Western Standard - August 20, 2024


Celebrating the life and work of one of Alberta's great men — Ted Byfield

Topics
toasting ted
Hosted by
Nigel Hannaford
Mentioned
Paul Bunner Jonathan Vince Byfield Preston Manning Ted Byfield Stephen Harper Paul Bunner We Jason Kenney Smith Paul Bunner Fighting Jonathan Van Maron Paul Bunner Well Paul Bunner Look Derek Fildebrandt Peter Stock Tucker Carlson Pierre Poilievre
Alberta Expands Addiction Treatment with Opening of Third Recovery Community Monkeypox fearmongering is irresponsible

Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

141.56

Word count

2,999

Sentence count

191

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Vince Byfield and Jonathan Van Maren discuss the life and career of Ted Byfield, who died at the age of 95, and the impact he had on the culture wars that were raging in Alberta at the time of his death.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers. I'm Nigel Hannaford, and welcome to The Hannaford Show.
00:00:22.720 It would be hard to exaggerate the impact that the late Ted Byfield had on the life and politics of Alberta for the last 30 years, I would say.
00:00:36.920 The man was incredibly industrious, pushing out his point of view through the report magazines and through various publications.
00:00:45.080 I knew him a little in the last years of his life, and even at the age of 90, he was still publishing books.
00:00:52.080 He thrust this into my hand just before I saw him for the last time.
00:00:57.160 The time is now, and it was an examination of the culture wars that were raging in Alberta and continue to do so.
00:01:05.540 We are very pleased to have with us tonight Vince Byfield.
00:01:12.100 Welcome, Vince.
00:01:13.020 Ah, hey, Nigel. Good to see you.
00:01:16.820 Good to see you again.
00:01:18.420 Gosh, you're so hard to get on the phone.
00:01:20.720 This is what we do to have to get you, is it?
00:01:23.480 Also, I'm glad to welcome Jonathan Van Maren, who is a columnist who will be familiar to many of our readers through his own bridgehead postings.
00:01:33.960 You have just, I think, completed this little book here, The Prairie Lion, a biography of Ted Byfield.
00:01:44.880 It's a great read, and I'm going to come to you first.
00:01:49.240 Actually, Jonathan, let me start with you.
00:01:53.700 You've had a good look at the life of Ted Byfield.
00:01:56.240 Stephen Harper said that Ted Byfield's magazines, the reports, Alberta, BC, Western, were key to nurturing the conservative movement in Western Canada.
00:02:11.340 Would you agree with that?
00:02:14.180 Completely. I think it was probably best put by publisher Peter Stockland, who said no Alberta report, no Reform Party as it was, no Reform Party as it was, no PC collapse, no PC collapse, no conservative majority in 2011.
00:02:31.900 It's shorthand history, but fair shorthand history.
00:02:35.720 Many people don't know that it was actually Ted who wrote the first column in 1986, proposing the idea for what a Reform-type party would look like.
00:02:45.440 He did the keynote speech in 1987 in Vancouver, announcing that the West wants in.
00:02:51.320 That conference was an incredibly momentous conference for Canadian conservatism because it was hosted by Preston Manning.
00:02:58.140 And at that conference, a young Stephen Harper handed Preston Manning a paper on taxes that landed him a job as chief policy analyst.
00:03:05.940 Ted would never take credit for all of the things that followed, but Preston Manning insisted on giving it to him.
00:03:11.220 And almost everybody I interviewed said that we simply would not have seen politics unfold the way they did without Alberta report, without Ted Byfield.
00:03:19.940 Well, that's all the recommendation we need.
00:03:23.260 Coming now to you, Vince, one of the, I think, one of the very, very sad things that we all Western conservatives had to contend with was that when your father passed on,
00:03:36.060 he did so in the middle of the COVID epidemic, and we were never really able to have that kind of a Viking funeral that he so richly deserved.
00:03:46.500 I sort of remember that grave-sized ceremony at 30 below in Edmonton, and the interment followed, and I've never heard the liturgy chanted so quickly and so compellingly.
00:04:01.560 But that was the fact, the fact was that even though the former premier, Jason Kenney, did show up, there were an awful lot of people who would have wanted to say something as he said goodbye to your father.
00:04:21.000 Absolutely.
00:04:21.640 And I know you have got a project.
00:04:25.040 I do.
00:04:25.480 Tell us about it.
00:04:26.080 I do.
00:04:26.760 Well, actually, it's funny you mentioned Preston, because I give credit for this project to Preston.
