I have good neighbours who are now flying Alberta flags to signal their support for separatism. So I need to make something clear: they are, indeed, good neighbours. And I like them. Nobody can see inside the head of someone else or know how they process information or interpret experience. Good people can have diametrically opposed viewpoints. I don’t only like people who think like me. My separatist neighbours are family, and nothing is going to change that. Not even the manipulators trying so cynically to drive wedges and divide us.

I detest the idea of Alberta separatism. I love Alberta like I love my family, because it is my family… but nothing about that could ever make me turn away from my country, because it is my country. I’m proud to be Canadian.

So the fact that Danielle Smith thought it would be clever to blow on the embers of resentment until they burst into flame, simply to gain leverage in her constant effort to look smart and to keep her oil millionaire buddies happy, really, really makes me mad. She has chosen deliberately to divide my community, ruin my province, and weaken my country — all for nothing more than her twisted ego’s need to break things and blame others. She’s been doing it ever since she entered public life.

But she will not succeed in turning me against my neighbours with their Alberta flags. She won’t get me to belittle their thinking or beliefs. I’ll despise the purveyors of separatism koolaid to hell and back, but not those who drank it.

At the end of the day, the separatism movement will fail under the weight of its own illegitimacy, impracticality and goofiness.

But me and my good neighbours will still be neighbours. And Canada will be stronger than ever.

No glib-talking, double-dealing, smug, deceitful Premier-for-a-while can ever succeed at taking that from us. I can’t wait for her to retire to Panama and leave us to pick up the pieces. Together. As neighbours.