Letter: Westerners need to stand up

By Letter to the Editor on July 9, 2021.

Dear editor,

Where is all that cheering, laughing, and high fiving coming from? Oh, it’s David Suzuki, Elizabeth May, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Federation, the Greta Thurnbergs of the world, academics, Trudeau and his entourage rejoicing that the western oil industry, and with it the economies of Alberta and Saskatchewan, have been eviscerated and driven into the ground!

Their wildest dreams have been answered. Before you hop on that bandwagon, be careful what you wish for. I remember living in Alberta prior to the development of the Alberta petroleum industry. I can tell you from first hand experience it was a minimal existence. The standard of living in many cases was far, far less than what welfare recipients receive today. My old dad worked 5 1/2 days a week at a steady job and earned about $50 per month. My family of four lived in the City of Medicine Hat on Eighth Street SW in a one-room shack that had a door but no windows. No electricity, no sewer, no furnace, no hot water tank, no toilet, no bathtub, no washing machine, no bus service, no sidewalk, no street lights and no paved road. We had only natural gas, cold water and an out house. When we moved to a better accommodation it was to a single garage that my father built, still one room, same outhouse.

But hey, the garage had one window! The prairies have been shafted by the federal government since day one and have been ever since right up to today. I can only hope and pray that the current generation of Albertans have more balls than my generation and rebel at being a colony of the Laurentian Elite. Albertans must demand real and significant changes immediately to the predatory system we westerners have been forced to live under. Separation being Plan B and a bright light at the end of the tunnel.

John MacLaren

Medicine Hat

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