“Western Canada” Separatists Throw in the Towel

It ended quietly.  On January 28th, Canada’s electoral commission officially delisted the Western Block Party (W.B.P.) as a registered political party after it failed to raise the 250 necessary signatures.  Originally founded in the 1980s as the Western Concept Party, the Western Block advocated the secession of Canada’s four southwesternmost provinces—British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba—as a separate nation, generally envisioned under the name West Canada or Western Canada.  A Republic of Western Canada, with under 10 million people, would be the 12th-largest country in the world and an oil-exporting giant.

Doug Christie, wearing his trademark 37.85411784-liter hat

The W.B.P.’s founder, who died in March 2013, signaling the decline of the movement, was Doug Christie, a Winnipeg-born attorney in Victoria, B.C., who became notorious for defending neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, and others in free-speech cases.  In the United States, this would be considered a moral stance, but in Canada, where most citizens are content to have their government decide which kinds of political speech are acceptable, the public presumes that only those with actual far-right sympathies would take on such a case.  Christie, though he swore up and down he was not a neo-Nazi, was indeed an ultra-conservative, and he tapped into many of the resentments rural western Canadians tend to have for government, urbanites, East Coasters, indigenous people, and, of course, French Canadians.  In fact, Western Canadian separatism has tended to rise and fall with separatism in Quebec.  But now, even though Québécois nationalism is on a bit of an upswing, with the Parti Québécois (P.Q.) in power in that province, it has taken on an intolerant, Islamophobic tinge (as discussed in this blog).  Maybe it is harder to rouse Francophobia on the prairies when Canadian sovereigntists tack hard to the right.  Or maybe it turned out to be only Christie that was holding the W.B.P. together, and that Western Canada never really made sense as an idea for a separate nation.  It’s also true that the rise of western-based Tea Party–style movements like the Reform Party in the 1990s stole a lot of votes from western separatists.

One proposal for a partitioned Canada.
Something tells me Newfies won’t like this plan.

Another separatist party, the Western Canada Independence Party (W.C.I.P.) (a.k.a. Western Canada Party, or W.C.P.), fizzled out in the late 1980s, though it still has some branch operations at the provincial level.  Its vision was a new nation consisting of the four western provinces listed above, plus the territories of Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut.  This would leave nothing in Canada but Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritimes.  The W.C.I.P. plan made even less sense than the W.B.P.’s.  If Christie and the W.B.P. had erred in thinking that the liberals of Vancouver and Victoria, B.C., would share the conservative views of Albertans and Saskatchewanites, it was a bigger error to think that the indigenous voters who dominate Canada’s north would be a good fit too.

The current flag of Alberta

There have been other separatist movements in western Canada.  The Separation Party of Alberta (S.P.A.) changed its name last year to the Alberta First Party and no longer makes independence a major part of its platform.  Alberta, with its oil riches and large religious conservative population (including communities of Mormons descended from those fleeing persecution in the U.S. in the 19th century), has earned it the name “the Texas of Canada.”  Its natural resources guarantee that it would be economically viable on its own, though landlocked.

The flags of Vancouver (the city), Canada, and B.C.

And in the 1950s and ’60s, British Columbia’s far-right-wing premier, W. A. C. “Wacky” Bennett, wanted to make B.C. its own nation—and take Yukon with him when he pulled out of the union.  Today, B.C. is politically divided between its liberal coastal rainforests and cities and its conservative interior deserts and tundra.

The sun finally set
on W. A. C. “Wacky” Bennett

What is left of active separatism in western Canada is actually mostly left-wing, not right-wing.  Last year (as reported at the time in this blog) saw the emergence of the Vancouver Island Province Initiative (V.I.P.I.), which aims to make the large island that contains B.C.’s capital, Victoria, into Canada’s 11th province.  Another group, the Sovereign State of Vancouver Island Party (S.S.V.I.P.), wants to take the island, which has long been ground-zero of the environmentalist and indigenous battle against clearcut logging, into its own republic.  In some ways it is an outgrowth of the quixotic, ecology-based movement to create an independent Cascadia from (in one common version) B.C. plus the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington.  But these movements are even more fringe than the W.B.P. once was.

This was the flag of Vancouver Island,
when it was a separate British colony in pre-Canada days.

For now, at least, whatever happens in Quebec, Canada’s western flank is likely to stay in one piece.  A regional feeling of nationhood never really did gel.  There was never even an agreed-upon flag.  Look at the “Republic of Western Canada” swag pictured at the top of this article.  The only flag shown is a Union Jack.  It’s as if all the movement could come up with as a distinguishing cultural feature was: “French not spoken here.”

Related articles:
“Quebec Cracks Down on Crimes against the State—Like Playing Hopscotch in English” (November 2011)
“Which Part of Wet’suwet’en Territory Don’t They Understand?” (November 2012)
“Vancouver Islanders Hope to Be Canada’s 11th Province—and Its Greenest” (August 2013)
“Separatists Challenge Canadian Tolerance with Proposed Islamic-Headscarf Ban” (September 2013)

“Quebec Free-Love Saucer Cult Joins Muslim Headscarf Debate, Suggests Censoring Religious Texts” (October 2013)

[You can read more about West Canada, Vancouver Island, and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

Vancouver Islanders Hope to Be Canada’s 11th Province, and Its Greenest

Some residents of Canada’s southwesternmost flank, British Columbia’s Vancouver Island, are hoping to make their large, lush land mass the newest province, to accompany the 10 others and the three territories of the Arctic.

