Because I am a Kjolberg

I call myself Norwegian. I eat lefse and lutefisk at Christmas. In times of duress, I often mutter “Uff-da.” I have blonde hair and blue eyes, a decidedly pronounced brow. Left to its own devices, the hair on that brow would have me looking like a Flash Gordon villain. Why?

                Because I am a Kjolberg.

                Ah, but what is a Kjolberg? Or what was/is a Kjølberg? A Kjolberg is one who, brow aside, is defined as one descended from a large family, a family rooted to a farm near a hill near Fredrikstad, on the Oslofjord in Norway. Kjølberg is a farm—and a family—named for the nearby hill that looks like the hull of an upside down ship.

                Kjøl=keel

                Berg=hill

                It is a well-known landmark in the region. So famous in the area that there is a school and a street named for it, that when I lost my way once I needed to only say the name (more like “shell-berg” in Norske) and was pointed to it. In 2001 I visited it and had my photo taken in front of my great-grandfather’s boyhood home and climbed that hill, in 2007 I lay my grandmother’s ashes upon that hill, and in 2014 I visited that spot with her daughter—my mother—and her great-grandchildren—my sons.

                I tie myself, by a rope that runs a quarter-length of my identity, to a young man named Gunder who was born on that farm, in sight of that name-giving hill, who would settle via the northern United States near Instow, Saskatchewan. I tie myself and my boys through Louise, through Gloria to Gunder.

                Because I am a Kjolberg.

                My link, my mother—a woman good enough to marry another Norwegian descendent whose own name is derived from Norwegian farms involving hills, thus doubling my 3^rd generation Norseness—is the link. Through her, and through Gloria.

                Because she was a Kjolberg.

                Gloria was and remains my muse. I owe much of what I am to her and to my mother, my personality stamped with their values as it was with their DNA, as if the goodness in me I derive from them is in some way compensating for eyebrows that will one-day require hedge-trimmers.

                My art, my values, the way I love. My ideologies, my lifestyle, my outlook. Many of the philosophies I live by today are rooted in things Gloria said to me in a too-short quarter century.

                “A real man shouldn’t be afraid to cry.”

                “Of course you’ll write about it—it’s what you do. You’re a writer.”

                “Your sensitivity is what makes you a good person.”

                “Stop not feeling good enough and start feeling good about being you, because you make me feel damn foolish for loving you so much when you don’t.”  

                Because she was a Kjolberg.

                One of the passions that came from her is my obsession with our heritage, especially because it was something I shared with both my parents. As early as I can remember I recall an interest and an intrigue in the Old Country, in the mythic place where people ate more fish and talked a different language, and found the farming options so lacking that two of my great-grandfathers left it in a few short years of each other to settle within a few miles away of each other.

                When Gloria’s aunt passed away in 1995, her cousins chose to spend the inheritance to bring her, her brothers, and the American Kjolbergs—those known at the time—to Norway, to the farm, to the hill.

                Because they were all Kjolbergs.

                When I went there in 2001, fresh from university, I was welcomed as close kin by Kolstads and Haugens and, yes, by Kjølbergs. They welcomed and loved me, because we shared that link, that blood.

                To be a Kjolberg, I have noted, means to be informed, intelligent, gentle. Often political, always opinionated. Kjolbergs are good speakers, some are great listeners. They value a meal and a sunny day.

                My earliest memories of my grand-uncles Gary and Ken involve being spoken to as a rational and intelligent person, disregarding my youth. Despite our near-opposite ideologies, Gary and I would spend much of the time we had together at family functions conversing about mutual interests. He never spoke down to me—as a boy, as a teen, as a man—when we spoke about politics, history, geography, or of the Norwegian versions of all three. He always showed respect, and from him, from our modern patriarch, I have learned respect even in disagreement. I marvel, having grown up with two brothers and a cousin who many in my world couldn’t tell apart from myself, at how Gary and his wife and their children have always spoken to me with individual interest and respect, even when years have separated visits. It’s how they treat everyone.

                Because they are Kjolbergs.

                Ken is gentle, wise, possessed of a delicate and caring manner that calms any room he enters. He is a man of peace. He worked in the same field as my mother, his daughters blend in at every gathering like aunts of my own, his son is a delight as in touch with his Canadian heritage as I am with my Norwegian. This summer at a reunion, I watched Ken make men I love dearest in the world bawl like babies after he told them how much he loves them, thinks of them, and prays for them every day. He is a good man.

