WAGNER: Link Byfield should have seen this day...

Ten years ago this month, Alberta’s top conservative activist/writer passed away. Link Byfield had been a journalist, editor, and publisher of Alberta Report magazine, as well as a founder of the Wildrose Party. His death left a gaping hole in Alberta that’s yet to be filled.Indeed, we could sure use him right now. Link loved Alberta and would fight tooth-and-nail against Ottawa’s attacks on this province as he did in days past.His determination to defend this province is clear in the foreword he wrote to my 2009 book, Alberta: Separatism Then and Now: “Looking back a whole quarter-century and more, to 1982, when I was young and easily convinced, I was a convinced western separatist. I voted for it with firm belief and would have taken up arms for it had duty called.”As a reporter for Alberta Report, Link covered the Olds-Didsbury by-election of February, 1982 that saw Gordon Kesler of the Western Canada Concept (WCC) win a seat in the Alberta legislature. After the results came in, Link caught a ride with Kesler from Olds back to Edmonton. He immediately wrote a story about the by-election that won first prize for political coverage at the Western Magazine Awards.Like many others, Link later turned away from the idea of Alberta independence and saw reforming Canada’s institutions as a better way forward — thanks largely to the efforts of Preston Manning.Yet, Link also noted in his foreword that “despite its wild confusion and temper, the WCC did accomplish one thing. It established that Alberta, if provoked, might leave Canada. It helped advance the principle – now an established legal certainty — that any province, not just Quebec, has a constitutional right to peacefully secede. That, in turn, makes for a more cautious and reasoned federalism.”If Link were around today, he would be leading the charge for Alberta in its conflict with Ottawa.Link was also prescient in another way. He was an early supporter of the populist-nationalist movement that would ultimately triumph under President Donald Trump..In the early to mid-1990s, a prominent American conservative commentator named Patrick J. Buchanan ran twice for the Republican presidential nomination as a populist-nationalist. Although he was ultimately unsuccessful, he did receive surprising levels of support and even won the New Hampshire Republican primary in February, 1996.Years later, Buchanan’s political efforts were commonly seen as the precursor to Trump’s campaign. National Review magazine, in its June 12, 2017 issue, wrote of Buchanan that “No one except Trump himself did more to give us the Trump years.”After Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary, Link wrote a supportive column in Alberta Report entitled, “Why Pat Buchanan so horrifies the North American liberal establishment.”Link explained to Albertans why Buchanan was at that time seen as “the Great Satan of the entire American political establishment” – a term that could easily be applied in recent years to Trump.Anyway, Link asked, “just what are Mr. Buchanan’s diabolical intentions? Increased tariffs against low-wage economies to protect American jobs. Much more resolute immigration laws, much tougher policing of the southern border and an end to federal funding of bilingualism and multiculturalism. No more affirmative action quotas. An end to America’s role as policemen of the New World Order.”Does that sound familiar? Remember, this was written in 1996, twenty years before Donald Trump triumphed by campaigning on these very issues.In short, Buchanan was fighting for “the old populist conception of government, that the role of the state is to protect individuals, families and communities in the free exercise of their God-given responsibilities.”Having backed Buchanan in 1996, it’s likely Link would have been an enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump today. In this, Link was way ahead of his time.Besides his love for Alberta and support of populist-nationalism, Link was a preeminent social conservative advocate.After the Supreme Court of Canada’s Vriend decision of April 1998, where it added sexual orientation to Alberta’s human rights legislation, there was considerable anger in much of the province. Many Albertans did not appreciate a federal court writing provincial legislation.Link articulated this point clearly: “Other Canadians imagine that Albertans get angry about gay rights because we hate gays. This is not true. We couldn’t be bothered hating gays. We get angry because we don’t like — and don’t accept — being told by outsiders how we will live, what we will think, and what our provincial laws will say. And this goes double when the people doing the telling are a panel of fat-headed, overpaid Ottawa lawyers in red suits who alter our laws at a whim and answer to no one. Our laws do not belong to these Ottawa lawyers, whose stupidity about charter rights grows more wanton and reckless by the year. Our laws belong to us.”No one could say it quite like Link, especially when it came to the Supreme Court.We could sure use him right now — a powerfully articulate voice for Alberta, Western Canada, the common people against the progressive elite, and traditional Christian morality. He’s been sorely missed these past ten years, but not forgotten.

WAGNER: Link Byfield should have seen this day...

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