https://www.westernstandard.news/opinion/aubut-from-rocks-to-rights-a-life-shaped-by-canadas-divide/68033

AUBUT: From rocks to rights: A life shaped by Canada’s divide

Rocks may have built my career, but it was Ottawa’s bureaucracy that forged my politics.

House of commons vote over "three strikes" actScreenshot:CPAC

Western Standard Guest Columnist

Published on: 

05 Oct 2025, 3:30 pm

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Alan Aubut is a retired geologist, based in Nipigon.

Many of you may wonder why someone from Ontario has anything to say to a Western Standard audience. I must agree with you. My story illustrates how we too often paint with far too broad a brush. Ontario is the third largest province by area and the largest by population. Yet most of that population is in a relatively small area centred on Toronto. I live far from the city that considers itself the centre of the Canadian universe, yet too often I am painted with that brush.

Northwestern Ontario differs sharply from Southern Ontario, in climate, geography, and outlook. Yet much is shared with broad swaths of western Canada. Just because I live in Ontario does not mean I share the same views as those in Southern Ontario, nor do they share mine. My life experiences, the ones that shaped me, were lived in Western Canada.

I went to university in Thunder Bay, not far from where I grew up beside the Trans-Canada Highway in a rural area surrounded by Boreal Forest and underlain by the Canadian Shield. I loved being outdoors and still do. Growing up miles from neighbours shaped my independence and resilience. I once considered engineering, but lacking confidence in math, I turned instead to fields that meshed with my love of the outdoors. Science and geography appealed to me, but I could not see myself in forestry. Rocks, however, fascinated me. They told the story of how landforms were created and provided the building blocks of society. As a result, I registered in the geology program at Lakehead University. Time has shown me that unlike most geologists who stumbled into the field by accident, I chose it deliberately.

University was an eye-opener for a country boy. In a twist of fate, that is where I met my wife. We had attended the same high school but never really connected until then. We were married in 1975, during my third year at university.

It was at Lakehead that I stumbled into my first act of activism. In my final year, one required course, Physics of the Earth, was taught by a semi-retired physics professor. The assignments were very difficult, including calculating how fast the moon is moving away from Earth. There were only five of us in the class, and after each lecture, we pooled our efforts, but always failed when the problems were reviewed. Near the end of the term, the professor noted that one classmate who had skipped first-year physics might not pass. I blurted out that I had taken first-year physics and still doubted I would pass. I pointed out that the problems assigned were well beyond our training and that it was unfair since this was a mandatory course for graduation. The professor was stunned but began reviewing the problems with us. One appeared on the final exam. We all passed, and all graduated.

When I graduated in 1979, jobs for geologists were scarce. One option was further study, and my marks were strong enough for graduate school with a teaching assistantship. I applied to three universities, all out West, since that was where the work was. We chose Edmonton, where I began studies at the University of Alberta. We packed all our belongings into a Ryder truck and moved.

After a year and a half, before formally finishing, I was offered a full-time job with Pacific Petroleum in Calgary, not long after it had been acquired by Petro-Canada. Our move to Calgary was another turning point. Alberta was booming, and though I was trained in hard-rock geology, petroleum demanded a different skillset. I was thrust into a world of sedimentary basins, drill cuttings, and seismic data. At first, I felt adrift, yet this discomfort forced me to learn quickly. I discovered that geology is as much about problem-solving as it is about theory, and that adaptation is often the most valuable skill. Calgary also gave me a window into Western culture and industry, broadening my perspective beyond Northern Ontario.

Not long after, I was offered a job with Inco, then the dominant player in nickel. Although its main operations were in Sudbury and Thompson, it had a small mine an hour west of Thunder Bay that needed an underground geologist. For my wife and me, the decision was easy. We could be near family again, and I could return to my core training. The negatives were a pay cut and a struggling nickel market. I started work at the Shebandowan mine in May 1980. Joining Inco brought new challenges. At Shebandowan, the realities of underground geology demanded discipline. 

