Happened to my wife and I on the Henday when we canvasser for signatures. Cops did nothing. Needs to be called out.
I am calling on the Forever Canadians to denounce this behavior!
Today, while driving with Alberta flags displayed on my vehicle, I experienced something that genuinely shook me.
A pickup truck towing a trailer suddenly swerved toward my lane.
It happened in an instant.
Less than a second.
One moment he was driving normally. The next moment he was steering thousands of pounds of truck and trailer toward another vehicle because he apparently didn’t like what he saw.
What has stayed with me ever since isn’t just the maneuver itself.
It’s what it revealed.
That decision didn’t come from nowhere.
Human beings don’t manufacture that kind of rage in half a second.
The capacity was already there.
The hostility was already there.
The willingness to endanger complete strangers was already there.
All it took was seeing Alberta flags and, in a split second, that is what came out.
That realization honestly terrifies me.
Because if someone can be triggered into that kind of behavior merely by seeing a political opinion they dislike, then none of us are truly safe.
My wife was in the vehicle with me.
Had I reacted differently, hit the shoulder, entered the ditch, rolled the vehicle, or been struck by the truck and trailer, the outcome could have been catastrophic.
And for what?
For exercising my constitutional right to freedom of expression?
For peacefully displaying Alberta flags?
For supporting a democratic referendum process in which Albertans will settle this question through discussion, debate, and votes rather than violence?
I am constantly told that Alberta independence supporters are the angry ones.
Yet I wasn’t the one swerving a vehicle toward strangers because of a political disagreement.
The irony is impossible to ignore.
Many of the people who tell us that Alberta should remain in Canada because Canada is supposedly more tolerant, more democratic, and more respectful are proving the exact opposite when they react like this.
If your response to peaceful political expression is intimidation, threats, or reckless behavior, you are not defending democracy.
You are demonstrating precisely why so many Albertans have lost faith in the country.
A free society requires the ability to live beside people who disagree with us.
It requires self-control.
It requires tolerance.
It requires the ability to see a flag you dislike and simply keep driving.
The fact that some people can no longer do that should concern every Canadian, regardless of where they stand on Alberta independence.