COb Lund is almost royalty. in Alberta. He is a country music star and comes from a family that has been ranching in this state for four generations. And he is gaining political attention.
Important points
- Alberta country music singer Coble Land is spearheading a petition against coal mining in the Crowsnest Pass region.
- The Grassy Mountain Coal Mine Project was once canceled due to concerns about its environmental impact.
- Mining company Northback is reconsidering the project with revised proposals
This winter, Lund filed a citizen initiative petition with Elections Alberta that, if enough signers, would force a referendum question on coal mining on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Lund opposes mining in the area. The Alberta government does not.
“I think it’s incredibly distorted,” Rand said. “There’s no benefit to it.”
It was the Grassy Mountain Project that inspired Lund to take action. Grassy Mountain, on Crowsnest Pass near the town of Blairmore, is a long-debated plan to build a steel-making coal mine on the site of a mine that closed decades ago.
Northback, the company behind the mine proposal, and its supporters have positioned the project as an economic lifeline for the region. Critics say the plan would destroy sensitive areas of the Oldman River headwaters and negatively impact water, including fish habitat, grasslands and drinking water for 200,000 people downstream in Lethbridge and surrounding areas.
Lund and his team call their campaign “Water, Not Coal” and argue that Alberta should not tamper with land mines in the region. Fifty years ago, Prime Minister Peter Lougheed’s government took a similar approach and banned coal mining on the eastern slopes. In spring 2020, Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party (UCP) government withdrew the policy and reinstated it a year later in the face of public backlash.
Around the same time, a joint review committee put together by the Alberta Energy Regulator and the federal government found that the environmental risks of the Grassy Mountain project outweighed the economic benefits, and the federal government rejected the plan. Australian company Benga Mining took the lead on Grassy Mountain, changing its name to Northback in 2023 and later changing its offer. Last spring, Alberta regulators approved a new application by Northback for a “coal exploration program” at the site.
The battle continues, but the outcome is unclear. A new version of the project is currently undergoing an environmental impact assessment by Northback Corporation under the guidance of the Alberta Energy Regulator. It is smaller, uses newer technology, and for the first time addresses some of the environmental concerns raised by the federal government.
As far as Lund is concerned, the debate over coal mining should have ended decades ago. He has spent the past six years protesting against coal mines. In 2021, he rewrote and re-recorded his song “This Is My Prairie” with Paul Brandt and other Alberta music stars and watched it go viral as an anti-coal anthem. But it wasn’t enough to permanently solve the problem.
So he’s raising deposits and using the government’s own laws to challenge the state over the mine. It took two attempts to get the citizen initiative petition into action. After his initial application was approved by Elections Alberta, it was effectively canceled when the UCP government changed the rules. Lund simply resubmitted the documents.
Grassy Mountain “should have been dead, and here we are, fighting the same battle. That’s one of the most frustrating things about this. How many times do Albertans have to say no to the same mine?” he says.
Lund’s background couldn’t be more Albertan. His roots in the area date back to 1902, when his great-grandfather established the farm that became the family ranch. “I’ve cycled with my grandpa many, many times to every nook and cranny of this place, and there’s a stream running through it,” says Rand, who now lives in Lethbridge. “My grandfather would comment every day about the stream… whether it was higher or lower than last week, whether it was sunny or cloudy.”
In 1989, Rand formed a punk metal band called Smalls in Edmonton. A decade and a half later, he turned to country music and formed a new band, the Heartin’ Albertans. Since then, he has won the Juno Award and the Canadian Country Music Award 11 times. He writes songs that speak to the land and Alberta’s complex relationship with its resource sector, the hubris and heartbreak associated with the energy industry, and the province’s boom-and-bust cycles. His songs have lines like Too much oil money, not enough alcohol.
Director of Writing and Publishing at King’s College University, Sonic Boom: Making Music in the Oil Towna history of Calgary’s roots music scene.
She says Americans began moving north in the late 1800s, bringing cattle to the Canadian prairies. These cowboys sang songs during the cattle drive. At night, they sang to keep out the noise and keep the cows from running away. Many of the singing cowboys established ranches in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Their repertoire was collected by folklorists in the early 20th century and revived by singers who were playing them in movies and on the radio, Turnbull said. In Alberta, that tradition blossomed for decades, with a thriving country and roots music scene. It produced stars like Ian Tyson, KD Lang, Brett Kissel, Paul Brandt and Terry Clark. Today, Alberta is home to a vibrant live country music scene, with Calgary and Edmonton hosting two of the country’s largest folk music festivals each year. Lund will be headlining the Calgary Folk Festival in July.
Until now, Mr. Lund has remained popular in part because he has deftly avoided appearing too political. It can be dangerous for country music singers to take sides on hot political issues. Just ask the band formerly known as the Dixie Chicks. The band never fully regained its popularity after speaking out against then-U.S. President George Bush in 2003. Lund’s audience was largely the same Americans who abandoned the Chicks, as they were now called. “He always talked about how he was very concerned about alienating different factions of the audience, so he made himself seem completely neutral,” Turnbull said.
Even now, he walks that path carefully. “I’m not partisan. I don’t like any political party at all. My belief system is a la carte,” he says. This is a version of what he has been saying in interviews for 10 years.
On social media, he has been accused of becoming a “woke bastard” and a “pathetic liberal bitch.” He is only interested in protecting the rights of colonial ranchers and is being told to leave the state. That he doesn’t care about work. His friend and fellow musician Brandt publicly supported Lund on the mine in 2021, but has now remained silent on the issue. (Blunt has experienced his own political awakening and public backlash, posting a photo of himself featuring the lyrics on Instagram.) Yes, I have a sense of independence. From the 2004 song “Alberta Bound”. Blunt has been vague about his views on Alberta secession in interviews. )
Prime Minister Daniel Smith couldn’t resist a jab at Lund, saying: “Maybe he’ll write a song about me.”
Perhaps he will, but it won’t happen soon. Lund now doesn’t have time to write songs, practice music or spend time on the ranch, he says. He’s too busy with politics. He is losing income due to his advocacy work. “This is not good for my career,” he says.
But he is willing to stake his reputation on the mine. He sees himself as a steward of the land for future generations, and a coal mine would irrevocably change the land. “If you have a legacy that you intend to give to your children, or that you inherited from the third or fourth generation, that’s really guardianship.”
Christina Frangou is Western Canada regional correspondent for The Walrus.