                Because he is a Kjolberg.

                One of my greatest memories is returning—at 23—from Norway, and being sat and debriefed by these two men. I shared it with them, I got it. I had been a part of this great memory they shared with my grandmother. We held court, we discussed, we laughed, we debated.

                Because that is what Kjolbergs do.

                I had made a connection with their cousins—Olav, Reidar, Helge, Per, Berit—and their extended families. Cousins, family, peers separated only by an ocean, men and women much the same as these. People who would have such an influence and effect on my life that it would boggle the mind that I see them only once every seven or so years. Names like Olav and Magnus, Else-Christin and Jan-Christian, Monika and Hans-Peter get said in my house on a daily basis. These are our family, our Norwegian cousins. Intelligent, gentle, tall. Kjolbergs.

                One of my greatest friendships and greatest losses was one of these, a Norwegian cousin who became a friend far greater than either of us had expected, gone too soon, gone the same week as my youngest son was born. We built our friendship around talks, around debates, around music, around drinks and laughs in Norway, Sweden, Canada, and Taiwan.

                Because he was a Kjolberg.

                The farm, the Instow heritage, visited for the first time this summer by young Ryan—filmmaker, artist, pure and regal Viking, tall, because he is a Kjolberg—a place of peace, wonder, love, and fine meals.

                Great Grandpa Gunder and his Jenny, Al and Rick. Quiet and respectful, loving, decent. I recall humbugs and leather-armed grey chairs, turkey dinners and full laughs at TV shows on CBC, tee-hee tickles and “Hello, Paul” said through clenched teeth, light beer at the King’s on a Saturday night with Scott, and plaid to envy my own grunge-era fashion sense.

                Because to me these were the first Kjolbergs.

                Last summer with the Norwegians, this summer with the North Americans—including the recently-discovered and loved Perttula clan—we share this walk, this identity. Our beloved Uncle Gary ails, Ken speaks about feeling his own mortality, Gloria is gone these thirteen (!) years, her sisters lost to stories outside my memory, all of us wonder still at seeing Al without Rick despite four years of time, and Margaret’s family cross the bridge of her connection to visit us when she cannot.

                We are Kjolbergs.

                We are engineers, managers, clerks, health care workers, teachers (so many!), artists, painters, entrepreneurs, musicians, gardeners, talkers, writers, workers, and—of course—farmers. We are intelligent, caring, compassionate, loving, argumentative and—in all male cases but mine—tall.   

                This is what it means to be a Kjolberg. That an identity that makes up a quarter of who I am can so define me, so influence me.  It is an identity I value because it is something I feel I must live up to. Earn. Every day I hear Olav’s accented English in my head. Every day I hear Magnus say “cheers.” Every day I hear Uncle Rick’s laugh. Every day I see my grandmother in my dreams.

                I’ve never told anyone this. When Grandpa Gunder died I was not yet seven. I started having recurring dreams. I’d enter this hall on a cold, wintry night, and all my relatives past and gone would be there, waiting for something. I’d arrive and have trouble seeing their faces, but one thing that happened again and again was time would pass and Gunder would come in, young and lively, a farmer resembling more my father in his 30s than the man who died old when I was young. He’d see me and say, “There’s my boy.” And then he’d embrace me because my grandmother told me that he was a man who could cry, and thus a man who could hug. Years later, the night my grandmother died—I was living in Asia and it had only been a year since my first trip to Norway—I dreamed of the hall again. There she was, the glory that was Gloria, and this time she welcomed me into the hall. Again Gunder was there, but this time seated at the head rather than arriving late, as if something had been righted in his world. (Of course I was reminded of the story my grandmother used to tell about feeling his presence, just behind you, just there, for the nine years between his own death and Great Grandma Jenny’s). But it was about Grandma, bringing me in, making me home before all of those faceless, passed-on relatives stretching back to King Harald for all I could tell. And she and they welcomed me, raised a horn, said hello.

                Because we are all Kjolbergs.

                

Inside Shoes

Inside Shoes

                For J.

                On the last day of school, only his second last day of school ever, he wore home his inside shoes.

                Only his second pair of inside shoes ever.

Bursting out of the school, in an ocean of screaming and laughing that stretches back and shudders awake an inner sleeping child.

                “Now these are my outside shoes!”

