Western Alienation in a Nutshell
by Wentworth Sutton,assistant vice-principal, Mitchell Hepburn Collegiate Institute, Don Mills, and president emeritus, Semiologico-Hermeneutic Institute of Toronto.

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Psychiatric knowledge does not seem to be widespread in the Canadian west. Otherwise Westerners would not be describing their malaise as alienation.

Westerners seem to be particularly wanting in awareness of the concept of the defence mechanism. Let's see – they claim we Easterners neglect and disparage the West. However, when the federal government proposed that the minister of intergovernmental affairs address the problem of Western alienation, alienated Westerners rose as one to proclaim indignantly that they weren't going to discuss their alienation with a mere Easterner. It was insulting to think that they would lower themselves so. And have you ever seen an Easterner driving around with a bumper sticker on his car reading Let the Western Bastards Freeze in the Dark?

Western "alienation" is really the defence mechanism of projection. Westerners hate the East, but they make their hatred acceptable to themselves by claiming that it's the East that hates them.

Why do Westerners hate the East? Well, it's really Albertans who hate the East, isn't it? And it's fairly easy to figure out what they hate. They hate Easterners because we're poorer than they are. They hate Easterners because we made them rich.

For all its complaints of being hard done by, Alberta is remarkably well off. It anticipates being able to eliminate provincial income tax by 2015, and is even considering renouncing federal health transfers so it can run its health care system the way it wants. Not exactly a crushing burden of oppression, is it?

And where did Alberta get its wealth? It got its wealth from us. The Alberta oil industry was subsidized for years by the other provinces west of the Ottawa river, who were prohibited from buying cheap foreign oil.

Naturally enough, although (I stress) unreasonably, at bottom Albertans feel guilty about that. They have to live with themselves, though, so they find a way to deal with the guilt. That way is projection – instead of feeling guilty about getting rich off our money, they accuse us of stealing theirs. Yes, Alberta does pay out a lot in transfers, but they keep even more. Are they trying to tell us that Alberta is a poor province?

The tale of Alberta is the familiar one of the one guy in the neighbourhood who made good. Eventually, his guilt at having more than his neighbours leads him to fantasize about their designs on his goods, and about finding a better neighbourhood in which to live. For many Albertans that better neighbourhood is the United States, but if they think they're alienated now, they should think about what would await them if they did join the United States.

If Alberta became an American state it would be entitled to 4 or 5 members of the House of Representatives (total strength 435) and to 2 senators out of a new total of 102. That would be the equivalent of Alberta having a grand total of 3 (three) seats in the House of Commons, instead of the 26 (twenty-six) it now has.

How can we help Albertans to overcome this terrible neurosis which is crippling their relationship with their countrymen and filling their heads with erroneous and harmful fantasies? Unfortunately, we are unlikely to be able to persuade Alberta to undertake an extensive course of therapy. Instead, I recommend that we use the Canadian solution. We will blame it all on Toronto. Everyone outside Toronto hates Toronto, so that will give Albertans common cause with over 90% of their fellow Canadians.

The beauty of this idea is that it hurts no one. Albertans will feel better, but the roughly similar number of Torontonians won't feel any worse because they're so used to being hated that a little more detestation won't even be noticed. Besides, we've got things to do.

Western Alienation in a Nutshell © Coolth, 2001

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