Alberta Separatists Celebrate Canada Day by Wearing Different Colour of Canada
Alberta's separatist movement marked Canada Day this week by swapping its trademark red for blue, a rebrand the organizers described as a bold rejection of the country whose founding holiday they had chosen to attend.
The colour change, announced with the solemnity usually reserved for constitutional amendments, was explained as a way to distinguish true Albertans from the federalist masses. Observers noted that both groups were, in fact, standing on the same lawn eating the same grocery-store cake shaped like a maple leaf.
"We are not celebrating Canada," clarified one organizer, adjusting a blue cowboy hat purchased at a Canada Day sidewalk sale for thirty per cent off. "We are celebrating the Alberta that could exist if Canada would stop being in the way of it." Asked what that Alberta would look like, he gestured vaguely at a food truck.
Meanwhile in Ottawa, Prime Minister Carney used his Canada Day address to place national unity at centre stage, a phrase his staff reportedly workshopped for six days before landing on the version that sounded least like a threat. The speech thanked every province by name, lingering on Alberta the way one lingers on a cousin who has announced, again, that they are moving out.
By sundown, the separatists had folded up their blue banners, loaded them into trucks registered in Alberta, insured in Alberta, and fuelled with gas taxed by Ottawa, and driven home along a Trans-Canada Highway they insist should be renamed.
Organizers say next year's colour will be teal, pending a naming committee.