Not long after, Inco was bleeding money and ordered cost cuts. I was the most junior geologist in Ontario, but my work was solid enough that I was transferred rather than laid off. The exploration department was busy and needed people, though a hiring freeze was in place. Since I was already on staff, I was moved to exploration. I opened a Thunder Bay office and at first worked alone. Over time, it grew, and by the late 1980s, I supervised close to 20 people and managed the largest exploration budget in Ontario. Those were heady days. The optimism was captured by the Timbuk 3 song “The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades.”

By the 1990s, the industry was evolving quickly. I was transferred to Thompson, Manitoba, to lead the exploration team for Central Canada. Then, exploration budgets shrank, and my career pivoted toward resource estimation. Computers were reshaping the field, and I seized the chance to master them. From building models to analysing data sets, I became one of the early adopters who could bridge geological insight with emerging software and applied them in ways that few others attempted at the time. It was demanding but also deeply rewarding, and it positioned me for later international work. That willingness to adapt and innovate became defining threads of my career.

The company policy was that one could retire with a full pension after 30 years of service. Toward the end, I was counting the days, but I cannot complain about the opportunities. After Vale acquired Inco in 2006, bureaucracy only worsened. Still, I was able to work abroad in Western Australia and Indonesia as an internal consultant on resource estimation.

I retired in 2010 but took up consulting, specializing in resource estimation. The discovery of chromite in Northern Ontario in 2008 should have been transformative. These deposits in what became known as the Ring of Fire hold world-class potential, and I was quickly involved. Yet instead of rapid development, we faced an ever-thickening wall of bureaucracy. Governments layered regulation upon regulation, slowing progress to a crawl.

For me, it was a bitter lesson in how opportunity can be squandered when politics overwhelms practical industry. It also planted the seed of political engagement, as I could no longer ignore how decisions made far from the North stifled growth. 

With COVID-19, consulting dried up at the same time my enthusiasm for geology was fading. I turned increasingly to writing about issues I once took for granted. Freedom was being chipped away.

In 2021, I ran as a candidate for the People’s Party of Canada, the only party aligned with my moral and ethical compass. I finished a distant fourth but earned about 2,500 votes in a riding where the Liberals, NDP, and Conservatives traditionally dominate. The system favours the big three, but I learned much about what it takes for small upstarts. Since late 2021, I have been editor and primary author of an online newsletter, first called The Purple Wave and now rebranded as The Amethyst Trail.

I may be getting along in years, but my desire is to leave this world better than I found it. The optimism of the 1980s may be gone, but it does not mean we cannot recover it. History has shown that cycles of decline are followed by cycles of renewal. 

The warnings in George Orwell’s 1984 feel less like fiction and more like instruction for those in power, but they also serve as a reminder. Canadians still have the means and the duty to stand against creeping control. What matters is whether we are willing to actively exercise the freedoms we still have rather than surrender them through silence and submission.

I want my two surviving sons, and by extension all Canadians, to inherit a country that reclaims its spirit of independence, innovation, enterprise, and fairness. The path will not be easy, but neither was the work of previous generations who built this country from wilderness and rock. If they could forge prosperity under harsh conditions, so can we. I intend to continue to explore how we can push back against a narrowing horizon and instead look outward with confidence. The battle may be daunting, but we must stand together and declare, “not on my watch.” My future writings will continue exploring how Canada can reclaim its freedom and purpose, and I hope you will join me on that path.

Alan Aubut is a retired geologist, based in Nipigon.

 

Fear is not an Acceptable Option

 

I, for one, have been searching for an explanation as to why so many Canadians, and people in so many other countries, have gone insane. For example, Canada has long been governed under the principles that laws are meant to be honoured, including by the law makers, and that government is there to serve the people and not the other way round. Right now, that is not the case and specifically far too many Canadians have no problem with that! While I still have no clear-cut answer, it is obvious that they have fallen victim to a mass psychosis out of fear of a new virus. Yet I have no intention to also succumb to that fear, as it is not an acceptable option!

