Historian Fernand Braudel, who wrote his university thesis in a Nazi prisoner of war camp for French soldiers, taught that history moves slowly.
He said that it’s not the events of a day that are significant, “they are just flecks of foam on strong, underlying tides.”
Alberta’s political and economic history bear this out.
Its political dynasties change slowly.
The commercialization of the oilsands started in 1872, the first mine and upgrader opened in 1967, the federal and provincial royalty system that made it an international investment magnate was instituted in 1992.
A strong, underlying tide of 120 years.
The ratcheting up of global oil prices to a level that made Alberta conventional crude production a prime economic driver started in 1953.
In London that year the largest oil producing nations and the biggest oil companies made a fifty-fifty profit-sharing agreement.
In a series of steps in the 1970s the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) trashed the fifty-fifty deal and took control of oil pricing.
In 1973, OPEC raised prices and after 1984, Canada’s federal government de-controlled the oil market and Canadian producers fully shared in the world price.
A strong underlying tide of 30 years.
The land locking of Alberta oil because of the failure of four major pipelines has been a tide of 25 years, from the start of project planning after 2000 to the present day.
The modern oil era, a 70-year tide from 1947 and the discovery of the first billion-barrel field in 1947 to the price crash in 2014, is over.
The new reality is reflected in a recent letter to the Calgary Herald from a reader named Lindsay Johnson. “Calgary has the highest unemployment rate in Canada. There are record office vacancy rates downtown. One in four Calgarians have just enough money to meet their basic needs each month,” Johnson wrote.
The democratic and populist rejection of the 2026 Olympic Winter Games bid by a convincing majority of Calgarians shows that Alberta is now on an ebb tide.
John Gardner, who remade the United States with The War on Poverty and the Great Society program, as President Lyndon Johnson’s secretary of health education and welfare, said that "failure to face the realities of change brings heavy penalties.
“Individuals become imprisoned in their own rigidities. Great institutions deteriorate. Civilizations fall.
“Yet decay is not inevitable. There is also renewal."
How will Alberta renew from $10 per barrel oil?
It’s time to throw off “world class” hubris and replace it with conviction of Alberta’s identity, and role on the continent and the world.
What tides will carry the next Alberta?
Alberta’s response to the tides of renewal will be led by the municipal and provincial governments, the 20 agricultural commodity groups, thinkers in universities, colleges and publishing, and the social media generations.
Braudel said, “leaders don’t make history, history makes leaders.”
In the past, Alberta’s leaders, who had never heard of Braudel, dreamed of changing the world from their tractor seats.
The next generation of leaders dream of changing the world with their cellphones.
– Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist and author.
