East meets West in Winnipeg

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/11/2015 (3066 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Relations between Ottawa and Edmonton are awfully cosy at the moment, with a Liberal government in charge of the House of Commons and the NDP in command of the Alberta legislature.

Early this week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was praising Alberta Premier Rachel Notley for a climate change strategy that includes a carbon tax. Go back in time one year, and that previous sentence would have sounded more implausible than “alien spacecraft lands in Steinbach” or “Donald Trump leads Republican nomination race.”

For the next few days, however, the Canadian and Alberta capitals must at least pretend to be at loggerheads, given the presence of the Ottawa Redblacks and the Edmonton Eskimos in the 103rd Grey Cup.

On the field, this is a rivalry between a two-year-old expansion club and one of the most storied franchises in CFL history. There’s little history between the two teams, though the defunct Ottawa Rough Riders and the Eskimos met three times in Grey Cup games: Ottawa won the 1960 and 1973 title games, 16-6 and 22-18, respectively, while Edmonton won the 1981 game 26-23.

Off the field, there’s a lot more going on between the two cities. Here’s how the Ottawa-Edmonton rivalry stacks up, completely arbitrary:

The battle to create Alberta

In 1904, when Alberta was part of the Northwest Territories, Premier Sir Frederick Haultain wanted to become the leader of a new Canadian province.

Haultain was among many western Canadians pushing hard for the territories to enter Confederation. He envisioned the creation of a large new province called Buffalo, which would encompass all of what’s now Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Ottawa, however, had other plans. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the Liberal prime minister, feared the establishment of an enormous, Conservative-affiliated province with the potential to rival Ontario or Quebec in terms of power.

So instead of creating Buffalo, Laurier pushed for two smaller, separate provinces to enter Confederation in 1905, with Edmonton and Regina as their respective capitals.

Haultain wound up on the Saskatchewan side of the border.

Advantage: Ottawa

The WHA non-rivalry

Diehard Canadian hockey fans fondly recall the World Hockey Association as the league that gave birth to the Edmonton Oilers, Quebec Nordiques and the original Winnipeg Jets.

Less well-remembered are the Ottawa Nationals, a squad that played a single season in the nation’s capital before moving south to Toronto to become the Toros and finally Birmingham, Ala., to become the pugnacious Bulls.

The Nationals deserve a footnote in hockey history because they played on opening night of the inaugural WHA season, when they lost 7-4 to the Oilers.

That was 1972. The Edmonton club entered the NHL in 1979, and has won five Stanley Cups. Ottawa wouldn’t enter the NHL until the rebirth of the Senators in 1992.

Perhaps it’s a bit weak to call this a portent.

Advantage: Edmonton

The battle for the flow of oil

In 1980, the Pierre Trudeau government enraged Alberta with the National Energy Program, which sought to control oil prices for all Canadians at the expense of profits in the oil patch.

The program may have cushioned the blow of the early ’80s recession in Ontario and Quebec, but the results in Alberta included bankruptcies and lost income estimated in the tens of billions of dollars.

At the height of Alberta outrage, bumper stickers appeared on Edmonton vehicles, declaring “Let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark.”

Three-and-a-half decades later, the joke is on both Edmonton and Ottawa. The 103rd Grey Cup game will be held in Winnipeg, with kickoff at Investors Group Field taking place 28 minutes after sunset.

In other words, both teams are going to freeze in the dark.

Advantage: No one, including Winnipeg Blue Bombers season-ticket holders.

A competition of carbs

Rightly or wrongly, the food most commonly associated with Ottawa is the beavertail, a flat oval of deep-fried dough slathered with butter and sprinkled with toppings such as Nutella or maple syrup.

The unofficial food of Edmonton appears to be the green onion cake, a savoury round of pan-fried dough, originally of Chinese origin.

So to recap: Ottawa loves deep-fried dough that’s usually sweet; Edmonton loves pan-fried dough that’s typically served with chili-garlic sauce.

Advantage: Manufacturers of cholesterol medications.

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You Oughta Know vs. Constant Craving

Famous people born in Ottawa include author Margaret Atwood, actors Sandra Oh and Lorne Greene, musicians Bruce Cockburn and Alanis Morissette, and comedians Dan Aykroyd and Rich Little.

Famous folks from Edmonton include author W.P. Kinsella, intellectual Marshall McLuhan, musician k.d. lang, actors Michael J. Fox and Nathan Fillion and comedians Tommy Chong and Bruce McCulloch.

In other words, Ottawa has given us The Handmaid’s Tale, the original Battlestar Galactica and Ghostbusters, while Edmonton has given us Shoeless Joe, Firefly and Back to the Future.

Advantage: Neither, as that’s as close to a cultural draw as you can get.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca