When Alberta Premier Danielle Smith rails against the federal Liberals as she is inclined to do, I usually find myself agreeing with the feds. This is partly due to our differing politics, but it is also due to differing sensibilities. Hers are inclined to the rural as this is her power base, mine to the urban. This divide, I would suggest, is more important than the notorious east-west divide that captures so much attention.

This division between urban and rural, town and country, has been highly visible of late. In elections across the West the progressive NDP has dominated ridings in the urban areas while conservative parties have dominated those in the rural areas. In Alberta, for instance, the NDP won all the seats in Edmonton and over half in Calgary, but only four in the rest of the province. The conservative UCP nearly swept the countryside.

This is true federally as well. In the 2021 federal election the Liberals tended to win big in the cities, the Conservatives in the rural areas. The divide has been recognized in the U.S. and other countries around the world.

Jack Lucas of the University of Calgary and David Armstrong and Zack Taylor of Western University tracked support for the Liberals and Conservatives in urban and rural areas from 1900 to today. The result is shown in the graph to the right. Above the line is urban-oriented and below the line is rural-oriented with the usual blue for Tories and red for Liberals.

As shown, early in the century urban areas went Conservative and then about 1930 things switch. Since then, urban areas increasingly support the Liberals and rural areas the Conservatives. The divide is the highest today that it’s ever been.

Premier Smith has lamented that as people migrate from the rural areas to Calgary and Edmonton, they become indoctrinated in progressive views. I believe she’s got it backwards. They don’t become progressive in the cities, they migrate to the cities because they are progressive to start with.

I grew up in the country in southern Saskatchewan. I got a good job in town but I was restless. I wanted to see something of the world so I moved to the city, and eventually to a series of cities. I discovered that although I was born and raised in the country, I was a city boy at heart. I love the variety and the vitality—the choices—that only cities offer.

Young people have for a long time departed villages and small towns for the city. They leave because they are curious about the world, because they want to further their education, because they want more opportunities. In other words, the curious, the bright and the ambitious tend to leave. There is an imagination/brain/ambition drain. Over time, over generations, this results in two different peoples, an urban more progressive, a rural more conservative. This is enhanced by immigration. Most immigrants, with their different ways and ideas, land in the big cities.

All this contributes to a more cosmopolitan, more entrepreneurial, more tolerant urban culture. Left behind is a more homogeneous, conservative, traditional rural culture. We are becoming two solitudes. I am more likely to find a like-minded person in Toronto or Montreal than in Claresholm or Stettler. Someone from Claresholm is more likely to find a like-minded person in Chatham or Simcoe then in Edmonton.

Can the gap be bridged? When Ralph Klein, a Calgary boy, ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party (and therefore for premier) he spent great effort wooing the countryside and it paid off, helping him win, overcoming the odds-on urban favourite Nancy Betkowski (who later became leader of the Alberta Liberal Party). The new NDP leader, Naheed Nenshi, is determined to follow Klein’s example and breach the CPU’a lock on the rural vote. It is much more of a challenge for a progressive, so I wish him luck. The gap is widening and presents a major source of polarization, something we already have an excess of.