               

Purchased lovingly, giddily, even reverently in the fall.

                “What a lucky boy to have two new pairs of shoes!”

                One for outside, one for in.

                Over time, the outer dirtied, scuffed torn.

                Its twin twins forgotten, the outside set battered deep into October.

                Replaced by new boots.

                “He outgrows things so quickly!”

                Then back out come the outside shoes, tentatively, once in March half of April, permanently in May (when not substituted for rubber boots).

                June, finally.

                Baseball and soccer and bikes and outside and dirt and chasing and falling and looking and watching and play, play, play.

                Oh, to be a boy again!

                (Oh, if he’d only stay a boy forever!)

                Limping into June, falling apart, soles glued together.

                The last day of school, then, and the Inside shoes return

Like sailors full of stories,

                Stowed safely on some foreign beach.

                Kept safe, safer even than the worrying twin!

                Raised by a foreign duke, filled full of his wisdom,

                Then set off for home.

                Forgotten. Unfamiliar, pristine, unsullied. Unknowing of nature and daylight.

                And for a second year

                —twice makes custom—

                He declares these his summer shoes.

                They’ve graduated.

               

                We hear, we see. We feel, we know.

                Inside shoes to mark the passing of time.

                Markers of another year that slipped us by.

                Another year older.

                Shoes to run alongside wall height charts and report cards and chapter books and food bills and notes from girls.

                We long to push departure and return of inside shoes further and further apart

                To put one on each foot of the colossus, have him stretch the meetings of shoes and time

                Far, far apart

                Shoes on bronze feet

                Bookend the year to infinity

                

One Morning I Woke Up and I Just Wasn't As Mad Anymore . . .

I’m going to disappoint a few of the people who like to read my blog for its sometime (of late,

Initially these oranges were on the right side of your page, but that felt wrong. 

frequent) political commentary. People looking for my response to the result from Alberta’s provincial election on May 5. This anticipation is borne from—and I won’t apologize for this—my known utter disdain for the incumbent party and its (then) new premier, their disastrous and uninventive proposed budget, their cronyism, their corruption, their contempt for the average Albertan. Perhaps the anticipated result would be me exploding in a rave of pro-Notley huzzahs to balance a month of anti-PC rants.

                I didn’t do that, and I won’t.

                The reason is this: I am not and never have been a pure ideologue. I feel supporting a single party every election is the worst kind of democratic sin—that is, after taking no part at all. I am not partisan. I simply vote for the candidate in a given election who I feel best represents my own values. Traditionally, those values have been found in the parties on left, but not exclusively and not because they are the parties on the left.

                I suppose it sounds dubious considering how emphatically I was bashing all things Prentice to say I’m not partisan, and there’s no doubt I was elated that the NDP was elected. I hate that that elation came from negativity because though I support the majority of NDP policies, this was just secondary. I felt the Prentice PC policies—that budget as the iceberg’s tip—were so destructive for our province, and the Wild Rose more of the same only worse that near anything would have been better. I’m cautiously optimistic about Rachel Notley as premier in that she can in four years undo some of the damage the PCs of late have done and were determined to do. I’m hopeful.

                But that’s really all I have to say about our new NDP government. For the remainder I wish to tell you a story.

                When I woke up on the morning of May 6, I didn’t know what to feel. I have lived in this province for twelve years, and I had resented its ideological and political values for at least a decade longer than that.

                For as long as I have lived here I’ve been embarrassed about one thing: how Albertans vote. That in keeping this party in power so long, especially since 1993, Albertans were telling the rest of the country and the world that we valued oil over the environment, money over services, that we cared not a whit about the needs of our fellow man. Poor people are poor because they’re lazy. A place of maddening contradictions, where the south is rife with religious extremism that preaches loving your brother and yet politically supports the two(!) parties on the right whose mantras are “Mine, mine, mine.”

                I didn’t know what to feel on May 6. I had suddenly awakened to a world gone surprisingly sane. Alberta was making sense. The joke was so old I didn’t know why it was funny anymore, and then suddenly it was gone. Poof. No joke. A party that wanted to cut services to the public, insulate private interests, and tell Albertans what they think had gone to those Albertans with a contemptuous request: "More."

                And Albertans said no.

                Like a high school rebel always bristling against conformity, always challenging any authority, I’d grown so used to being angry at the power at the top that I was unprepared for a time when I agreed with the majority, when I accepted the decisions of the leadership.

