Alberta’s Gift to Culture
What an opportunity!!
To invade Washington with Alberta Culture – to take artists and
musicians and dancers to the heart of America for a Folklife Festival vs the
usual invasion of American Culture on our airwaves and media outlets!!
An opportunity to show off Alberta. We are fortunate to have a voice like Ben Gadd there. And artist Les Manning who is also there hoping to uphold an identity for a province that seems destined to define itself by its oil and gas resources. “We have a great land. We have sold so many of the resources but we still don’t have anything that really identifies us as a people.”
Not only is Alberta making news in Washington but national eyes have also
looked our way to see our response to being represented by a truck.
Murray Smith, a former energy minister for Alberta claims it was his idea
to park the truck at the Smithsonian, feeling that the oil sands are a perfect
fit for a Folklife Festival “it
reflects the province's way of life in the same way ranching, dinosaurs and the
Rockies are part of provincial life.”
Funny, I don’t recall the last time
a boom in ranching resulted in such traumatic labour force issues,
infrastructure destruction in towns like Fort Mac and Whitecourt, or the
decimation of thousands of acres of traditional and natural lands for wells and
seismic exploration. I don’t
recall the Rockies being disruptive to the water table.
Actually the proliferation of resource extraction is permanently altering
the Rockies and ranching life in Alberta.
“I can't think of anything more
appropriate in today's world than a deposit of 175 million barrels of crude
oil,” continued Smith. “Alberta is known for its resource base, it's
entirely appropriate that we reflect on how people work; that people live in
these two-storey trucks 24 hours a day and deliver 450 tons of sand soaked in
bitumen every two minutes, 20 seconds, to a dump.”
Yah, that’s my Alberta!
Mr Smith seems to have no knowledge of the ensuing social dilemma that
comes from a life of dumping bitumen every 20 seconds!
It should be no surprise to him that the billboards on our highways now
read “Meth kills” and “Gamblers Anonymous”.
Or of the massive move to build poorly constructed housing for those that
can actually find a carpenter.
Hell, I’d be happy to be able to get
coffee at a late night Tims as I navigate the meth driven traffic on the road
home from the city! Small business
people are being forced to close early or on weekends, losing their livelihoods,
because they cant get staff. And
450 tons of bitumen sand really doesn’t do much when we can’t get our cars
on the road this month because the small town mechanic has no one to do oil
changes!!
Oil sands critic
Casey-Lefkowitz says “Right now, Americans who think about Alberta
think about Banff and Jasper. They think about skiing and about beautiful
natural areas. This will make them
think about Alberta as a destructive environmental disaster. It will make them
think about Alberta, an area the size of Florida, that's going to be ripped
up.”
And while I feel for folks like Casey-Lefkowitz,
an oil-sands critic that was notably excluded from the official list of
participants for Washington – I feel even more for the actual keepers of our
culture who were excluded. Out
of hundreds of recognized artists musicians dancers and writers – we are being
represented by approximately 30 voices.
Is it any surprise that CN prefers not
to be called Canadian National or that the National – CBC’s flagship
newscast is moving its timeslot to allow for an American inspired reality tv
program to air at the historical 10pm?
What icon will be next – the Stanley
cup? Oh – we don’t want to go
there…Happy Canada Day!!