Voters’ emphatic rejection of separation strengthens Mark Carney’s energy strategy in the face of a US trade war and threats

Canadians are proving to be a voice of sanity. In roundly rejecting the idea of separating from Canada, voters in the oil- and gas-rich province of Alberta sensibly backed the nation-building strategy of the prime minister, Mark Carney. He has put Alberta at the centre of his plan to make Canada an energy superpower that is “much less dependent on the United States”.

Donald Trump’s trade war and threats last week to make Canada the 51st US state were a fillip for Mr Carney in Alberta, a landlocked western province where Liberal prime ministers have historically been unpopular. The stakes were high: a successful separatist campaign would have handed Mr Trump leverage over Canada’s resource belt. The result instead lets Mr Carney cast Alberta’s mineral wealth as a national asset, rather than allow separatists to define it as a regional grievance.

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The organization We Are the Seeds began planting as part of a push to return land sovereignty to Indigenous people

Xiao Hui Star kneeled on her haunches, with her hands in the dirt as she cleared a spot to plant a flowering perennial in late summer. Surrounding her was a native garden replete with golden sunflowers, beans, squash, pawpaw and corn. She ruffled tufts of sweetgrass, which emitted a vanilla-like fragrance. Birds fluttered by and swooped down into a small bath filled with hard clam shells. Sandwiched between a brick home and a playground in west Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, the native garden featured plants endemic to the region.

“These are very special endangered varieties that we are rematriating back to the soil,” said Star, who is part of Rhode Island’s Narragansett tribe. She is also the manager of new initiatives at the Philadelphia-based organization We Are the Seeds, which hosts public events and education on Indigenous arts and culture. “Who knows how many centuries it’s been since a Lenape corn or a Nanticoke squash have grown in this soil.”