                I’d like to say that a weight was lifted, but really it was confusion. When you’re mad at something for so long, when it’s gone you feel a void.

                I found myself wondering what the Rebels did after the Death Star was gone, after Darth Vader and the Emperor were dead. When your energy is so focussed for so long against something, where do you turn it afterward?

                I’ll admit that it’s a nice problem to have, once the initial surrealism has passed. For almost a month I have found myself realizing that it was not all a dream, that we’ve come to our senses. I’m no longer proud with a catch of living in Alberta. My every day is not approached with irony.

                I know it’s going to be a long four years, and the new leadership walks a razor’s edge to not do too much and yet still do enough, to not just see the province fall back to the right in 2019. The critics already have their knives out, attacking everything they can set their focus on. For once and for now I am not on the side of these critics, and I find myself going, “Wow, so THAT’S what this feels like.”

                For now it’s a question of how it will work. There are doubts, but mostly they are outweighed by hope, by faith rewarded. By belief in rational, logical things happening in the one place no Canadian ever thought was rational or logical. Today we have hope.

                And now for Harper. 

A Vote for the Wildrose is a Vote for the PCs

Only one of these things is not like the others. (globalnews.ca)

After the Alberta election next Tuesday, the scenario as I see it, like it or not, is this: Jim Prentice will still be premier. He will even control the majority of seats in the legislature (and make no mistake, HE will control those seats.) It won’t be easy, but he will get his majority.

However, it won’t be because his party gets the most votes or even the most seats. So how can I be predicting a majority win? How, when as of this morning every poll in the province puts Jim Prentice’s dusty old entitled white man’s party at third almost province-wide, how do I see him nabbing 44 seats in the legislature?  (Some poll links herein: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/04/30/alberta-ndp-rachel-notley_n_7181594.html?utm_hp_ref=canada-alberta&ir=Canada+Alberta)

I see this because of the three parties currying popular favour in this province right now, one of them is the Wildrose party, and a vote for the Wildrose is just a vote for the PCs. Prentice’s majority will be via a coalition.

When the dust settles, three parties will hold the majority of the seats in Edmonton: the Progressive Conservatives, the Wildrose, and the Alberta New Democrats. Let’s say the wonderful happens and the PCs come in third (I doubt it), that means either the NDP or the Wildrose form the government. No one expects either to do this with a majority, so we could end up with a minority government, with the left NDP either leading or balancing the extreme right Wildrose. A minority government would be the best thing for us after forty-three years of PC entitlement and arrogance. It would be bliss.

For about five seconds.

Then Jim Prentice would call up Brian Jean.  

No matter where this falls out, no matter where Prentice’s PCs find themselves, no matter where the other two parties end up—first, second, or third—unless the NDP pulls off a majority win (and no matter how generous the poll, nobody on any wing believes this will happen), Prentice will have his majority. He just has to reach out and mutter the word “coalition.”

Can you hear the cries from High River? The despair from Brooks? The Wildrose support was betrayed once by those dastardly floor-crossers. How could they do this? How could they turn on their support base again? Coalition?! Treachery!

Actually, it wouldn’t be a coalition. A coalition is two ideologically-opposed political parties finding some middle ground for the sake of governing. This would be a conservative government, because these parties are the same. Anyone who is voting Wildrose and calling it a change is switching from Pepsi to Coke for the sake of their health.

This morning there were euphoric polls saying that the NDP has 44% of the decided vote. Unbelievable. And yet, more than 50% believe the PCs will win. And win a majority. How does this all add up? Prentice is right, math is hard.

In 2012, the Redford PCs defied the polls and formed a majority because traditionally centre and left voters kept her party in power for fear of the Wildrose, who at the time looked much more extreme than Redford’s PCs. Under Prentice and Jean, the two parties are identical. Strategic voting like this has taken a lot of criticism this election, but for many Albertans this was one of the few times they felt like their vote counted for something in this province, a place where many I know will vote PC on Tuesday with no better explanation than because they always have. Also, most of the critics of strategic voting appear to be the partisan supporters of parties, the sort of supporters who never concern themselves with policies, just with winning and losing.

