The Legal Case for Alberta’s Independence
(The Rights of Albertans asserted and proved)
Illegitimi non Carborundum ∴ Inveniam viam aut faciam
“When in the Course of human events,
it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands
which have connected them with another, and to assume
among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which
the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them,
a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should
declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . ,
That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People
to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government”[1]
The cause for Alberta’s Independence is:
“Undo the colonial fetters of wickedness,
untie and dissolve the bands of the perversion of justice, and
let the oppressed Albertans be free from their Canadian colonial bondage”[2]
Preliminary DRAFT
April 12, 2026, by Robert Weidenfeld, M.S.E.E., an independent Albertan[3]
Table of contents: Page
2. The colonial conquest of North America, 1606 – 1905 8
2.1 William Blackstone’s legal doctrines, 1765 10
2.2 England’s colonial conquest of America, 1606 – 1776 11
2.3 America’s colonial conquest of Western North America, 1776 – 1867 12
A. George Washington started the French Indian war, 1753 12
B. James Otis defended the rights of Boston’s merchants, 1761 13
C. Thomas Jefferson defended the rights of Americans, 1774 14
D. The resolution of America’s First Continental Congress, 1774 14
E. Edmund Burke asked UK Parliament to reconcile with America, 1775 15
F. The “Common Sense” of Thomas Paine, 1776 15
G. The American revolutionary war, 1775-83 16
H. America’s purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France, 1803 17
I. America’s conquest of Mexico, California, Oregon Country, 1818-1846 18
J. America’s purchase of Alaska from Russia, 1867 21
K. Summary 23
2.4 England’s illegal colonial conquest of Western Canada, 1670 – 1867 24
A. Hudson’s Bay Company’s Royal Charter 1670 (“HBC1670”) 25
B. HBC1670 was a legally fictitious paper 27
B.1 Parliament’s debates in 1848 question the validity of HBC1670 27
B.2 Parliament’s debates in 1849 question the validity of HBC1670 29
B.3 Parliament’s debates in 1857 question the validity of HBC1670 30
B.4 C.J. Draper’s letter to H. Labouchere, dated May 6, 1857 31
B.5 Parliament’s debates in 1858 question the validity of HBC1670 31
B.6 Summary of the Parliament’s debates on the validity of HBC1670 35
C. Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (“JCPC”)[4] ruled that a
Royal Charter does NOT confer land ownership, January 1899 36
2.5 Canada’s illegal colonial conquest of Alberta, 1867 – 1905 38
A. British North America Act, 1867 38
B. British Columbia, 1846 – 1871 41
C. Ruppert Land, 1670 – 1870 42
D. Hudson’s Bay Company’s fake “Deed of Surender” of its assets
to Canada in 1870 was a legal nullity 44
E. Supreme Court of Canada’s critical error in its definition of “Land Title” 45
F. The ancient Roman Law that applied to a legal claim for “Land Title” 49
2.6 Canada’s illegal colonial conquest of the Arctic Archipelago in 1880 51
2.7 America could, and should annex the Arctic Archipelago 54
3. Homestead Acts in America and Canada, 1862 – 1930 57
3.1 Homestead Acts in America, 1862 – 1930 58
3.2 Homestead Acts in Canada, 1872 – 1930 59
4. The “Manifest Destiny” to conquer terra nullius (empty land) 59
4.1 America’s “Manifest Destiny” to colonize the North America continent 60
4.2 Canada’s “Manifest Destiny” to colonize the land North of the 49th Parallel 61
5. Alberta Act 1905, Canada’s illegal colonial subjugation of Alberta, 1905 62
5.1 Alberta demographics, 1901 – 1906 62
5.2 The immigration of Europeans to Alberta, 1896 – 1905 62
5.3 Canada Parliament’s ultra vires enactment of the Alberta Act 1905 64
6. Alberta’s futile Olive Branches Petitions (“OBP”) to Canada never worked 67
6.1 Historical futile OBPs to England’s “Most Excellent Majesties”, the “Royals” 67
6.2 Alberta’s futile OBPs to Canada’s “Most Excellent Majesties”, the Prime Min. 69
A. The “Firewall Letter”, 2001, Stephen Harper et. al 69
B. Jason Kenney’s failed Referendum, October 18, 2021 70
C. Danielle Smith’s futile “Olive Branches” to Prime Minister Carney 72
D. Danielle Smith’s futile Referendum planned on October 19, 2026 75
6.3 Alberta Premiers lack the cojones to oppose Ottawa, her colonial master 78