This has all come about due to the acceptance that we are being attacked by a virulent and deadly new virus. Ample evidence is available now, two years after it made its presence known, that neither is the case; it is NOT widely and easily contagious and it is NOT highly deadly, with most deaths being those who are infirm and on death’s door. The healthy have been spared. But not in the minds of the media, nor the minds of the general public.

To illustrate, I have two different friends that are afraid this virus will be the death of them. One is a heavy smoker. In both cases, when it is pointed out that the numbers do not support their fear, they brush it off, believing their fear is valid. Similarly, when the subject of vaccines come up and it is pointed out that a vaccine is defined as something that makes one immune yet none of the current batch of experimental drugs do that and therefore cannot be called that, they disagree without rational reasons.

The same goes for everything associated with the “controls” put in place to “combat” this “deadly pathogen.” After a year, to year and a half, has “social distancing” had a measurable positive effect? No. Has the imposition of masks had a measurable positive effect? No. Have lock downs helped, an exaggerated form of quarantine that was designed for the sick and not the healthy? No. How about those experimental drugs? No. Passports? No. None have had any positive effect on diminishing, never mind eliminating, the virus. But all have been used to destroy our rights and freedoms and the fearful masses don’t care! They are even reveling in it, welcoming with open arms the insanity that engulfed the German people in the 1930’s that culminated in one of the greatest tragedies of the 20^th century, the Holocaust.

One psychologist, Dr. Mathias Desmet, a professor at Ghent University in Belgium, has a plausible explanation to describe what is happening. He calls it “mass formation,” a form of mass psychosis. Unfortunately, I don’t buy his reasons. While the diagnosis makes sense the attributed causes do not. Primarily he believes there must be widespread social isolation and disconnectedness. That does not hold up under even the lowest magnification of scrutiny. For as long as I can remember, many of us, especially me, were quite content to stay in a small bubble of social isolation. At the core though was appreciation for freedom. To say that suddenly this is no longer the case? No, it must be something else.

One change I have seen, and which correlates with observations from studying history, is the almost total absence of a social conscience; a guide to help the masses distinguish between good and evil. At one time that was through religion. It was by joining with others to review rules to help guide them as recorded in holy scripture that society was able to find a way to live peacefully with respect for the rights of others as well as for oneself. With the invention of the printing press came the “Fourth Estate,” the “media.” They took on the role of identifying good from evil, to a large part supplanting the other estates, including the Clergy (religion).

Should this come as a surprise? During my lifetime, religion has lost a lot of its control over much of society. While I am not religious, I still hold in high regard the same moral and ethical values of my friends, many of whom are religious. Few of us have succumbed to this mass psychosis. So, it is not because of feeling isolated. The only explanation that makes sense to me is a disconnect from having strong moral and ethical values that allow one to see the evil that comes with abandoning law and trying to be the master when in fact you are the servant. Our media have picked a side, and it is the side of  evil. No wonder so many act like slaves to those who wield power.

If indeed that is the case, what is the solution? How can we help those hypnotised by the evil of oppressing others under the guise of protecting yourself from an imaginary harm? I wish it would be as simple as snapping one’s fingers, Like Thanos in the movie Avengers: Infinity War, and seeing this quickly evolving dystopian world return to normal. One sure fire way of getting back to sanity, due to its widespread network, is if the Fourth Estate cast aside being propagandists, but I am not optimistic that would happen. Far too many are controlled by media barons so consumed with greed that suppression of competition and dissent have become paramount. Yet, there is hope and I am clinging to that fervently. Because the opposite, fear, is NOT an acceptable option!

How to Lose an Election

 

This past year I ran as a candidate representing the People’s Party of Canada. While I have a lot of relevant qualifications that, compared to my competition, was at minimum on par, but typically far better than my opponents I lost. I came in a distant fourth.

If it had been a “fair fight” I would tuck my tail between my legs and skulk off never to try this again. But it was not. It would be easy to complain, although, in a fashion I am, but I am going to expose the realities I faced. Realities that, while I had a sense of what I was up against, it was not until I took active part that I came to realise the many artificial roadblocks that kept me from properly giving myself the exposure that the electorate deserve.

