We Are All Lighthouse Keepers

I have spent a lifetime fascinated by maps. Road maps. Aviation charts. Weather systems. Arctic maps. Maps teach you something important about the world. Tiny deviations rarely feel dangerous in the moment. One degree off course does not look like much. The road still feels familiar. The landmarks still seem recognizable. Life carries on.

But keep moving without correction and eventually you wake up somewhere you never intended to be.

Democracy works a little like navigation. Institutions are the map. Rules are the compass. Transparency is the lighthouse standing on the shoreline, warning us when we are drifting toward dangerous waters. The danger is rarely that the lighthouse suddenly goes dark. More often, it dims slowly enough that people adjust to seeing less. The compass shifts a degree. Process bends a little. Trust weakens a little. Something that should feel unacceptable becomes normalized because it happens often enough that people stop noticing.

Then one day people look around and realize the map no longer matches the terrain. That is where my mind has been since yesterday.

I have been talking about paying attention since August, September, and October of 2025, during the months when many of us were working on Forever Canadian. I said repeatedly then what I am saying again now. Read legislation, watch process and pay attention to what happens underneath headlines because democracy is not only shaped by elections. It is shaped inside committee rooms. It is shaped by procedure, rules, guardrails, and public trust. It is built in places most people understandably do not have time to follow closely because they are raising families, building businesses, working long hours, caring for parents, and trying to survive daily life.

But somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew this was not finished.

You could see pressure building. You could see narratives hardening. You could increasingly see influences and strategies that felt disturbingly familiar to what we have watched unfold south of the border over the past decade. Institutions slowly becoming targets. The process becomes inconvenient when it impedes outcomes. Distrust becoming fuel. Anger becomes a strategy. Democratic guardrails are beginning to feel less like safeguards and more like obstacles to people who believe the end justifies the means.

Yesterday unsettled me more deeply than I expected.

Thomas Lukaszuk appeared before the Alberta Legislature committee on behalf of nearly 500,000 Albertans who signed Forever Canadian. Nearly half a million Albertans signed because they wanted Alberta to remain in Canada. Nearly half a million Albertans signed because they wanted leadership to do the difficult work of governing rather than drag Alberta into the economic uncertainty, division, and damage that a separation referendum would create.

Forever Canadian was filed deliberately under the policy stream, not the referendum stream. That distinction matters. Thomas has been clear from the beginning that the purpose was not to create a referendum campaign. It was to ask elected leaders to do their jobs and govern responsibly.

Then came something that should concern Albertans regardless of political stripe. While committee discussions were still underway, government communications announcing the outcome had already gone out publicly. Debate was still active. Discussion had not concluded. Yet communications declaring the result had already reached the press.

Albertans can draw their own conclusions. But public trust lives and dies on process.

I also found myself thinking about Thomas personally. Thomas is a friend and colleague. I know how strongly he believes Alberta belongs in Canada. I know why Forever Canadian was built. I also know how events unfolded publicly left me deeply uncomfortable.

I was not in the room. I cannot speak to private conversations or private intentions. But I can speak honestly about concern. My concern is that process matters. My concern is that public trust matters. My concern is that if Albertans begin believing decisions are predetermined before deliberation concludes, trust breaks.

If institutions begin feeling performative instead of meaningful, trust breaks.

If discussion begins feeling like validation of decisions rather than genuine democratic process, trust breaks. And trust, once broken, is one hell of a thing to rebuild.

The part frightening me this morning is not disagreement. Alberta has always had disagreement. Democracy survives disagreement. The part frightening me is wondering whether maybe the lighthouse has dimmed enough that I cannot see the shoreline as clearly anymore.

That should concern all of us. Because democracies rarely collapse dramatically. The compass shifts gradually. The lighthouse dims slowly. The map stops matching the terrain so incrementally that people convince themselves nothing fundamental has changed.

Until one day they realize it has.

I am Forever Canadian not because Canada is perfect and not because Alberta is perfect. Far from it. I am Forever Canadian because I love Alberta enough to worry. I love Alberta enough to speak. I love Alberta enough to believe this province deserves institutions people trust and democratic systems people believe in.

Maybe now we need more lighthouse keepers. People willing to climb the stairs. People willing to change the bulb. People willing to stand watch before we drift too far off course. Because if enough warning lights fade and enough people convince themselves someone else will fix it, eventually you do not lose your way all at once.

You simply wake up one morning and realize you have drifted farther from shore than anyone realized. And by then, finding your way back becomes a whole lot harder.

I still believe Alberta knows who it is. I still believe Alberta knows what country it belongs to. But belief alone is not enough. Maps matter, compasses matter and lighthouses matter. But none of them work if people stop paying attention. October 19 is coming.

Choose carefully. Some directions are far easier to drift into than they are to find your way back from.