For my early primary school education, I was fortunate enough to attend a public elementary school in the province of Quebec during the early 1970s, being a student from Kindergarten to Grade 2. With the plasticity that children have with language, I flourished in my imposed French immersion and made lots of friends (mostly girls). I largely have happy memories of those days, and never felt like I was an outsider, even though I was a native Albertan. We returned to Alberta, and my 8 year old mind understood very quickly that my Quebecois ways were not welcome. Again, childhood plasticity kicked in and I understood that my time in Quebec was not to be discussed. In a funny way, that time in another province was like a dream or TV show that never really happened (cancel culture works both ways, m’ dears!) From Grade 3 and onwards, I stayed in the English-only public school system and essentially grew up a typical Albertan.

In my twenties, I travelled the world and realized there were huge gaps in my education. I excelled at school and university (once I found my footing), but comparing myself to peers from the U.S. and the U.K., I learned I didn’t learn much about much in public school. One glaring hole in Alberta education of the 70s and 80s was the history of Alberta itself; I knew next to nothing about how Alberta came into existence or how it got its name. I seemed to know more about U.S. and U.K. history than the province I was born and grew up in. Maybe the curriculum is different in the new Millennium, but judging from the pop culture around me, my guess is not much has changed in that respect.

There was always an undercurrent of separatism in Albertan society, and lately it has been pushed to the forefront thanks to Social Media, chat bots and political instability in America. All this made me curious about the deeper history of Alberta: how did it come into existence and what does “Alberta” mean. Yes, now I know the quick answer is that the province was named after Princess Louise, the daughter of Queen Victoria, but the very curious way it got named after her makes me wonder if the average Albertan is aware of it? In this age of identity politics, do sympathizers of Alberta separatism understand where their identity comes from?

Through complete happenstance, I came into possession of a set of century-old encyclopaedias in near-mint condition, the esteemed “The World Book” published in 1922 by the W. F. Quarrie & Company of Toronto. It was made in the U.S.A. and definitely has an American bias, but this set was unique in that it was “Candianized” and had extensive entries on the Canadian provinces. An old encyclopedia like this is a time capsule of when it was published, and considering that Alberta was decreed a province only 40 years previous to its publication, the information was only within a generation or two. For context, consider the entry for the first cell phone in a modern encyclopedia. There are those of use who where around at the time and who recall seeing and hearing of them.

In “The World Book” encyclopedia of 1922, the 10-page entry for “Alberta” comes right after “Albert I”, the still-living King of Belgium at the time. It has all kinds of fascinating details and statistics, finishing with a list of questions to test your understanding of the subject. Some of the bizarre questions are laughable in the modern age, especially the ones that bang you over the head with comparisons to America and reminders of British ties:

• If all the all the inhabitants of Canada were transferred to Alberta, would the density of population be greater or less than that in the United States?
• How many Canadian provinces are larger than Alberta? How many states of the United States?
• What part of Alberta can be called “The Switzerland of America”? Why?
• About what is it estimated that the horses of Alberta are worth?
• In what way, besides sending of troops, was Alberta able to help Great Britain in the War of the Nations?
• How does the amount of wheat raised in Alberta compare with that raised in Iowa?
• How important a problem is the “divorce-evil” in Alberta?

Interesting questions indeed, even today. The list of questions at the end of the other provinces were framed the same way.

The wealth of information presented in the 10 pages is enough to generate a hundred other discussions about the early history of the province, but let’s focus on its naming. How the arbitrary boundaries of the province of Alberta were set is the epitome of colonialist arrogance, and that alone earn a separate investigation.

In a nutshell, Alberta was named after Princess Louise Alberta, the wife of the Governor-General of Canada at the time, the Marquis of Lorne (John Campbell). They were on an extended trip to the region, and the Marquis wrote a sonnet about it (LGBTQ+ Flag Number 1):

In token of the love whom thou has shown
For this wide land of freedom, I have named
A province vast, and for its beauty famed,
By thy dear name to be hereafter known,
Alberta shall it be! Her fountains thrown
From Alps unto three oceans, to all men
Shall vaunt her loveliness e’en now; and when,
Each little hamlet to a city grown,
And numberless as blades of prairie grass,
Or the thick leaves in distant forest bower,
Great peoples hear the giant currents pass,
Still shall the waters, bringing wealth and power,
Speak the loved name — land of silver springs —
Worthy the daughter of our English Kings.

Now before anyone gets their knickers in a knot (très à propos non?), masculinity was defined differently in the late 1800s than today, so perhaps writing sonnets to your wife naming vast regions of wilderness already inhabited by indigenous people for millennia was what British aristocrats did in those days. But there’s more about the eyebrow-raising marriage between Princess Louise and the Marquis of Lorne that will make you flip your 19th Century wig. Re-reading this poem makes me wonder what double-entendres are being shared with the world. Isn’t poetry filled with secrets encoded in verse and metaphor? However, the British imperialism in the last line is as blunt as the Red Cross of St. George in the Albertan flag.

I present to you the second LGBTQ+ Flag, the painting of the wedding in 1871. Mr. Campbell is almost as pretty as the blushing bride, don’t you think?

Since this post is mostly about John Campbell and contemporary accounts of him, and not so much about Princess Louise (you will find a plethora of stories about her online), I looked for our Marquis of Lorne in the same set of “The World Book” encyclopedias, but alas, I couldn’t find another mention of him. I turned to the Governor General of Canada’s web site, which provided some more information with his last official title, Duke of Argyll. Princess Louise and John may not have had the most conventional marriage of the time, but what they accomplished plants several more LGBTQ+ Flags:

• The couple assisted with establishing the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and the National Gallery of Canada
• In addition to the sonnet quoted above, the Duke wrote many books and poems about Canada. Princess Louise was herself an artist, producing paintings and sculptures.
• They hosted all kinds of parties at Rideau Hall, including toboggan & skating parties.

The personalities of the person who named Alberta and its namesake are people who are far cry from the Albertan identity of today; rough necks in the oil-patch, cowboys on the ranch, movers and shakers in the gleaming downtown towers of Edmonton and Calgary. For those who are so wrapped-up in gender identity, the naming of the province is quite a disconnect from the emotional response to what “being an Albertas” means. Perhaps this should be a point of wider discussion about Canada’s colonial past and Alberta’s place in it, as defined by its history.

My point is this: don’t take for granted what you think you know about Alberta’s history and identity. For all you know, this great province is what it is today because of a not so rigidly-defined masculine man and a not so rigidly-defined feminine princess.