It has become obvious to most that over the last few years there is increasing censorship in the public domain against any view that does not promote socialism. This trend I have observed from the sidelines for close to a quarter century. The event that brought this trend first to my attention was the enactment of Bill C-68, an act that required the licensing of gun owners and the registration of their firearms. Sure, I had a vested interest as I had been an avid hunter since a teenager. But when I looked at the reasons for this legislation, I could find no rational reasons that held any water. It was not as if hunters had suddenly become dangers to society.

It was, to me, the pivotal moment of “virtue signalling”; an attempt by politicians to appear they were doing something worthwhile yet under closer scrutiny there was no supporting evidence. Such signalling cannot take place without the support of the press. This was the moment I noticed that our media collectively had taken on a new role. Rather than questioning those in power, required by a true democracy, they had decided to take a side. One that was idealistic rather than rational. One that began the ever-increasing infringements of personal freedom.

This trend has been escalating to the point that we are now on the verge of dictatorship all because the media have become propagandists rather than holding those elected accountable. They have become the purveyors of “misinformation”, lies and outright censorship rather than the pursuers of truth like they used to be.

I knew this would be a major challenge when I decided to put my name forward to represent the People’s Party of Canada in the recent federal election. As a result, I had formulated a plan to try and circumvent that censorship by avoiding as much as possible the established media. This I naively thought could be easily done by bypassing the media and dealing directly with the voting public. Why was I naive? Because I did not take into consideration the challenges that I would have to face.

One challenge was just sharing with people who I am and what I was all about. In recent years one tool that became available was Facebook. But no longer. They tightly control sharing of information, especially if not of a political leaning they support, and that includes the People’s Party. For example, during the campaign I tried to let people know in out lying communities I would be in town by “boosting” a post announcing when and where I would be. Facebook denied that option saying it was “political”. And then would make sure my Facebook page was bombarded by paid advertisements for the other parties.

Another opportunity that was denied was being invited to either of the “all candidates” debates scheduled by the Chamber of Commerce and the local television broadcaster. See the picture at the top of this post. Out of the 5 candidates running only 3 were present. The two missing are myself and the Conservative candidate who declined her invitation. Why was I not there? Because on a national level the party I had chosen to represent, had too low a popularity based on biased “opinion” polling and thus the organizers felt it was inappropriate to invite me. To "an all candidates" debate. One where no one in the riding was polled to determine who should be invited. To this day I still cannot rationalise this as what has that got to do with who the local candidates are? If I had been an "independent" with no relationship to a National party would I still have been excluded? But I was not surprised.

My real problem was that the focus of my campaign was trying to get hard copy material into the hands of as many electors as possible. First, I did not appreciate the costs involved and the severe disadvantage I had in not having access to funds through fund raising. Without question the Canada Elections Act does not do any favours for newbies like me. I was up against multiple 500-pound gorillas who just, through the financial resources available to them, I just could not compete against. This compounded the fact that I had to rely on a bare bones approach which, In the end, failed to deliver. I doubt many even looked at my material.

In the end, I am very confident that when ever I had the chance to talk to people, they felt I was a credible candidate with the right qualifications, including strong morals and ethics. I just did not have the exposure I needed, much of that due to the traditional media. A “fair” fight it most certainly was not. I am not bitter, but I am disappointed coloured by sadness. We as Canadians have traditionally prided ourselves on being a truly egalitarian society to the point that we commonly mock our neighbours to the south who brag about “freedom”, “justice” and “free speech” when they have none of that. Now I know firsthand that neither do we.

Why I became a Candidate

 

I have been asked a few times “why did you decide to run as a candidate” in the just past Federal election. In short, for two reasons: I wanted to provide the constituents in the riding I was running to represent a real, qualified option, and the other is that when unhappy with a situation one has a moral and ethical duty to “put up or shut up”.

At its very core the electoral system in Canada is one where you vote for a person to represent you in parliament. As such the choice should be to select from the available choices the person who is best for the job. By “best” I mean someone with the appropriate skill set that they can properly evaluate the many, at times complex issues, that a parliamentarian will have to address. And one who shares morals and ethics that resonate with your own. Or at least theoretically that is how it is supposed to work.

