Calgary and Edmonton · Posted Jul 6, 07:46 PM by Todd Babiak

Check out the comments at the bottom of THIS STORY

Versus the comments on the SAME STORY published in a different newspaper in a different city.

Curious.

1. So creepy!

   
   — Lana    Jul 8, 10:22 AM    #
   
   

2. The bad ones have been removed.

   
   — Anna    Jul 8, 09:44 PM    #
   
   

3. This would all be very funny if…it weren’t.

   There are a lot of wonderful people in Calgary, and I feel immense reluctance in saying this.

   But we have to face it: Calgary is a problem. It’s a problem because the Ayn-Rand-conservative, yee-howdy, damn-the-environment, damn-the-aboriginals, we-get-it-and-you-don’t attitudes of the oil execs have so completely permeated the public discourse down there.

   It’s a problem because so many Calgarians seem to have absolutely no scruples about parading their blinkered ignorance of history and of cultural difference.

   It’s a problem because so many Calgarians who overlook the entirely arbitrary nature of a “province” as an imagined community feel entitled to consider natural resources located 800 km away from them as “theirs.”

   It’s a problem because those same people bemoan a culture of “entitlement” in our “politically correct” society.

   Most of all, Calgary is a problem because it has been allowed to define the founding mythology of this province: a mythology based on selfishness, greed and intellectual laziness.

   Calgary, friends, is a problem. And I think it’s a lost cause.

   Here’s my modest proposal: let’s give up on Calgary as a quaint but failed experiment. Let’s redraw provincial boundaries to amalgamate Edmonton and northern Alberta with Saskatchewan.

   We’ll keep the oilsands, and develop them (if at all) responsibly.

   They can keep the dinosaurs. Which seems somehow appropriate.

   Let’s join Saskatchewan. Who’s in?

   
   — JDL    Jul 11, 03:06 PM    #
   
   

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