Loving Saskatchewan Living in Alberta

I’m from Saskatchewan and I live in Alberta.

And suddenly half of you are breaking out in guffaws. Now why is that?

Let me say, this is not about the Grey Cup. I’m writing this before the game, but it’ll be posted afterwards, and regardless of the outcome, this is not about the game. This is about what I’m hearing about people like myself, born in that beautiful near-rectangle to the east. For in the lead-up to the Grey Cup weekend in Calgary—possibly because our team beat their team—the nastiness that is here all year got turned up a notch. I’d like to address it.

But, I’m going to address it without the “I know you are what am I” attacks. So let’s get this out of the way: I like living in Alberta. Seriously.

Do I miss the province of my birth? Dearly.

Would I move back there? To the right place, say Saskatoon or Shaunavon, yeah.

“So if it’s so great, why do you live here?” Because I like it, and I have a very good job.

When I moved out here, I had two interviews lined up, one for in Alberta and one for in Regina; Alberta offered first. I stayed because within six months I had met my future wife.

What always gets me is this condescension I get whenever I tell somebody I’m from Saskatchewan, like I’m the slow little brother who demands pity. Too bad.

You know when you travel and you meet an American and they pull that attitude—y’know, that “you’re not from anywhere interesting” attitude—on you? That’s how it feels. Guess what, you know that mix of pity and contempt you feel for the Yank then? Yeah.

See, I’m proud of where I’m from. I grew up on a farm and in a small town and I loved the area. I love farming, I love the space, I love the neighbourly camaraderie.

There’s that laughter again.

“Isn’t everywhere in Saskatchewan small, isn’t everything a farm?”

Yep, there are lots of small towns. But I challenge you to find a place with more community pride than Shaunavon, the place with less than 2,000 people in which I spent my youth. I mean, Strathmore has 11,000 people and the only civic pride we see is when we all unite to criticize the mayor and town council. When they berate us and attack us for questioning them because the only public works they do is housing development, and the only green-spaces we have are a slough that they want to see turned into duplexes, you have to wonder. Community pride? Shaunavon has this ambitious I ♥ Shaunavon campaign that really has gone to a lot of work to promote the place, while Strathmore spent its centennial arguing whether or not town council should be allowed to build itself a new town hall on one of our ball diamonds. Swell.

Oh yeah, I’m a bit blinded by nostalgia, but I’m sad too. I mean, I used to love it when people mocked my home province’s Socialist government, its lack of over-crowded, sprawling cities, its open space. Urbanites didn’t get it. People who view Calgary as a metropolis and a heart of all things cosmopolitan didn’t get it. Suited me just fine. But after I left Saskatchewan they elected a Conservative government worse than the Reform Party, and they opened up their own tar sands monstrosity. Great, Saskatchewan would soon be appearing on the world stage for all the wrong reasons.

Point is, I was glad people in Alberta didn’t get it, because then they couldn’t ruin it with their golf courses and their ready-made acreage communities and their five-dollar-coffee shops. But then we went and ruined it on our own by letting the people who wanted it to be Alberta take over. Sigh. Alberta works in Alberta, not in Saskatchewan.

Alberta has farmers, Alberta has flat prairie, Alberta has backwards moralistic groups. But that all gets ignored when given the chance to trudge out an old cliché about hillbillies or dogs running away.

What saddens me most is people actually believe that those of us raised in the beautiful green province really are dumb and uncultured. My mother has spent four fifths of her life on a farm, and you won’t find a more worldly, learned woman anywhere. Same went for her own mother, who grew up before women’s liberation and was married to an old-fashioned Catholic, spending nearly forty years raising kids. Most of my best friends from home have their Masters degrees, some their Doctorates. And like me, many have done homework in a grain truck at some point in life. CEOs, doctors, school administrators, lawyers, the running joke in any professional setting in Alberta is to count the number of us who grew up in Saskatchewan. These are hardly the doofi of the labour force here in Alberta.

Culture? You’d be hard-pressed to find a pair of more culturally-active cities than Saskatoon and Regina. But, yes, that might have something to do with their socially-conscious citizens. Calgary is having trouble keeping its art galleries open because half the city’s population thinks “culture” is spending oil money on an expensive sushi dinner. But I said I wouldn’t get nasty. Edmonton rocks, at least. But then it reminds me of Saskatoon . . .

I love living here, but I’m bored of the patronizing from people who’ve never even been to Saskatchewan.

Here’s the reality: we’re not proud of where we’re from because of some underdog sense of survival when wide-eyed in the big city. We’re proud because it’s a good place. People underestimate it because of their own prejudices (and to deal with their own insecurity when compared with Vancouver, let’s face it). You won’t take that away from us, no matter how you belittle us. I feel that I had a sound, moral, irreligious upbringing in a gorgeous, peaceful province where beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and if an ocean of prairie, of unending sky and the whisper of summer wind is not for you, well, who asked you?

We’re friendly and we’re happy, and we’re treated like morons. But then, Newfies are the friendliest and happiest people in the country, and they’re treated like second-class citizens.

You’re right, we live in Alberta now. That’s because we’ve got good jobs and because it’s a nice province. Conservatives governments, the ultra-religious Right and tar-sand pollution aside, it’s fantastic. And I’d have all three if I was still in Saskatchewan. Those, and rats. That is, instead of the myth of a rat-free province (but don’t get me started on that silliness).

So thanks, Alberta. Like our grandparents generations ago who came to Canada from Europe, we who’ve moved to Alberta have to suffer the prejudices of those already here. We’ll bring our own culture and morals and intelligence and work ethic and we’ll be mocked for them. But the Newfies and us, we’re just going to smile, because where we’re from made us who we are, and we’ve brought that here. If this province is getting better, well, our influence has to be felt.

Don’t worry, we know we won’t hear it, we don’t need to. But we feel all the richer for being able to love mountains and prairie for what they are, different, but beautiful for all their own reasons.

Oh, and now and forever, Go Riders!