The reality is that it instead is a “popularity” contest where qualifications seem to have little to do with the process. Far too often there is a strong disconnect in that the “candidate” far too often is a cardboard cut-out who is an avatar for a political party, specifically the personality who is the “leader” of that party. So, many of us do not vote for a representative but instead for a place holder for a person who has no vested interest in your well being.

I have a problem in that I hold my principles dearly. Too dearly in comparison to many others. I firmly believe that the person should be the primary point of evaluation when choosing who to vote for. And that the party they represent should come second. Every party has a basic platform which summarises the morals, ethics and principles that the party says they wish to promote and defend. That platform is meaningless if the representative is unable to advocate the regional wants and needs of their riding. It is for that reason that the person needs to be the primary concern.

It may appear that I have let my ego lead, but I assure you that is not the case. I do not search for the limelight and typically am most at home in the background, helping others. Because I have strong principles, if I believe something is worth supporting, I will step forward when no one else is willing to do so. My first “leadership” role was back in university where I was President of the Geology Club. Why? Because I believed in the purpose of having the club and no one else was willing to lead. So, I stepped forward. And that I have done numerous times since, whether it was being a minor hockey coach, President of the local curling club or President of a local service club. It was never about me but the belief that it was a worthy cause, and someone had to do it.

Yes, I went to university. But I have never felt that put me above others in that it made me “more educated”. The reason I went to university was an offshoot of a passion of mine growing up; I loved tramping through the bush and just surrounding myself with the natural world. When evaluating potential job opportunities at the time, being a geologist came to the forefront. And to become a geologist one had to go to university, in effect the appropriate “trade school”. It is for that reason I respect anyone who went on after high school to any form of advanced learning. We all share the same desire in that we needed to get specialised training for the trade we wished to make a career from. It doesn’t matter if that was a college, an apprenticeship program or a university. Different paths for the same basic purpose; acquiring the skills and knowledge required to do your chosen profession well.

Even so, it has opened for me opportunities and additional training that has broadened my resume and in doing so has made me quite qualified to be a representative in Parliament. While not a great public speaker I am not afraid to stand up before others and speak publicly. Being in a career that requires a lot of troubleshooting ability I am not afraid to come up with ideas that may work. Yet not offended when someone else comes up with something better. A key to be a successful geologist is being a good observer and fitting the pieces together to try and solve a puzzle. Or observing how others do a task so that, in a pinch, you can complete a similar task if needed to get the job done. To be flexible. To be willing and able to cooperate with others yet still true to oneself and to the available facts. To push back by asking questions, to ensure that the correct path is taken.

Watching what has happened these past two years have opened my eyes in that we as Canadians have created a situation we should never have put ourselves in. All because we elected people who have no qualifications to evaluate the complexities that have bubbled to the surface. We have, due to making poor political choices, had past governments who have contributed to our current problems by appointing unelected ideologues in too many key bureaucratic positions based on their politics rather than their actual abilities. How else can we explain having people with medical training who had to take an oath to “do no harm” yet come out with “recommendations” that do not follow that ethical requirement. In fact, they do not even respect our existing laws, especially our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And where have been our “elected” representatives who are supposed to be the ones who direct the bureaucracy? No where to be found, or if they do say something, it is to show their abject ignorance of the subject at hand. To say, “we are following the science”, which is nonsense because science is a process and not a result. A process of asking questions. Of pushing back.

I am a scientist. I am a person who does know how to ask questions and do so all the time. Not because I know I am right or think I am, but because that is what science is all about. In addition, I have been an advocate for others. I am willing, and able, to stand up and say something. I may not be the most eloquent speaker, but I do know that I can see where things are leading typically before many others do. Yet no one else has made themselves available that has the skill set I have to offer. Thus, I put my name forward as a candidate.

In the end, I lost. I came in a distant fourth. It was not because I was an inferior candidate. But that is a different story that I will write about in the future.