Strategic voting could blow up in the face of anyone hoping for diversity or a functional minority government in this province. Prentice is a student of the Harper style of fear-mongering, smear-campaigning, and the knives are out for the NDP. Like Redford drew in the left to battle the extreme right, Prentice can draw in the Wild(-eyed)rose supporters by making concepts like fair taxation and funded education seem straight out of 1965 Moscow. This is not a time for logic and facts. This is an election!

If Albertans want to see their votes count, if they want to actually vote for someone who has the interests of Albertans in mind, rather than their own power and the support of their boardroom buddies, then the Wildrose is not where their vote should go when opposing the PCs. Both parties oppose taxes, oppose any fair taxation system, because they both abide by the medieval doctrine that taxes are bad. The Wildrose are suggesting they can pay for services by cutting taxes (I know, math is hard), and the PCs can’t anger their seven-figure puppeteers by changing the corporate tax rates, nor can they introduce a PST because this would be a contentious issue, and the PCs try to avoid contentious issues because they are more interested in power than in governing.

It’s extremely important for Albertans to consider who they vote for next Tuesday. The Prentice government intends to make disastrous cuts to education, health care, and other essential services in order to balance a budget for balance’s sake, all the while telling Albertans it’s our own fault, and refusing to tax companies that are exploiting our public natural resources for private wealth. A vote for the Wildrose is a vote for the PCs, since if both fail to form a majority, a coalition is extremely likely, wasting the votes of anyone who believes a vote for the Wildrose is a vote for change. Real change in this province means ensuring essential services for all Albertans, to a standard of quality all Albertans have come to expect; it means using Albertans’ taxes for Albertans rather than to create a black ledger for its own sake; it means securing our kids’ economic and environmental future by acting on behalf of tomorrow today, rather than for today at tomorrow’s expense. Real change means voting for change, not choosing an identical alternative.

You’ve seen my projection above. On Tuesday, prove me wrong.   

On Poetry

                “Hey, have a look at this poem!”

Language distillation.

                Let’s ponder the social situations where the above line would be acceptable, maybe even successful. After quitting time at the mill, and stopping by the pub to watch the game: no. When the mayor has just announced that education funding has been cut so you won’t get that new French Immersion elementary and through tears asks if anyone has any questions: nope. When getting hot and heavy on a fifth or fifth date and someone’s hand slides up someone else’s shirt: un unh. When the Stanley Cup is being raised in June and when you’re looking something that encapsulates the moment more feelingly than “F#@kin’ rights, boys!”: alas, no.

                So, maybe there’s no good time to say, “Hey, have a look at this poem.”

                Well, although I emphatically disagree with the sentiment, I can line up on bare syntactical grounds. Have a look, no—have a listen. Now we’re on to something.

                Why most folks hate poetry is because most folks don’t understand it, that is how it’s being used. USED, I say. Employed, son, not simply read.

                Poetry hasn’t been replaced, but it’s been somewhat substituted. It doesn’t always suit our nine to five, work/eat/tv/sleep lifestyles. Time was your average dude would appreciate you rattling off a verse at the end of the day—a samurai for sure!—but popular music has nicely filled that void without people who really aren’t made that way having to actually read or listen to someone else reading. The beauty of this substitution is the layman finds Taylor swift much more approachable than Jonathan.

                See, to get poetry, to really dig a poem, you have to get right in there. Dig in, let your toes squish, soak it up. It’s something people don’t often take the time for even though it’s one of our shortest art forms. And yet we can binge on three straight seasons of Orange is the New Black in an evening.

                With poetry, what you’re looking for is not plot, not events. It’s how language is used with passion. A rave or a rant, in writing that revels ore reveals. This is the essence of poetry.

                How to start? Forget everything you know about poetry. Banish all assumptions. Suspend all illusions. Delete all clichés. If your idea of poetry is Jim Morrison, then you need an education because getting drunk and hollering pages from the thesaurus isn’t art. It’s just complicated-sounding noise. The reason you hate poetry is because Jim Morrison and some beatniks you read in high school convinced you it’s too hard to understand because they were saying nothing. It still needs a point.

                A poem asks a question, it presents a problem. At some point its style will completely shift. A very good poetry teacher once told me that a poem is like a three frame strip comic. Establish/complicate/answer. All there is to it.

                Get it, got it, good.

                Now quit being afraid of it.

                This can be the richest form of our expression. This is when our words come best, when in tiny capsules of brilliance we can let out pieces of our soul, our best. Like pamphlets of Eden.

