(Recently, Nevermore Media posted a Call for Submissions, inviting people from different parts of the world to write reports about what things are like in their locales. We are please to present this report from Alberta, Canada)
Hello Winter Oak and world! We’re writing to you from a place we call Buffalo- the northern prairies of Turtle Island, from the foothills of the Rockies to the Canadian shield, and more specifically from the western most ‘province’ therein: Alberta. We do not consider legitimate the flailing leadership of Trudeau or the entrenched Laurentian power structure that has ruled us from afar since the establishment of the genocidal state of Canada! We have our own gods, our own culture and advocate for an effective ‘land back’ solution via direct democratic online ‘peoples parliaments’ and the immediate end of colonial rule, on our prairies at least. But alas- here we are: suffering a lineage of derision from a federal government that sees us as nothing more than kulaks and fodder to feed an ecocidal extraction regime.
Going into our second year of pandemic, Buffalo was little affected by literal pathogens. Though there were some deaths, all-cause mortality remained even in CE2020, with only the ‘deaths of despair’ (suicides and overdoses) increasing categorically; respiratory complications did not increase out of normal margins- though they were all counted as ‘COVID’, rather than as seasonal influenza (zero reported cases!), despite the verisimilitude of symptoms, and the average age of such an event matched the ‘life expectancy’ here, at 84 years.
Official mortality reports are not yet as forthcoming going into our third year, but some estimates from insurance and funeral services suggest we could be up as much as 40%, with many more people having been reported COVID-positive in the present wave than at any time before (symptoms are perhaps typically mild, but not for all.)
Public health measures themselves are relatively relaxed in Buffalo as compared to elsewhere in the colonial federation, if only because the state lacks sufficient enforcement capacity. Masks are mandatory everywhere and are generally worn indoors. Widespread employment mandates pushed injection rates over three-quarters in most urban areas, but rural areas waver around half perhaps, though rates are certainly lower in some areas.
Rural folk are more familial, conservative (blue party) and traditionally religious – meaning primarily protestant Christian, some Catholic. ‘Mark of the beast’ style bible-belt eschatology is very present here in the ‘Texas of Canada’. Rural opposition to the pandemic routinely conjures an apocalyptic tone, with groups such as GraceLife Church (Pastor Coates) and notorious street preacher Artur Pawlowski making media spectacles with compliance refusals resulting in jail time, the latter going quite viral for some weeks after name-calling the cops trying to inhibit his services.
While many places elsewhere appear to be pivoting, Canada continues to shuffle emerging norms into place, it feels- starting in the cities and the east, then moving rural and westward. Aside from municipal and some regional forces, Canadians are subjected to a continental police called the RCMP that is stationed throughout provinces and can be shuffled around to provide concentrations of force at federal discretion. The situation seems to be that the new decrees and accepted etiquettes are imposed by the reds (Liberals) in Ottawa, percolate through all establishment parties- federally and provincially (even the ostensible separatists in Quebec). Only after having solidified control elsewhere, are additional strictures brought to us here in the prairies. The local blue party in Alberta simply play dumb and lie, then roll out the carpet for the federal reds when the memo comes down the tube, (as they did with ‘vaccine passports’: avowedly impossible here in the summer when Ontario and BC rolled them out, but by winter- voila!)
Reds have next to no representation in the prairies, but the orange party- the social-democratic NDP, provide a significant opposition to the blue party in places. While marshaling urban leftist support for stronger covid measures, orange discusses door-to-door and mandatory vaccinations.
Queer identified establishments are taking the lead in banning access with negative tests, without any legal necessity to do so. In Saskatchewan, retail sale of alcohol and Cannabis (all state controlled) is effectively banned to the uninjected (QR code required). So far no essentials have been withheld- though that has become legal in New Brunswick, and Quebec has stated intention to fine refuseniks ‘inconvenient’ sums.
Our countrysides are culturally disenfranchised and have little to no cultural effect on cities, other than to pose for the contrarians. But our hills and pastures are not wholly economically or demographically obsolete here. There are new rumblings of no mere reform party, but an actual secessionist movement able to take power in Parliament, giving rise to interprovincial ‘maverick’ parties (mostly farmers), a small Buffalo Party in Saskatchewan, and the now explicitly separatist Wild Rose faction in Alberta- a moniker that has held significant seats in Edmonton with previous incarnations (including two past Parliamentary stints for current party leader Paul Hinman). Though acting previously as blue party runoff, Wild Rose (Wildrose Independence Party) has attracted a more inclusive support grounded in unequivocal opposition to the current public health measures, and is by no means so ‘white cis-het male’ as the state controlled media here would have us believe- with some indigenous, Islamic and Sikh communities also in vehement opposition to mandates, and liberalism generally. Though it will likely take a miracle to actually have the WIP form a government, we are certainly in exceptional times!
Push is coming to shove in Canada with new unprecendented and very particular retail restrictions on the uninjected in Quebec (one may enter the big box outlet- escorted through a plexiglass maze, to use the pharmacy.. but must not purchase other items), massive freight trucker convoys congregating on Ottawa (despite having millions in CAD raised and then withheld by GoFundMe), various tensions over the prospect of infinite boosters and faltering shock at just how ridiculous this all was- and is, to be daily playing at political theatre that benefits none but the already ridiculously disproportionately empowered.
Will Trudy and the Redlibs collapse into a regional reshuffle, or will international support maintain Ottawa’s parasitic hegemony over the northern expanse of Turtle Island? One can follow our socials at @no.stache.nietzsche or @apollyon_yuga for local updates and perspective, as well as progress on the Buffalo Manifesto!
Take care and stay true, another world is possible!