00:04:33.180 So Preston, after recent events, we had a fellow up here, a gentleman from America by the name of Tucker Carlson.
00:04:44.340 And Preston helped me a lot in trying to get people to that event.
00:04:49.520 And we filled a stadium.
00:04:51.000 And I was calling Preston afterwards to thank him for getting me in touch with key people to help to get that room full.
00:05:01.660 And he then said, you know, it's too bad that we never really had the opportunity to give your dad the kind of send-off that he deserved.
00:05:10.280 And I agreed.
00:05:13.600 And he said, you know, if you do decide, even at this stage of the game, to do something, some kind of occasion or event, I would be honored to speak at that.
00:05:25.760 And I said, be careful, Preston.
00:05:29.020 I may take you up on that.
00:05:31.660 And I then brought it past Premier Smith's eyes, and she liked the idea very much.
00:05:39.720 And from that, we now have an event, which we have coined the Toasting Ted, an evening to remember and to honor Ted Byfield.
00:05:50.300 It's going to be in Edmonton at the Edmonton Convention Center, Hall D, their biggest hall.
00:05:56.920 And it's going to be on September the 25th.
00:05:59.620 And it will be a night to remember.
00:06:03.780 Very much styled in the kind of festive occasions and parties that dad enjoyed to host.
00:06:13.600 He was well-known for his Boxing Day parties, which he would pack our home with upwards of 200 people.
00:06:23.380 We do not have that large a home, so it was a crowded affair, but a lot of fun, a lot of singing, a lot of good times.
00:06:35.140 He hosted it almost 40 times, right?
00:06:39.300 And so this will be in the style of that.
00:06:41.780 This will be an echo of a well-tried routine for bringing people together.
00:06:46.780 But I think this one's going to be a lot bigger.
00:06:49.380 And if you don't move quickly, you are probably going to miss out.
00:06:53.860 So how do people get their hands on a ticket?
00:06:57.020 Well, the best way is to go to our website, which is toastingted, all one word, toasting, like T-O-A-S-T, toastingted.ca.
00:07:07.960 And the very first thing you see at the top is a big red button that says reserve your spot.
00:07:13.920 And what that does is gives you a form.
00:07:17.140 You're not actually buying a ticket just yet.
00:07:19.760 What you are doing is filling out your interest, and you are then in the queue for a spot at the table for this event, which will be an amazing event.
00:07:29.560 And so we're doing it in that fashion rather than giving out ticket prices because we want very much the – you'll recall that I said it's an evening to remember Ted, but it's also an evening to honor Ted.
00:07:44.500 And by honor, Dad gave the last 20 years of his life at least to the creation of what he believes is his most important work, which was the 12-volume history book series that is entitled The Christians, Their First 2,000 Years.
00:08:06.160 And it's that series that we are trying to raise funds for with this event to get them into as many high school as possible.
00:08:17.140 Well, I think that's a wonderful project, and I am somewhat familiar with it, having worked on it myself in the – or not on the preparation of the books, but in the use of them later as teaching aids.
00:08:30.160 So I wish you very well with that, so it's a good cause, but I think the – tell us again, you have Premier Smith speaking.
00:08:39.160 That's wonderful news.
00:08:41.160 Who else – if this is going to be a truly conservative event, who else is going to be there?
00:08:48.160 Well, we have also Stephen Harper, who will be speaking.
00:08:53.160 He is – unfortunately, he is not able to attend.
00:09:00.160 We were hoping he could.
00:09:02.160 He was trying to get his schedule readjusted, but he won't be able to attend, so he is trying to make a video for the evening.
00:09:09.160 And we are working with Pierre Polyev as well and with Jason Kenney to have them provide speaking.
00:09:16.160 There are other people – there are a lot of other people that are coming, politicians from the Reform days, politicians, current politicians from the United Conservative Party days.
00:09:26.160 We have alumnus coming from – alumni from all of the Report magazines.
00:09:32.160 We have people coming from his days from St. John's School.
00:09:36.160 We have students coming.
00:09:38.160 We have subscribers of Alberta Report coming, many of them from all over the province.
00:09:43.160 And so there is also going to be a live auction at this event.
00:09:50.160 And Stockwell Day has volunteered his services as an auctioneer for that event.
00:09:57.160 I had no idea that before he was a politician, Stock was an auctioneer.
00:10:05.160 And so I understand he's a very good one, too.
00:10:08.160 I have certainly seen him in action.
