I didn’t want to write this essay.

I was born in Alberta. I graduated from St. Francis High School in Calgary, then earned two degrees down the street at the University of Calgary. I wrestled for the Dinos, the university’s wrestling team, and for Team Alberta at the Canada Summer Games, where I lost the gold medal match in overtime to a kid from Newfoundland. The memory still haunts me. I got married in Cochrane, Alberta, to a woman from Fairview, Alberta. We had a son and, eventually, a divorce in Calgary. Alberta has always been my home.

So, when I’ve been asked in the past to write about the Alberta independence movement, I’ve said no. As a lifelong Albertan, I’ve grown weary of the rest of Canada’s fixation on my province’s conservative excesses, and I didn’t feel the current separatist tantrum warranted the nation’s attention. Or maybe I was just embarrassed. In any case, I thought Canadians were hearing enough about this already.

I changed my mind when I realized what people outside of Alberta — or even those within the province — weren’t hearing. The economic and political grievances expressed by the movement’s leaders obfuscate what’s really going on. I wanted Canadians to understand that Alberta separatism, at its heart, isn’t motivated by equalization policies, Senate seats, carbon taxes or oil. These tired complaints may ride shotgun on independence, but bigotry drives the truck.