This June, two environmental activists, Laurie Gourlay and Scott Akenhead launched something called the Vancouver Island Province Initiative.  (Akenhead is president of the Mid-Island Sustainability and Stewardship Initiative, of which Gourlay is also a member.)  At the moment, it is merely a website (see it here), but petitions to the federal Parliament in Ottawa and the B.C. provincial parliament in Victoria are already being prepared.  They aim to establish the island as its own province by May 16, 2021, which is the 150th anniversary of B.C.’s accession to the Canadian federation.

... and maybe to Canada’s 11th province, as well.

Unlike, say, the movement for the vast northern reaches of Ontario to secede as a separate province, the Vancouver Island provincehood movement comes from the left of the political spectrum, not the right.  In particular, the environmental movement in B.C. in particular and in Canada generally has been galvanized of late by plans by Enbridge, Inc., to build a Northern Gateway Pipeline to bring natural gas from Alberta’s tar sands to the ecologically and economically sensitive inlets around Kitimat, B.C., in the province’s northern mainland coast.  Vancouver Island itself, which is often called simply “the Island” by British Columbians, is no stranger to environmental activism either.  It was here, at Clayoquot Sound in the 1990s, that environmental groups and multi-national timber corporations held a standoff over the very survival of the Island’s vast temperate rainforests.  On both the coasts and the mainland, First Nations people have also been at the forefront of this kind of activism.

Vancouver Island used to be separate, as students of Canadian history know.  Before there was a Canada, in 1849, the British Colony of Vancouver Island was created, as part of the resolution of the long-simmering question of who—the Americans or the British—would control the Oregon Country and points north.  In 1866 it was merged into the Colony of British Columbia, which was then just the mainland, with a capital at New Westminster, now a suburb of the mainland’s largest city—also called, confusingly, Vancouver.  Vancouver Island’s capital, Victoria, became the capital of the new amalgamated colony, which joined the four-year-young independent dominion of Canada in 1871.

The old Oregon Country (not too dissimilar in its boundaries from today’s “Cascadia”)

Over the years there have been several attempts to redraw the region’s boundaries.  In the 1950s and ’60s, B.C.’s far-right premier, W. A. C. “Wacky” Bennett, wanted B.C. to leave Canada, and to take the Yukon Territory with it.  Starting very seriously in the 1990s, B.C.’s First Nations people began challenging the legitimacy of the Canadian and B.C. state structures by pointing out that no treaties had ever been signed for the vast majority of the province’s territory, thus making it, according to constitutional-level documents like the Royal Proclamation of 1763, unceded Indian territory illegally occupied by Canada.  And a mostly symbolic environmentalist movement to create an independent nation of Cascadia, consisting at the very least of Oregon and Washington, often includes B.C. in its aspirations as well.  (The idea is far more popular in Oregon and Washington than in B.C.)

The flag of Cascadia

If Vancouver Island did secede, it would be Canada’s second-smallest province, after Prince Edward Island, but, with more than a quarter-million people, it would just nudge past New Brunswick to become the eighth-most-populous.  It would also have more than six times as many people as Canada’s three territories—Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Yukon—put together.  After the loss of Vancouver Island, B.C. would still retain its position as the third-largest province, behind Ontario and Quebec.

More significantly for its prospects, it would become one of the most left-leaning and environmentally-minded provinces.  It would probably take a far more aggressively line in enhancing First Nations sovereignty and protecting natural systems from corporate pillage.  In line with that, it would be able to be far more dependent on tourism than on the resource-extraction industries like mining, pipelines, and especially timber that characterize the mainland economy.  Vancouverites—people of the City of Vancouver, that is, on the mainland—are likely to fight the secession if it ever becomes a serious concern.  Without the Island, the left-leaning city will need to work harder to push progressive policies past the conservative interior of the province.  Much of the arid southern interior is ranchland, with a Wild West feel and more in common with Alberta (“the Texas of Canada”) than with the coasts.

Wet’suwet’en environmental activists in northern B.C. last year

As indicated, it is already confusing that the City of Vancouver is not on Vancouver Island.  Without Vancouver Island and Victoria, what remains of B.C. would be tempted to make Vancouver its new capital, but just to avoid further confusion it might make sense to give New Westminster its day in the sun.  Then again, Vancouver Island might choose an indigenous name for itself.  But that would mean deciding which of the island’s many indigenous Salish and Wakashan languages would be so privileged.  A linguistically hybrid name, like that of Burkina Faso, is one possibility.

There is also the question of who else might decide to join the new province.  The Queen Charlotte Islands, now renamed Haida Gwaii, whose indigenous Haida nation is often at the forefront of environmental activism, is one candidate.  So might be a number of the smaller islands, from the Georgia Strait near Vancouver and Victoria all the way to the large islands of Tsimshian territory to the north.

Would Haida Gwaii, for example, be better off in B.C.,
in the Province of Vancouver Island, or even on its own?

Since it used to be its own colony, Vancouver Island already has—or had—its own flag.  With its prominent Union Jack in the canton, it would need revising.

Vancouver Island’s flag when it was a separate colony, from 1849 to 1866.

I recommend some sort of First Nations design—the route chosen by Nunavut with its flag (see below).  After all, Vancouver Island’s indigenous people, and those of the B.C. and Alaska coasts more generally, have one of the most robust and distinctive graphic-arts traditions in the world.

Nunavut’s flag

But it would be very hard to top the stunning design that British Columbia itself chose for itself in 1960.

British Columbia’s current flag

That flag alone might be worth staying in B.C.  Eh?

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]