Earlier this summer, I walked out of the journalism building at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology where I teach and heard a helicopter overhead. I stopped and squinted as it flew toward Calgary’s downtown with a giant royal-blue flag trailing behind.
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A half dozen or so people watched with me. We zoomed in with our phones to figure out if this was what we suspected it was—an aerial show sponsored by Alberta separatists using the province’s flag, with its distinctive blue background and the shield from Alberta’s coat of arms.
This is where things stand in 2026 in Alberta, where one might logically assume that a helicopter towing a large blue flag over Calgary is there to tell Canada to shove it.
Earlier this year, Premier Danielle Smith announced that the province would hold a referendum in October to determine whether Albertans should vote to separate from Canada. Ever since, Albertans have been hoisting flags to signal where they stand on the question. Separatists are flying the provincial flag: I saw a truck in Calgary displaying nine of them and drove past a man sitting by the Trans-Canada in a lawn chair surrounded by Alberta flags and a sign reading “Vote Option #2” (referring to the ridiculously verbose second choice on the ballot that could trigger the legal process for the province to separate). The Canada flag—which, during the pandemic, was co-opted by people opposed to public health restrictions and flown right side up and upside down in anger in street blockades and rallies—has been reclaimed by Albertans who want to remain in this country.
I’ve never seen so many Maple Leafs in my own neighbourhood, just north of Calgary’s downtown; within two blocks of my home, I counted sixteen. Houses and apartments have flags or placards in their windows or hanging from their front porches, cars, and patios. Some are hand drawn and others so freshly purchased that they still bear packaging folds embedded in the fabric. My MP, Liberal Corey Hogan, called on Albertans to “pick up [the Canadian] flag”; he later said on a podcast that his office had nearly run out of its annual allotment of flags. In my immediate vicinity, there’s only one Alberta independence sign, propped up in the window of a condo. In this neighbourhood, we all know where it is.
The ratio looks different in rural areas. I often go for long bike rides just south of the city, winding through the communities of Priddis and Millarville. There are stretches where Canada and Alberta flags alternate one to one along the roadside, each marking the entry to someone’s private property. These are next-door neighbours declaring themselves to be on opposite sides of what is shaping up to be one of the most consequential votes in the province’s history. Do they still exchange neighbourly hellos and call on each other for a cup of sugar?
These two flags came into existence almost together, amid a surge of national and provincial pride in the 1960s. Most other provinces had already adopted a flag, and the government of Alberta—always allergic to being seen as a have-not—wanted something that made a formal statement about Alberta’s identity within the federation. In 1961, under Premier Ernest C. Manning (father of Preston Manning, who founded the Reform Party), Alberta toyed with an incredibly bland concept: a white flag with the province’s coat of arms at the centre. Later, some Albertans suggested the province hang onto the Red Ensign after the federal government ditched it for the Maple Leaf in 1965; others pointed out that the Red Ensign, associated with Canadian ships, was not suitable for a province devoid of any large body of water (a problem that separatists, eager for access to tidewater, bemoan to this day). In 1968, Alberta settled on its current version: the bright-blue background (now designated as “Alberta blue” and meant to represent the sky) fronted by the provincial shield with its St. George’s Cross along the top and images of snow-capped mountains, green hills, and fields of wheat below.
Over the past few years, Albertans have become accustomed to the sight of their provincial flag being used as shorthand for the independence movement. It’s flown in the hundreds at separatist rallies and is the opening photo on the website of the Alberta Prosperity Project, one of the groups driving the movement. Separatists’ use of the flag has ramped up considerably over the past few months. You see it on the front porches and the Facebook groups of independence supporters—where people post images of flags hanging on their properties and talk about replacing the St. George’s Cross with a couple of oil derricks in a post-Canada world.
Frits Pannekoek, a professor of history at Athabasca University and a specialist in Alberta history, says it is “really, really, really sad that the flag is misused as a symbol of separatism, when that was not its original intention. It was supposed to be a symbol of pride.”
Now it risks becoming a symbol of division. In late July, the union representing staff at the grocery chain Sobeys filed a complaint about Alberta flags in Safeway stores, a Sobeys brand. The flags, Sobeys representatives have said, are hung to promote Alberta-made products; the union counters that the flag is too controversial. In Sundre, a town on the stunning Cowboy Trail, the local rodeo association barred a float draped in Alberta flags from Sundre’s annual parade this summer and then cancelled the event amid public blowback.
It’s distressing to see Alberta’s flag become “unwelcome” in places where it was intended as a symbol of support for farmers and ranchers, says Lori Williams, a political analyst at Mount Royal University in Calgary. The flag is no longer a neutral symbol, she says. That’s true for Canada’s flag too. “The flags, unfortunately, became more politicized than they were before the pandemic.”
Elections Alberta, in a statement to the public, clarified that flags do not count as political advertising for the fall referendum. They’re welcome anywhere, no matter what message they might send about Alberta’s future.
“Flags are eminently flexible,” says Forrest Pass, a lead curator at Library and Archives Canada and a vexillologist (an expert in the history and symbolism of flags). This year, for the first time, he added an Alberta flag to his eavestrough on Canada Day, alongside the Canadian flag and a few others representing his family history. “It’s really up to the people who fly them to decide whether you’re going to represent a particular position.”
In the end, the flag I saw being helicoptered over Calgary was seemingly just an ad for a food delivery service. Like many Albertans, I don’t love this experience. I hate watching the flag that symbolizes my home used for a cause that I vehemently disagree with. I moved to this province twenty years ago because my parents had moved here. I stayed because I fell in love with the things depicted on Alberta’s flag—that big blue sky, the mountains, the foothills, the prairies. I’ve made friends and a family here and been the beneficiary of astonishing kindness, some of it from people who don’t mind the idea of separation.
