Fact-based journalism that sparks the Canadian conversation

Articles Business Environment Health Politics Arts & Culture Society

Special Series Hope You’re Well For the Love of the Game Living Rooms In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration Terra Cognita More special series >

For the Love of the Game

In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration

More special series >

Events The Walrus Talks The Walrus Video Room The Walrus Leadership Roundtables The Walrus Leadership Forums Article Club

The Walrus Video Room

The Walrus Leadership Roundtables

The Walrus Leadership Forums

Subscribe Renew your subscription Change your address Magazine Issues Newsletters Podcasts

Renew your subscription

The Walrus Lab Hire The Walrus Lab Amazon First Novel Award

Amazon First Novel Award

What Alberta’s Separatists Can Learn from Newfoundland

The province knows the pull of independence and the compromises that make Canada work

Some years back, I got into a heated debate with a fellow passenger on a flight from St. John’s to Ottawa. We were civil, and it ended amicably—we agreed to disagree—but the lady in the window seat was insistent that the 1948 referendum where Newfoundland broke with nearly a century of precedent, opting for Canada over independence, was rigged. Her claim? That her father swore he witnessed Canadians and Brits burn pro-independence ballots by the truckload.

Prominent historians who made their mark in the discipline across Canada, like Raymond B. Blake and Melvin Baker in their book, Where Once They Stood, or the late Peter Neary in Newfoundland in the North Atlantic World, effectively buried such conspiratorial claims under mounds of archival research. But emotions win over facts, and so the claims persist. Which brings me to last week’s referendum out West.

At 75 percent to 25 percent, the unofficial Alberta results were decisive in favour of staying in Canada, fortunately. In the previous weeks as once-remote provincial political issues found a national platform, Canada’s punditry turned to Quebec’s 1980 and 1995 referenda, and Brexit, for parallels. Even Albertan separatists took heed of lessons from those case studies. Yet, with some admitted bias as a born-and-raised Newfoundlander, I instead turn to the experience of Canada’s tenth province as the precedent that offers the most pertinent insights, one of which is that the rigging myth will persist.

The lesson to learn here is the romanticism of independence is powerful. The notion that a people could have a better fate, in full control of their destiny, naturally carries a romantic pull, one which we all value when put in terms like self-determination or sovereignty.

In any case, accepting that a majority of one’s fellow citizens hold an opposite view of a shared national future can be a hard pill to swallow. We can point to this reality when hearing that, before the votes were even counted, some Albertan separatists were calling into question the integrity of the referendum, while others claimed, both before and since the October 19 result, that the push for independence does not end with the referendum. Newfoundland is no stranger to such experiences.

More recently than most Canadians today could recall, the easternmost province remained a country distinct from their own. But it wasn’t easy. Despite achieving the ability to elect their own government in 1855, Newfoundland voluntarily suspended its democracy in 1934 in the face of economic and political........

© The Walrus