7. “What Is To Be Done” to regain Alberta’s Independence 80
Appendix “A” - Hudson’s Bay Company (“HBC”) maps of its Fur Trade Posts, 1870 90
Appendix “B” - Canada Constitution’s “kiss of death” to Alberta’s Independence 94
Appendix “C” - Alberta’s net financial tributes to Canada 96
Appendix “D” - Canada’s government debt spirals up, and out of control 99
Appendix “E” - The decision of the “Judicial Committee of the Privy Council” in
Staples v Queen, dated January 27, 1899 100
Footnotes (Table of Contents):
[1] The unaltered original: “IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
[2] Paraphrasing Nevi’im (Prophets), Yeshayahu (Isaiah), Ch. 58:6, https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/15989/showrashi/true; Note: on May 5, 2026, just one week after Canada elected Mark Carney to form a renewed minority government led by the Liberal Party, Premier Danielle Smith appeared on TV, and detailed the Province’s long list of grievances against Canada, Alberta’s colonial master. It was a speech long on whining but very short on the necessary, and sufficient actions that Albertans should immediately take to regain their freedom after120 years of colonial bondage: https://www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=9324556BC1A5F-CB3E-EEE9-85F1627BA226C867
[3] “I am a lover of liberty. I will not and I cannot serve a party”: Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, 1899, at p.377, Ephraim Emerton, quoting from Erasmus’s Spongia adversus aspergines Hutteni (Sponge against the sprays of Hutteni, 1523): https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/47517/pg47517-images.html
[4] UK’s JCPC was the highest court of appeals from all the judicial courts in Canada, from 1833 to 1949, when Canada abolished it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Committee_of_the_Privy_Council
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Pages 87 - 89
8. Conclusion
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls . . . Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered;
yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”[1]
Alberta has all the sufficient, and necessary natural resources, technology, agricultural products, and financial assets that should allow our landlocked State to be self-sufficient now, and for many generations to come. Albertans have “nothing to fear but the fear itself” from cutting their umbilical cord to Ottawa, once it for all, with “no reserve, no retreat, no regrets".
“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,
that is genius.”[2]
In 1848, Lord Macaulay[3] described his intimate knowledge of the overarching principles of the colonial policies cherished by the British Empire:
“The doctrine that the parent state has supreme power over the colonies is not only borne out by authority and by precedent, but will appear, when examined, to be in entire accordance with justice and with policy. During the feeble infancy of colonies independence would be pernicious, or rather fatal, to them. Undoubtedly, as they grow stronger and stronger, it will be wise in the home government to be more and more indulgent. No sensible parent deals with a son of twenty in the same way as with a son of ten. Nor will any government not infatuated treat such a province as Canada or Victoria in the way in which it might be proper to treat a little band of emigrants who have just begun to build their huts on a barbarous shore, and to whom the protection of the flag of a great nation is indispensably necessary. Nevertheless, there cannot really be more than one supreme power in a society. If, therefore, a time comes at which the mother country finds it expedient altogether to abdicate her paramount authority over a colony, one of two courses ought to be taken. There ought to be complete incorporation, if such incorporation be possible. If not, there ought to be complete separation. Very few propositions in polities can be so perfectly demonstrated as this, that parliamentary government cannot be carried on by two really equal and independent parliaments in one empire.”
What Macaulay described in 1848, applies equally to Alberta’s colonial “mother country” in 2026. Therefore, Albertans must act firmly, and expeditiously to redress the greatest historical wrong that Canada inflicted on our freedom loving land for the last 120 years.
