Thread by @RomboughSunni

I am SICK & TIRED of opportunists drumming up resentment for Ottawa using Albertans distrust for aid from the Feds. @TedMortonMLA is bastardizing Alberta’s history for partisan benefit. @jkenney has often latched on to this theme as well.

Time to debunk lies and reveal the past.

https://twitter.com/jkenney/status/1111649872996757504

The distrust of OLD STOCK Albertans for Ottawa and the 2 main political parties (PC & LP) is well deserved.

Anyone who is a resident here whose family didn’t endure the Great Depression in the 20th century in Alberta & Saskatchewan has no reason to harbor those feelings.

That mistrust is a result of enduring collective memory of Old Stock Albertan and Saskatchewan residents of Eastern politicians complete abandonment during the worst Depression in Canada’s history.

I grew up here and so did my grandmother, during the Great Depression.

When the stock market crashed in October 1929, my Métis family were land owners and farmers in Whitford, Alberta. Not rich, but comfortable. Comparable to modern middle class.

Before the end of the next decade, they lost everything. Selling a dust bowl farm for the taxes.

They traveled further North, closer to family, the parents of my great grandmother, who were squatters on unclaimed land. Using the money from the sale, they bought undeveloped land & turned it into a farm. My grandmother’s experience impacted her for a lifetime.

She was 4th of 13. The early days were difficult. Clearing a forest of trees & brush to create farm land is labour intensive. Hunting & gathering provided food. An abandoned fur trading station was their first home, until her father & brothers finished building the house.

The Depression & drought hit hard. So a new house wasn’t a priority. Clearing the land to grow food was.

My grandmother remembers eating squirrel, gophers and rabbits. Bear meat, badger and once a skunk. They were that desperate for food. This was Alberta in the Dirty 30’s.

But why? Other parts of the country weren’t hit so hard. Why the prairies? Why is Alberta so mistrustful of Easterners, federal govt & 2 major parties.

Because there was an extended drought in Alberta, from 1920’s until the end of the 1930’s and WW2 broke out.

And a volatile wheat market aggravated by tariffs.

What did Alberta farmers grow? Wheat.

Alberta has had a boom and bust economy from its entrance into Canada as an independent province.

Long overlooked by CP & LP politicians because of its “have-not” economy & low population

The double blow of the Great Depression and severe drought didn’t change the neglect.

Alberta is the proud survivor of federal government neglect throughout the 1920’s drought and well into the 1930’s. The federal governments of the day, both Conservative & Liberal abandoned AB.

The federal governments left the Alberta people to fend for themselves. After extended drought and the Great Depression, roughly 90% of farmers were affected. Many lost everything. Some left and moved to BC, or back east for work, where work programs were implemented.

Those who stayed, lived through the worst Depression in the Western world in the region most affected worldwide. Alberta was THE most impacted region in North America & Europe. Look it up.

And the feds abandoned us in our greatest time of need. That’s the source of mistrust.

So, if you didn’t live through that, or descend from those who did, you have no claim to that era. That’s reserved for Albertans who survived it.

Ted Morton is an Albertan, but emigrated from US. Kenney’s family is from Ontario.

They have no right to claim that heritage.

That doesn’t make my family or others who were impacted better Albertans. It makes us the stalwart survivors of a brutal era. Much like every Jewish person has an opinion on the Holocaust, only the survivors & their descendants can rightly claim the collective pain it caused.

So I’ll tell you how we survived it. It’s quite relevant to today’s politics and demonstrates how adulterated Morton’s article & Kennedy’s claims of western alienation really are.

Albertans survived by pulling together. If you had a milking cow, you shared your milk, butter & cream with neighbours. You had chickens, you shared the eggs with your neighbours, and invited many over for dinner when you made soup with the bones.

My grandmother survived by becoming a live in housekeeper at 13 years of age in an urban centre. Her wages were sent back home to the farm to help support her parents & siblings. She was given room & board. Her sisters did likewise at 12-13 years of age.

That’s the meaning of pull up your boot straps. Not extreme independence, it’s everyone helping each other. Everyone pulled up their boot straps and pitched in so they could all survive.

Where do you think the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation political party was born? In Calgary, Alberta 1935. CCF was the parent of modern NDP. And successfully brought attention to Albertan’s plight.

It was Albertan tenacity, INTERdependence & cooperation that created CCF.

It wasn’t austerity and balanced budgets like UCP will have you believe that enabled my family’s survival. It was the spirit of collective power, currently embodied by our Alberta homegrown Premiere, Rachel Notley.

And it’s also why my Métis grandmother was the best cabbage roll roller & perogy maker. It wasn’t her heritage, but the family she boarded with welcomed her with love and compassion. She was a child forced to survive through her labour, but received more than wages in return.

Here’s a prezi to show the level of drought in 1930’s Alberta.

prezi.com/jgonksfctgtm/c…

#BetterfOffWithRachel