Alberta in fiction: The emergence of a provincial consciousness

Alberta in fiction: the emergence of a provincial consciousness DAVID C. CARPENTER In this study of Alberta's regional character , a number of recent fictional works are to be analyzed to demonstrate that a provincial consciousness announces its own individuaality through the voices of its artists. The primary historical context from which this study arises is a paper by J. M. S. Careless in which he speaks, no doubt, for many Canadian historians: "Canada, if one nation, is eminently divisible." 1 In the opinion of Careless, in the absence of a unified, indivisible feeling of natfonal identity, Canadians can seek to establish other identities, with their province for example. One of the more substantially rooted regional allegiances in Canadians has become the provincial allegiance. On this subject Careless has made some important observations . In the twentieth century, the growing demands on the government in an industrializing, urbanizing society of course greatly enlarged the activities of the provinces; but, not less significantly, the process strengthened their identification with the particularist societies of Canada. They grew in status as well as in function. It is not only evident that federal-provincial conferences have acquired something of the atmosphere of diplomatic exchanges between states, but it is also not inexpressive of Canadian conditions that he·ads of powerful provincial regimes may use the title of prime miniister for their office - as in the current advance of the kingdom of British Columbia to co-equal dignity .2 It would not be unduly speculative to claim that from the discovery of these 12 limited regional identities comes the substructure upon which a nat1 ional identity is based. The quest for national identity in Canada, which seems at present to be in an active state of ferment, is not unlike that period in American history which cultural historians have (somewhat over-zealously perhaps) dubbed the American Renaissance. At that time, the mid-nineteenth century, Nathaniel Hawthorne commented on the dependence of a national ·identity upon a more confined regional identity. Perhaps his statement has some validity for Canadians today. "When you try to make it a matter of the heart, everything falls away except one's native state.... Yet, unquestionably, we do stand by our national flag as ...any people in the world, and I myself have folt the heart throb at sight of it as se·nsibly as other men."3 In Canada the province has become, or is becoming, the most vital storehouse of regional allegiances to be unlocked by its regional scholars so that the distinctive contours of our national territory may be collectively discovered. But to what extent can a province become a distinct mythical kingdom ? This bothersome question is the focal point of this whole constellation of theories pertaining to Canadian national identity. In this paper it will be suggested that, in view of certain isolable manifestations, historical and (primarily) literary, a provinciial myth is emerging in Alberta. Rather than argue that Alberta, as a region, has a totally unique identity, I will be content with pointing out sign1 ificant differences between Alberta's provincial spirit and that of its nearest neighbours, primarily Saskatchewan. A major problem in discussing provincial attitudes presents itself when, in the case of Alberta for instance, that area is surrounded almost entirely by arbitrary, map-ruled, pol:itical boundaries. Do things change, one might ask, when one has crossed the AlbertaSaskatchewan border? Has one really left one region and entered another? Let us view the problem in ·another way. Revue d'etudes canadiennes Edward Mccourt has observed that "to the native of the prairies Alberta ·is the far West: British Columbia the near East."4 This is so because a natural boundary divides B.C. and Alberta, and because the Pacific lends a distinctive character to B.C.'s western boundary . Primarily because the Rockies presented·a barrier to western settl·ement, B.C. was settled before 1885 from the coast region; and Alberta, the most westerly region in the territories before the Rockies, was settled (much later than B.C.) from the east. Historically and geographically, therefore, B.C. is often considered a separate region from the prairies. But no natural barrier divides Alberta from...