00:10:11.160 And this is not an event in which you can afford to leave your – or maybe you should leave your wallet at home.
00:10:17.160 I don't know.
00:10:18.160 But at any rate, this is all for a good cause.
00:10:20.160 So people give generously.
00:10:23.160 Okay.
00:10:24.160 So this has all the marks of being one of those hallmark signature attractions that people will talk about for months, years even.
00:10:33.160 And I don't know.
00:10:34.160 Were you at the such and – well, you know, you're going to want to be able to say yes.
00:10:38.160 I was there and I heard these people and it was a wonderful tribute to a great man who had done enormous things for Alberta.
00:10:46.160 And I picked up on what you said about alumni from the old Report magazines.
00:10:51.160 There are so many of them.
00:10:52.160 We won't get into who's who.
00:10:54.160 But some of the most prominent names in Canadian journalism started off in your father's office and there with your mother as proofreading and have stories to tell.
00:11:06.160 And it made them what they were.
00:11:08.160 Look, there's one other thing that I want to bring forward here, Vince.
00:11:12.160 This is a very significant moment for us at the Western Standard because having acquired the rights to the Alberta Report name, we are very proud – very proud – to be carrying this name forward within the context of the Western Standard.
00:11:29.160 And so what readers have already discovered is that to pick up the latest Alberta news, they go to that section of our website called Alberta Report.
00:11:39.160 Everything that is tagged Alberta goes into there.
00:11:42.160 And Vince, our goal is to continue the promotion of conservatism in the way that your father did for so many years and so effectively.
00:11:57.160 And I like what Jonathan had said just now about how they – how your father had actually laid out the blueprint that happened.
00:12:05.160 Get a regional party going, morph onto the national scene, you know, bring the old parties together and take over the government.
00:12:13.160 So, I mean, that was incredibly ambitious for 1986.
00:12:18.160 Here at the Western Standard we have our own ambitions and we're very pleased to think that that name, the Alberta Report, to which we're sentimentally attached as well as in a business way, is going to be part of it.
00:12:32.160 So it's a new era for both of us, Vince.
00:12:37.160 Yes, yeah.
00:12:38.160 And I would say that Western Standard is doing an admirable job in maintaining that independent voice that Alberta Report became so famous for.
00:12:50.160 There are many, many people through the years who've come to DAD and voiced their – expressed their appreciation for that time during the NEP years, the National Energy Program years, when virtually the entire established media was not saying anything at all.
00:13:14.160 In contradiction to this huge power grab that was taking place.
00:13:22.160 But DAD spoke up and by doing so earned the appreciation and loyalty of Albertans everywhere, especially in the oil industry.
00:13:33.160 And I believe that the Western Standard is absolutely continuing in that fashion.
00:13:40.160 So it is exceptionally appropriate that you take on and become, as we say, this event could very – will signal a changing of the guard from Alberta Report to the Western Standard.
00:13:57.160 And I see it in good hands.
00:13:59.160 So thank you.
00:14:00.160 All right.
00:14:01.160 Well, they're in the – yes.
00:14:02.160 You know, our publisher, Derek Fildebrandt, will be speaking at your event.
00:14:06.160 And I'm sure he'll have more to say on this subject.
00:14:09.160 But that's very much the way that he sees it as a continuation of a mission, a continuation of a very well-beloved and well-respected name in Alberta journalism.
00:14:22.160 So the project that you are engaged on, Vince, is distributing these books.
00:14:33.160 I get the impression that your father never lost his interest in politics but became increasingly towards the end of his life very conscious of wanting to take on a project that would honor God.
00:14:47.160 Is that where that series of books came from?
00:14:51.160 Yeah.
00:14:52.160 Dad – one of the things that Dad recognized with Alberta Report, and I think it kind of depressed him a little bit, is that he would put a lot of work into making every issue.
00:15:04.160 And it would have currency.
00:15:06.160 It actually had tremendous currency.
00:15:08.160 The readership reached at one point in the neighborhood of 500,000 Albertans.
00:15:14.160 And this was at a time when Alberta was two to two and a half million people.
00:15:18.160 So that would be one in five Albertans.
00:15:21.160 We're reading the magazine on a regular basis.
00:15:23.160 And people like Ted Martin, who will also be at this event and speaking.