Albertans must believe in their exceptionalism that is greater than the American Exceptionalism. In fact, when President Trump first declared[4] his vision to Make American Great Again (“MAGA2016”) during his 2016 presidential campaign, which he won, he covertly meant “Make Alberta Great Again”, eh. Trump knew that a great Alberta would provide a strong energy push to America, which is the necessary catalysator to grow a great economy.
Consequently, in 2026, Albertans should adopt our MAGA2026 slogan, and declare that:
a. We reject the false presumptions that the British Empire, from 1670 to 1867, had “supreme power over its colonies” in Canada, and certainly NOT in Alberta, not then nor ever. That delusionary, false legal belief had nothing to do with true justice, neither from 1670 to 1905, nor as enacted in ABA1905, and absolutely nor in 2026;
“For it seems to me that an unjust law is no law at all.”[5]
b. We categorically state that neither prior to 1905 nor ever since, Albertans proclaimed that “the protection of the flag of a great nation [England and/or Canada] is indispensably necessary” to their peaceful, and prosperous livelihood;
c. The time has come that “the mother country [Canada] finds it expedient altogether to abdicate her paramount authority over its colony” in Alberta;
d. The last 120 years have proved that the “complete incorporation” of Alberta into the Canadian Confederation was, and it still is NOT possible, and “there ought to be complete separation” of their financial, and political umbilical cords; and,
e. Most importantly for Alberta’s future prosperity, the proper, adequate, expeditious, and functionally efficient ”government cannot be carried on by two really equal and independent parliaments in one [Canadian] empire”. Alberta was, and still is a sovereign territory, independent of its illegal colonial masters, England and Canada.
In this book, I attempted, to the best of my ability, to describe the closely interrelated history of America, and Canada leading to ABA1905, the infamous Act of Parliament that sucked Alberta into the colonial empires of England, and Canada for the last 120 years. Because:
“Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”[6]
I will end for now by quoting the former American president defending the British soldiers who killed a Bostonian in self-defence. He acted as their defense lawyer, not of love to the British Empire, which he detested, but out of duty to serve justice[7] as he deemed right:
“I am for the prisoners at the bar, and shall apologize for it only in the words of the Marquis Beccaria:
“If I can but be the instrument of preserving one life, his blessing and tears of transport,
shall be a sufficient consolation to me, for the contempt of all mankind. . . .
I will enlarge no more on the evidence, but submit it to you.-
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations,
or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence:
nor is the law less stable than the fact; if an assault was made to endanger their lives,
the law is clear, they had a right to kill in their own defence”.
Similarly, no colonial master can ever “alter the state of facts and evidence” of how Albertans lived, and still live in infamy under two colonial masters, England, and Canada!
The final word (for now)
My fellow Albertans, please, learn your real, truthful history, because:
a. “Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis [it is] folly to be wise.”[8]
b. “The essence of liberty has always lain in the ability to choose as you wish to choose, because you wish so to choose, uncoerced, unbullied, not swallowed up in some vast system; and in the right to resist, to be unpopular, to stand up for your convictions merely because they are your convictions.
That is true freedom, and without it there is neither freedom of any kind, nor even the illusion of it.”[9]
c. “The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. . . .
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
The demaslave [1st appearance of this word] one who listens to what these idiots have to say and then
pretends that he believes it himself. . . . The typical American [and Canadian] law-maker . . .
knows the taste of boot-polish. . . .
His public life is an endless series of evasions and false pretences.
He is willing to embrace any issue, however idiotic, that will get him votes, and
he is willing to sacrifice any principle, however sound, that will lose them for him.”[10]
I hope that Lex4ABI would widely open the eyes, and especially the brains of these Albertans who still believe that ABA1905 was a legitimate enactment by the Parliament in 1905, and therefore Canada is a kosher confederation which should not be disturbed.
I further believe that after reading the Lex4ABI, the majority of Albertans would understand that in 2026, we have an historical unique opportunity to annul ABA1905, and begin our “world over again”[11], just as Americans did in 1776 when they had unilaterally severed their ties with England. It is worth repeating Paine’s writing on independence:
Albertans must realize that “a situation similar to the present hath not happened since the days” of the Athenian democracy in 500 - 323BCE, the only true democracy the world had ever experienced until now.
