The first Canadian election that I paid any real attention to was the 1980 snap election that brought Pierre Trudeau back to power. I was 12 years old, living in Saskatoon. My mother was heavily involved in our local NDP member of Parliament’s campaign for re-election, so the house was littered with signs and flyers. At some point I suppose that I began wondering what all the fuss was about.

I will never forget the evening of February 18th, when we all sat down as a family in front of the television to watch the election results. The news was literally blacked out until 8 p.m. Central, at which point the polls in Manitoba and Saskatchewan closed.

It was the first time I had ever watched election returns come in, and I was very excited. I can remember, at 8 p.m. precisely, the screen lighting up. Knowlton Nash welcomed us with the following words: ”œGreetings to those viewers in the west who have just joined us. We would like to inform you that the Liberals, under the leader- ship of Pierre Trudeau, have been elect- ed with a majority government.” Or words to that effect.

And that was it. The election was over. My father wandered off to make a pot of tea.

Of course, being young at the time, it was confusing. How could the Liberals have been elected already, I asked my mother, when officials hadn’t even started counting the votes anywhere west of Ontario?

”œThat’s how democracy works,” she said, ”œmost Canadians live in Ontario and Quebec.”

My brother and I had difficulty believing this, and so remained glued to the screen until the wee hours, when the final results from British Columbia were in. Of course, the Liberals pro- ceeded to lose every seat west of Winnipeg. Looking at the big map of Canada over Nash’s shoulder, it seemed to us inconceivable that the Liberals could lose every seat in the West, and yet still form the government. And yet form the government they did.

That February 18th was the evening I first became an ”œalienated” Westerner. Not long after, I got my hands on a membership card to the Western Canada Concept party, which I happily signed and kept in my wallet for years.

So what is the point of this little story? I think it is important because it reveals far more about the roots of Western alienation than any- thing coming out of the federal govern- ment, Ralph Klein’s office, or even the brain trust at the University of Calgary.

My youthful objections to the way that Canada was organized were essen- tially objections to the way that democracy functions. Political power rests ultimately with individuals, not provinces, or land masses, or interest groups. More people live in the city of Montreal than in the entire province of Alberta. More people live in Kitchener than in Saskatoon and Regina combined.

Of course, when you tell people this, everyone says ”œI know, I know, I know.” Yet there is a difference between knowing that it’s true and really understanding it. Certainly when I was growing up, I did- n’t fully grasp just how sparsely populat- ed the prairies were, and more significantly, how little of the Canadian economy is located there, until I actually visited Montreal and Toronto.

Having lived my entire life in Saskatoon, for instance, I had never actually seen a factory. Although in my mind I understood that manufactured goods came from factories, it wasn’t until I actually drove through the sub- urbs of Toronto and saw the Ford and the General Motors plants that the notion became real to me that some Canadians actually went to work in the morning and built cars.

If a century of Canadian short stories has taught us anything, it is that geography exercises a powerful grip on the imagination. This includes the political imagination. Yet power in a democracy does not track geography, it tracks people. This means that in order to maintain respect for the core principles of a democratic society, we must often struggle to overcome the biases that geography instills.

An enormous amount of Western alienation comes from a failure to see beyond Canada’s geography. As a result, it amounts to little more than an attempt by one minority group to exercise an influence over the political process that is disproportionate to its numbers.

In other words, a lot of western alienation is pure politics, in the pejo- rative sense of the term. It is about per- ception, and it is about power. It has nothing to do with political principles. (In this respect, I think that the change in the way election results are reported will do more to combat Western alien- ation than anything else the federal government can do.)

If Paul Martin wants to tackle the problem of Western alienation, that’s great, but he should be careful not to over do it. Above all, Westerners need to be reminded of my mother’s words, as often and as loudly as possible: ”œmost Canadians live in Ontario and Quebec.”

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