On this day in 1931, talk of secession was floating around the Alberta Legislature.
Bitter grievances with the federal government — both real and imagined — have been a part of Alberta's history since before there was an Alberta to be aggrieved. Frank Oliver, federal cabinet minister and publisher of the Edmonton Bulletin, wrote in 1885 that Canada's treatment of western Canada was "despotism as absolute, or more so, than that which curses Russia."
Edmonton has always been in an odd place when it comes to Alberta's various separatist movements. The city's population as a whole has had little tolerance for the idea, but, given its role as the provincial capital, it has nonetheless hosted many of its moments and key figures.
Some of that has played out in the halls of the Legislature, as with the 1931 debate. The comments came during a discussion about making Port Churchill, MB, a free port of entry to give Alberta more direct access to English markets. A representative from Vegreville accused the federal government of treating Alberta like a "milch cow", milking it of the profits of its agricultural exports. Tensions with the federal government were already high after Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King said he wouldn't give federal unemployment relief to provinces with Conservative governments during the early years of the Great Depression.
The 1970s and '80s are where most would mark the birth of the modern Alberta separatist movement. The grievances were once again mostly over resources, especially after the federal government's National Energy Program, which was seen as a disaster for the province's oil-based economy. While much of the secession movement was centred in Calgary, some of the notable figures came from Edmonton. Among them was Elmer Knutson, a businessman who founded the Western Canada Federation and held rallies that drew hundreds of people (although Knutson himself would claim he wasn't a separatist).
On Nov 20, 1980, a separatist rally drew 2,700 people to Edmonton's Jubilee Auditorium. The "wild" event, as Postmedia columnist Don Braid described it, remains the largest separatist gathering in the province's history.
Separatist sentiment has resurged in the past few years, sparked by opposition to former prime minister Justin Trudeau and continuing after the federal Liberals' election win under Prime Minister Mark Carney. In May 2025, hundreds gathered for another Edmonton separatist rally, this time at the Legislature grounds. There's reason to believe, however, that much of the organizing and communicating is happening online as the pro-separatist Stay Free Alberta gathers signatures for a referendum related to Alberta independence, even though former Edmonton-Castledowns MLA Thomas Lukaszuk's Forever Canadian organization has already gathered more than 400,000 signatures on a petition asking "Do you agree that Alberta should remain within Canada?"
This clipping was found on Vintage Edmonton, a daily look at Edmonton's history from armchair archivist Rev Recluse of Vintage Edmonton.