Epoch News had a post: What does Canada Day mean to you? Several people weighed in, but this is the one I identified with...

‘Celebrate Alberta’

Katherine Kowalchuk, 50, a lawyer from Calgary, says if she does anything on Canada Day it will be going to a local cafe to celebrate Alberta.

“I disassociated from Canada a while back. That started back in 2020 with COVID, when all of the mandates came in and I saw how our government was treating its citizens,” Kowalchuk said.

“It was 2021 where I really started looking seriously into Alberta separation, and ever since then I’ve become a dedicated separatist.”

Kowalchuk wants Alberta, or the West, to separate and become its own nation, not to join the United States, and she believes there’s a strong likelihood it will happen.

“I do think that there’s a really good chance that Alberta is going to separate. There’s too many push-and-pull factors that aren’t being resolved and are continuing to get worse and making life more difficult—not only for Canadians, but especially for Albertans, especially given the unfair treatment and relationship we have with Ottawa,” she said.

As for the recent push toward more patriotism and being proud of Canada as a country, Kowalchuk said it strikes her as “completely disingenuous.”

“For years, we’ve been told by the federal government that we’re post-national society, and our political leaders have made it clear that they prefer the multiculturalism approach to Canada, something that I do not agree with,” she said.

“I think that they used it as a marketing opportunity, like they do with most other things, to gain favour for the election, and I don’t believe they actually have any good feelings towards Canadians generally.”

Kowalchuk says the old Canada that Albertans and all Canadians were loyal to and proud of is now gone.

“The old Canada doesn’t exist anymore, and I fear that my generation, the Gen X generation, will really be probably the last generation to have a really good understanding about the kind of country Canada was and the kind of country that Canada has become.”