This book SHOULD “awaken a sleeping giant [Alberta], and fill it with the terrible resolve”[12] to regain the spirit of pioneering independence that dominated the hearts of their ancestors in 1905, and it still does in 2026.
Only a total, and unfettered Alberta’s independence may partially
remedy the colonial wrongs of the past, and especially of the present.
I strongly believe that in 2026, Albertans will do the right thing to regain
their independence, after they tried everything else for the last 120 years.[13]
** The end, NOT **
I will have more to say in the final version of this book
Eppur si muove[14]
Footnotes (pages 87 - 89):
[1] “The American Crisis”, #1, Dec. 19, 1776, T. Paine: https://americainclass.org/sources/makingrevolution/war/text2/painecrisis1776.pdf
[2]Self-Reliance, 1847 edition, Ralph Waldo Emerson: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Essays:_First_Series/Self-Reliance
[3] “The History of England from the Accession of James the Second”, 1848, five volumes covering 17 years of England’s turbulent times during 1685-1702 (including the “Glorious Revolution” 1688-1689), by Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800-1859), Secretary of War (1839-1841). The quote is from Volume 5, Chapter XXIII, at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2614/2614-h/2614-h.htm
[4] Trump’s MAGA2016 copied Ronald Reagan’s political slogan during his presidential campaign in 1980: “Let’s Make America Great Again”.
[5]“On Free Choice of the Will”, Book One, 388, at p.8, Augustine of Hippo: https://archive.org/details/isbn_2900872201889/mode/2up; “
”An unjust law is no law at all is a standard legal maxim around the world”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_unjust_law_is_no_law_at_all
[6] “In a 1948 speech to the House of Commons, Churchill paraphrased Santayana”:
[7] “The summation of John Adams in Rex v Wemms, The Soldiers Trial”, December 4, 1770. US 2nd President, March 1797 – March 1801. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/05-03-02-0001-0004-0016
[8] “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College”, 1768, Thomas Gray.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_on_a_Distant_Prospect_of_Eton_College
Martin Luther King’s corollary in “Strength to Love”, 1963, at p.48:
“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
[9] “Freedom and its betrayal - six enemies of human liberty”, 2002, 2nd Edition, Isaiah Berlin, at. p.112
[10] “Notes of Democracy”, 1926, Henry Louis Mencken, at pp.111-114.
RW’s note: in 1905, the demagogue PM Laurier, convinced the Parliament to enact the ultra vires ABA1905.
That illegal Act passed because the demaslaves in Alberta had ignorantly submitted to Canada’s colonial
empire that defied the fundamental principles of a democracy!
[11] “Should an independency be brought about by the first of those means, we have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest purest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world [like Alberta] is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the event of a few months.” “COMMON SENSE; addressed to the INHABITANTS of AMERICA”, Jan. 10, 1776, T. Paine, at p.30:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/147/147-h/147-h.htm
[12] Paraphrasing Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Navy that had stealthy attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Despite the heavy damages Yamamoto’s aircraft carriers inflicted to America’s Navy, he realized after the attack ended that Japan’s cowardly attack was a foreseeable, wasteful, and futile attempt to defeat America head-on in war. His last words in the epic movie Tora! Tora! Tora!, 1970, reflected Yamamoto’s afterthoughts succinctly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tora!_Tora!_Tora!
[13] Paraphrasing a quote misattributed to Churchill, yet a true fact in 1941 in US, as it is in 2026 in Alberta. After several attempts to convince President Roosevelt to join England in War World 2, Churchill had allegedly said: “In the end, America will do the right thing after trying everything else”. And indeed America did the right thing and joined England, but ONLY after Japan’s devastating attack on Pearl Harbor that destroyed the bulk of the American fleet in the Pacific Ocean!
[14] Alberta’s Independence: “and yet it moves” ON, despite its historical ignorant objectors!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_yet_it_moves