Freedom Over All, Against All Sense

"Y'can take our land . . ."

I was staying on a ranch in the Foothills south of Calgary. The rancher, who I had just met this August weekend, was a jovial and gracious host. In his presence, neither ear nor cup was empty for long. He was opinionated and proud, and never more the latter than when he took me for an afternoon hike in his sprawling back forty.

                I am in love with this region. A Saskatchewan immigrant, I’ve always been awed by the Rockies, but the Foothills have just the right blend of home and away that they tug insistently at me.

                An hour up into the hills and grass, we found a valley with bush on one side and sandstone cliffs on the other. We stopped to drink from a spring, around which he’d build as retaining wall for a pipe.

                “This is the water I use to make my wine,” he said, and handed me the A&W mug he left out here. I drank, and truly I had a short list of comparisons for such purity. Especially given the lingering effects of the wine he used this water to produce, proudly poured out in excess the night before.

                We were far enough away that, turning my back on the construction around the spring, I could see no sign of humanity. No fence, road, telephone pole. This prairie was nearly untouched—ignoring the hundred years of cattle grazing—as pristine a patch as you’ll fine in the West. As it appeared to the buffalo and the hunter, before the white man. Perhaps I was kidding myself, but I wanted to believe it very badly just then.

                He told me of the forthcoming deal that he and seventy-one other ranchers were brokering with the Nature Conservancy of Canada, a deal intended to keep this prairie as prairie. That is, free from development. He was in favour of the idea to an extent, but said, “That is unless Mulcair or Trudeau gets in. Or depending how I’m told to use my own land.”  

                I didn’t comment. First, as someone who traditionally votes for the left-wing federal parties, I’ve learned to pick my battles in ultra-conservative S.A., where people tend to look at political parties like sports teams: always stick to your guns and root for the one you always have. And second, because I was a little shocked at how his personal freedom from the intervention of a government—pending, even—or its offices mattered more to him than the preservation at all costs of the nearest thing we have to the untouched out here.

                Freedom over all, against all sense.

               

                The $40 million deal that the NCC signed with the seventy-two ranchers of the Waldron Grazing Co-op (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-ranchers-to-conserve-huge-tract-of-native-grassland-1.2781482) won’t hang in the news for long. It’s not the sort of news that generally interests most Albertans. That 12 000 hectares was purchased for preservation rather than production, to maintain rather than make money. Lack of development doesn’t make big news out here. Those of us who celebrate a piece of undeveloped, unsullied, undrilled (mostly. Let’s not go nuts, it’s Southern Alberta) prairie want to get up and dance. It reads like a great victory against the scar of urban sprawl that has taken the prairies and made it into a wasteland of industry and suburbia. But you can’t avoid the detractors, no matter how insane their arguments. There’s the matter of freedom to consider.

                The rancher I visited is one, a second on the radio yesterday morning also has reservations. If there are two, there are likely more. They signed on, but with questions. They can graze their cattle, but they can’t parcel their land off to be the next suburb of bloated acreages.

                “By saying there will be no development, they’re limiting our freedom.”

                Freedom, ah yes. We’ve got an over-entitled sense of freedom in this province, and an over-active cynicism in the role authority should play in our lives. There’s a vocal Libertarian minority at work out here, railing against any sort of infringement upon our cowboy autonomy. Must be all the American TV. It smacks of the anti-gun control rallies of the 90s. Freedom.

                How can the government dare to horn in on my self-determination?

                Because freedom can be a very bad thing.

                But you should feel blessed, freedom-advocates. Depending on your municipality, if you live in Alberta, you’re likely governed by three levels of government who all claim to stand for your personal liberty in the face of nasty socialist concepts like equality, free health care, and public broadcasting. That is, unless you want to be free to oppose unchecked development, or get an abortion, or have a sexual orientation. Freedom, as defined.

                This little corner of prairie is being preserved by an office that the Harper Government has hardly supported, tried to run off the rails, tried to muzzle, and the ranchers who have made this great step in the right direction are some of them more concerned about their personal land rights (ie, How much they can make off the land at a later date, at triple the price they got from the NCC) than what they’ve done for the good of us all.

                I have a news flash for the Libertarians and self-righteous Braveheart-screamers: your freedom should be limited because it’s not coming for free. Your liberty is costing us dear, and I for one want to see it reigned right in.

                It’s the freedom of unchecked capitalism that that has led this province to allow oil and gas to putrefy our land and water, sicken our people and animals, for the sake of nothing but dollars and excuses and a little bit of nose-thumbing at the hippies. Freedom has convinced us that living in a rich now is worth ignoring environmental repercussions, post-growth crashes, worth torpedoing Heritage Funds in favour of that now.

                It’s freedom to own weaponry for weaponry’s sake that’s led us to believe that we have a right to own instruments that serve no other purpose—not one—but to kill. As many as we want, and in great variety.

                It’s freedom that has created a disparity between entitled wealth and crippling poverty in this country, seeing the rich buy themselves into doctor’s clinics while the poor work full-time and can’t afford prescriptions.

                It’s freedom to think that race, gender, and financial inequality are the fault of the victim, that somehow mental illness and addiction and not being born into a blue chip Mount Royal family are solved by pulling up one’s bootstraps.

                Freedom is the problem. Too much freedom—or, perhaps, the belief that freedom is owed not earned—has seen this land preservation purchase go under-celebrated. Instead of it being a victory for tomorrow (“tomorrow” is a dirty word in Alberta, like “environmental” and “sustainable"), it’s been drug into the mud of personal liberty.

                Tax me, bind me, disarm me, film me. Do it equally across the board. Use the tax money for infrastructure and social services, keep me to the same laws as you do Imperial Oil execs, take away weaponry I never have and never will need, give me evidence to support me if I’m right, to damn me if I’m wrong.

                Because freedom hasn’t been good for us.