                Why not? Don’t be afraid of your soul, of your emotions, of truth. Poetry is like a hyperactive kid with no Ritalin in sight. It doesn’t hold back, nor should it.

                Read poetry every day.

                

The Political Artist

The continuation of a random and ongoing series on the nature of art.

It’s extremely hard to be an artist and to be politically astute. I mean, each is difficult in its own way for its own reasons, but both together? Hard.

                “Oh, yes. But important.”

                Maybe, but what walk sees you already plagued with self-doubt more than the artistic one? Throw into the mix the existential hand-wringing of wondering what good an artist is doing in the midst of all this bad and, well, the problem sure isn’t in anyway eased.

                Fact is, in my own art, especially my writing, I want to feel like I’m making a difference, that I’m doing good. Blame it on too many superhero comic books as a kid, blame it on a Catholic foundation that never took but still leaves its guilt. Blame it on a male need to leave a legacy. Blame it on an immaturity that I never graduated to the level of self-servitude and malice that more and more people I hear refer to as “the way it is” or “the world.” I want to write pieces of merit, pieces that are important. However, when that’s exclusively art—that is, the exploration of what it means to be a human, the exposure of this life—I often wonder what difference I am actually making. Is the metaphor taking?

                It’s all I can do not to go on a political rant right now. I’m enraged at the state of roll-over denial in the province of Albertan and Canadian politics. I’m sick of people accepting transparent lies and I’m scared to death about how much it's really working on our lives; it’s not just “same shit different day politics.” It’s happening. Bad is winning. We’re being ruled by corporate whores and all I want to do is rip apart every lie that Jim Prentice has fed the public in this province since Christmas.

                I went on a political rant. I lied, I knew I was doing it, I admit it. That’s why I feel I can judge liars like Prentice and his old boss our prime minister.

                That feels good, that ranting. I don’t know how much good it’s doing because people in this province and of late this nation don’t like facts: they like backing a winner. What he does matters a lot less than the fact that he’s winning. I don’t know the good I’m doing, as I say, but it feels good to point that fault out. It feels right. 

                And then suddenly I’m less an artist, more a political writer, or at least an opiner. A leftist political blogger living in Alberta. There goes my readership.

                It’s tough finding the balance between art and reality in writing, and at times like these that much more difficult because you want to use your art on reality.

                It’s the fine line. Times like these you want to wield your words against the lies being spouted, to rail against injustice and misinformation, to use the abilities you have to arm people against their own ignorance.

                But then, where’s the art in that anymore?

                A hero of mine—for his work, not his character—is Hunter S. Thompson, who wrote some of his best work about and against a corrupt right-wing administration. Familiar times. But, his greatest achievement—despite it’s autobiographical nature—was a work of art, not politics or journalism. No one ever reads Las Vegas after being turned on by On the Campaign Trail. Fear and Loathing always begins in Vegas.

                Many artists are political, but when you let politics take over your art and you’re not Thompson, it can certainly act as a distraction, as a hedging of bets. Jack of all trades. . . Many convicted and gifted artists—Margaret Atwood pops up—only let the themes of society penetrate their work, but then as public figures are highly political. This is wonderful. Artists should be political, because far too many pop stars are given far too much air time for their fumbling opinions.

                These are dark times in Alberta, in Canada. We have an unimaginative, megalomaniacal, self-serving, and lying premier. More than your average politician, I mean. And if Harper is re-elected this fall, the damage he has done to the Canadian identity, to our culture, and to the standard of truthfulness I thought we held our leaders up to—both he and Prentice have convinced their electorate that they hold presidential powers in a constitutional monarchy—will be forever lost.

                Caught me ranting again.

                Artists are obligated to do good and expose truth. In a time like this, when there is so much bad and so many lies, how are we to avoid turning our art to politics? I suppose we’re not. 

PST in Alberta? No, Worse: The Status Quo

                There isn’t going to be a sales tax in Alberta.

                If you’re the sort of person who has always taken pride in our lack of one, if you’re the sort of person who brags about that to the rest of the country, rest assured. It’s a dubious point of pride, sure, but you can retain it. No sales tax.

                But if you’re the sort of person willing to think beyond your satisfaction and ask why there is not going to be one amid falling oil prices and job cuts, your rest may come with just a tad less assurance.