00:15:29.160 He said that at one point, this is pre-internet days, Nigel.
00:15:36.160 And in rural Alberta, when the next issue of Alberta Report came out, people were talking about it.
00:15:43.160 But nonetheless, after a few weeks and months, all that work would wind up in a bin.
00:15:50.160 And Dad wanted to have a more lasting impact.
00:15:56.160 So he started a series of books called Alberta in the 20th Century.
00:16:02.160 And I believe that Alberta, he completed that 12 hardcover, beautifully illustrated volumes of the history of our province, Alberta.
00:16:14.160 And I don't know of any other province or state in North America, or the world for that matter, that has 12 full volumes dedicated to their history for one century.
00:16:28.160 That's an incredible piece of work.
00:16:30.160 And some very well-known writers contributed to that.
00:16:34.160 I do recall, I know that you had Paul Bunner there editing it at one time.
00:16:39.160 Paul Bunner would become the speechwriter for the Prime Minister Harper.
00:16:43.160 So, you know, the connections there are very close and very intense.
00:16:49.160 Paul Bunner then morph into the Christian history.
00:16:53.160 Paul Bunner Well, so after those books were completed, Dad also, I'll just say it, he was concerned about the rise of a resurgence of Islam.
00:17:08.160 And so he had started to write copious notes on the influence of Islam in the Western civilization and in the modern world.
00:17:22.160 But he wanted people to know the history, the background, and why it was a very serious threat.
00:17:28.160 Paul Bunner And so he began initially with that, but then as he started to do it more and more, he realized that this was only one segment of our history that most young people do not know.
00:17:46.160 Paul Bunner And so dad realized that there was actually a very pressing need for a complete history of everything that has transpired in Christendom or the Western.
00:18:01.160 Paul Bunner When you and I went to school in university, there was a course called Western civilization.
00:18:09.160 Paul Bunner It's now very rarely available now in universities.
00:18:14.160 Paul Bunner But these books essentially comprise that.
00:18:19.160 Paul Bunner It's the history of Christianity.
00:18:24.160 Paul Bunner And so dad did an exceptional job with this set of books because he went out of his way to recruit writers from all the main denominations of Christianity.
00:18:40.160 Paul Bunner And so he had Catholic writers, various Protestant denominations involved, and also Orthodox Christian writers.
00:18:46.160 Paul Bunner And so he brought on academics so that the contents of these books are agreed upon by all the major academics from all the major denominations.
00:18:59.160 Paul Bunner And so that has now taken on a life of its own.
00:19:04.160 Paul Bunner I can tell you stories.
00:19:05.160 Paul Bunner We have 200,000 of the books printed so far.
00:19:08.160 Paul Bunner They have reached all the, I won't say corners, but all the world.
00:19:15.160 Paul Bunner And they've had quite an incredible impact.
00:19:20.160 Paul Bunner I can tell.
00:19:21.160 Paul Bunner But anyway, that's what the dad was driven to do those books next.
00:19:27.160 Paul Bunner And that took, that was an enormous task involving hundreds of people contributing and millions of dollars to make.
00:19:40.160 Paul Bunner It is indeed an incredible project.
00:19:44.160 Paul Bunner I have my own set there and it's remarkable.
00:19:48.160 Paul Bunner Look, we're almost out of time.
00:19:50.160 Paul Bunner Jonathan I think it would be remiss of me if I did not point out that through your own Bridgehead publication, you are very much on the same mission as Ted Byfield was.
00:20:03.160 Paul Bunner Fighting the Culture War, maybe not the political war, but the culture war.
00:20:07.160 Paul Bunner And I have read a lot of your work.
00:20:10.160 Paul Bunner I admire it.
00:20:12.160 Paul Bunner I wish you'd give it away for free to the Western standards sometimes. 0.94
00:20:16.160 Paul Bunner But darn it, you know, you're a businessman as well.
00:20:19.160 Paul Bunner So, look, thank you for joining us. 0.90
00:20:22.160 Paul Bunner I want to thank both of both you and Vince for joining me on the show today and talking about this amazing product.
00:20:31.160 Paul Bunner We are so proud to take the Alberta report name forward and as we do to salute the founder of it, your father.
00:20:41.160 Paul Bunner And we will see you all again on September the 25th.
00:20:45.160 Paul Bunner God willing.
00:20:46.160 Paul Bunner For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.
00:20:52.160 Paul Bunner For the Western Standard 저녁 Inget from moment
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