finding common ground does not mean surrendering our beliefs. It means recognizing that we live in the same province and have to find a way forward together.
I want us to stand up for what we believe, ask difficult questions and expect honest answers. I also want us to remember that loving Alberta and caring about Canada can take more than one form.
If we are the can-do province, surely we can disagree without tearing one another apart. My heart hurts for everyone affected by the tragedy in Wainwright, a loss felt across Canada.