                Oil prices are down, and so are oil revenues. Alberta’s economy is fixed to these like a ship to an anchor, that’s right, fixed to the fortunes of a single, volatile commodity and so a projected surplus gets turned into a projected deficit. In. The. Billions. The most powerful economy in the country goes from champagne and party hats to Depression rhetoric in two months.

                Already the Suncors and the Shells are laying off jobs in the thousands. Belt-tightening for all, in every industry and every sector affected by oil, and because Alberta apparently has such a simpleton’s economy, every industry and every sector is affected by oil.

                The news since before Christmas has been a constant flow of doom, gloom, job losses, service cuts, wage rollbacks. Sales tax. All so much talk. Is it truly as bad as they’re telling us?

                No. But in making it seem that bad, by dangling the threat of the loss of that point of pride, being the only province in the country to run its budget without gaining cash from its citizens as they spend money, the Prentice Government can commit any number of fiscal atrocities. They’ve drummed up your sympathies and your ire, and if they back off from the threatened tax, Albertans will accept anything else because it “has to happen.”

                Because that’s what we’re being told has to happen.

                Because apparently this province’s electorate has lost the good sense to question what we’re told. Did we ever have it?

                There will be no sales tax, there will just be its fear. Instead there will be deep cuts to public sector wages and to services. The targets? The Conservative government’s two favorite punching bags since the Klein era: health care and education.

                Those schools promised last fall? Can’t, oil prices.

                More beds in hospitals? Price o’crude . . .

                Hiring rural doctors? Pesky petroleum.

                Teachers working on increases of 0% for three years while the private sector has seen an on average increase of 25%? It’s just, y’know, oil.

                If it’s as simple and as true as that—of course, it’s neither—why is it we aren’t stopping to question how we have let our economy be bungled so badly by being so deliberately tied to a non-renewable resource? Oh, and that we’re so dependent on that revenue today that we cut something as simple as health care premiums, empty the Heritage Fund, and wouldn’t even dream of something as sensible and proven as a sales tax.

                It’s all very convenient, and by fear-mongering about something as wise as a tax, our provincial (and federal) government show themselves incapable of seeing beyond the status quo.

                Oil is volatile economically, it’s eventually finite, and let’s not forget its acquisition is environmentally destructive (although in Alberta economic crises are treated as real and environmental ones as Hollywood and Athabascan fabrications). Tying our entire economy to crude is like planning a household budget on Dad’s Friday night casino winnings. Actually, it’s worse than that, because no one acts so gob smacked when they lose at a casino. 

                So what? This happens every few years, why can’t our government and the Shells and the Suncors run in the red for a bit until the price goes back up to $80 a barrel? Because the only word more reviled in Alberta than tax is deficit. Companies—and the government—use a downturn like this as an excuse to over-cut jobs and rape services because people for some reason buy into the necessity rather than question the poor planning that got us here.

                This is the definition of fiscal conservatism, then? An absolute implosion of middle and lower class quality of life for the sake of giddily seeing a little black in the ledger? To call it short-sighted is understatement.

                We’re looking at an election this spring. The Wild Rose Party has imploded in a spectacular combination of foolishness and power-greed and Premier Prentice dresses in Teflon every morning. The Left is in disarray and in no way prepared to challenge the forty-year pachyderm and its new handler. I’m idealistic, but not to the extent that I think this government will be ousted from office, but for the love of Pete can we stop rolling over and allowing it to believe we’re a province of rubes? I mean, our political news makes us the laughing stock of a country that is taking perverse delight in watching us fall from our pedestal.

                Opportune time to send a message to our elected representatives, to say that you owe us just a little more creativity when looking at the books. Time is long since passed that this great province has only one resource, and a policy that can only respond to that resource’s fortunes by shrugging and cutting.

                If we can’t elect people clever enough to save surplus for rainy days, to spread our assets across a few fields, to take a little off the top when we spend, to take more from those who have most, well, we deserve what we get.

                If we’re going to fall for this yet again, and let them base their mandate around our stupidity and their own un-inventiveness and duplicity, it’s our own fault.

                Because this has long since ceased to be a sensible way to conduct business. 


On this: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/16/alberta-oil-prentice_n_6488252.html?utm_hp_ref=alberta-politics

http://calgaryherald.com/news/politics/alberta-sales-tax-the-most-detested-budget-solution-poll-says

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tories-prepare-for-further-spending-restraint-due-to-cheap-oil/article22511451/