Since 1974 Heritage Day in Alberta has been celebrated on the first Monday in August, thus creating a welcome long weekend. This year the holiday falls on August 4th.If you look online for some guidance as to what Alberta’s heritage might be, you are referred to the abundant sunlight and open spaces of the province along with such historical facts as the existence of a UFO landing pad in St. Paul and the origin of the Bloody Caesar cocktail at the Westin Hotel in Calgary. In addition, there are the expected evocations of multiculturalism and unhappy First Nations’ experiences. One site suggested that we visit a museum and wear our traditional costumes. All this exhortation is captured in the oft-repeated woke cliché: diversity is what we have in common. It is also, apparently or paradoxically, our strength.Before getting carried away with feel-good emotional fuzziness, perhaps we should consider what “heritage” actually means and see how it applies to us..The word first appeared in English around 1200. It was derived from Latin via Old French and meant “that which could be inherited,” chiefly property. By the seventeenth century heritage could refer to cultural conditions transmitted from one’s ancestors as well as property. Today the meaning of the word stresses practices and stories handed over by tradition —another Latin-derived word that means handed down or handed across time.So now ask yourself: what have Blackfoot in the nineteenth century, Ukrainians in the twentieth, or Hong Kongers in the twenty-first century have handed down to them as Albertans? Is there an Alberta heritage or an Alberta tradition? And where might it be found?To get a grip on answering these (or similar) questions we first need to make a few distinctions and clarifications..On other occasions, I have quoted an insight first made by Northrop Frye. Frye was an English prof at the University of Toronto and one of the very few first-class thinkers ever found in Canada. One of his major distinctions was that history is the story of what happened, and myth is the story of what happens all the time. Myth contextualizes history and gives it a sense of continuity.Granted, the particular histories of the Blackfoot, the Ukrainians, and the Hong Kongers are distinct, what about the myths that transmit meaning? Now here is where Frye’s thinking provides us with great clarity.First of all, he argued persuasively that myths, which in the Canadian polity are invariably local, not national, are most adequately and fully expressed in imaginative literature. Coming from a literary critic, that is not much of a surprise. More commonsensically, if you read the novels of, say, Toronto’s Margaret Atwood and compare them to those of, say, Calgary’s Aritha Van Herk, you can quickly sense a difference even if you can’t quite define it. That’s the job of persons such as Frye.And, according to him, the literature of Upper Canada/Ontario and I would say today the whole of Laurentian Canada (including Quebec and the Laurentian colonies further east) is characterized as expressing what he called a “garrison mentality.”Garrisons, we know, are beleaguered places because the inhabitants see themselves surrounded by enemies, actual or potential. That is why Laurentians are so afraid of the rest of the world, particularly the English-speaking world if you are a francophone Quebecer, and of the United States if you are an Ontarian..I know, I know, this is a simplification, but that’s what myths do. There is no other way to give form to one’s heritage, history, and tradition. And Frye lived among those Laurentian people the whole of his adult academic life. He knew their ways and he knew what he was saying.Now, consider the Alberta myth that provides meaning to the distinct histories of the Blackfoot, the Ukrainians, and the Hong Kongers. Where do we look? Following Frye’s direction, lets consider the lyrics of Ian Tyson, whom we may designate as the Alberta national poet.His song, “Old Alberta Moon,” says it all. He is addressing some anonymous Torontonians, as near as I can tell:'So gas up your old ChevroletAnd head her way out west.To the land of golden opportunity.You'll get a first hand educationHow the cowboy rocks and rollsWith that Old Alberta MoonThrown in for free.'The cowboy rocks and rolls like Tom Three Persons, a Kainai (Blood) member of the Blackfoot Confederacy. He tamed the previously unridden Cyclone at the inaugural Stampede in 1912. For his efforts, he won a gold buckle, a saddle and a thousand-dollar prize (worth well over $30,000 today, but still less than the $50K bronc-rider Zeke Thurston from Big Valley took home this year.) When Three Persons died in 1949, his estate was worth well over a million dollars in today’s money — despite the worst intentions of the Ottawa bureaucrats in the Department of Indian Affairs to stifle Indian self-sufficiency and self-help.As it was for Three Persons, so it was for the Ukrainians and Hong Kongers, and for just about everyone else: Alberta embodies the myth of the land of golden opportunity. Laurentians think this is “American,” which is absurd. But their narrow prejudice does explain why we find Van Herk’s novels comic and those of Atwood so glum, not to say paranoid. For the optimistic Alberta imagination, the garrison holds few opportunities and so almost by instinct we reject it..You want contemporary proof? Read a beautiful essay in the e-journal, C2C (July 27, 2025), by John Weissenberger, who arrived here from Montreal forty years ago. Without quoting Tyson, he echoed all Tyson’s sentiments. And unlike so many other former Laurentians, Weissenberger has become a genuine Albertan and, aware of what he has put behind him, is grateful for the opportunities available here. As are we all.It seems to me that the heritage evoked in Tyson’s song still lives in the province. Most obviously the current level of support for Alberta’s political independence from the Laurentians perfectly expresses the conflict between the myth of the Laurentian garrison and our myth of golden opportunity. In the contest of myths, Albertans hold it to be self-evident where our allegiance lies, with that old Alberta moon thrown in for free.
