When Prime Minister Mark  Carney visited this year’s Calgary Stampede, he didn’t ditch his blazer, but he was wearing blue jeans and the requisite cowboy hat as he worked the crowds among revellers preparing to watch chuckwagon races on Saturday evening.

“There he is!” Carney said, as he spotted billionaire businessman Ron Mannix almost immediately upon exiting a motorcade with his wife, Diana Fox Carney, enthusiastically shaking his hand.

As he posed for selfies with teenagers and adults alike, there were more people smiling at the sight of the Liberal prime minister than there were hecklers.

One man made a note in passing about the prime minister’s attire. “Cowboy boots, where are they?” he asked, looking at the sneakers Carney had donned instead.

By Sunday morning, the message had sunk in. Carney showed up to a community centre pancake breakfast in Calgary after trading in his running shoes for brown cowboy boots.

Carney’s visit to the Stampede came as the federal government and those trying to urge Albertans to stay in Canada have a little more than three months to ensure their message sinks in.

The province goes to the polls on Oct. 19 for a referendum that asks voters whether they should stay in Canada or pursue a further vote on secession.

Carney, Poilievre grew up in Alberta

“We’re not going to have a chance to have this conversation again,” Corey Hogan, the Liberal MP for Calgary Confederation, told CBC News in an interview.

“If you decide to vote in order to continue with the separation process, you’re causing some real damage and harm to this province.”

Flanked by fellow Liberal MPs Matt Jeneroux of Edmonton Riverbend and Terry Duguid of Winnipeg South, Hogan said he had persuaded about 40 caucus members to show up over the course of the Stampede’s 10-day stretch in July.

“This is a party that’s interested in growth. This is a party that’s interested in inclusion and fairness and being welcoming. These are all western traits,” Hogan said.

It’s not a message that’s ever really worked in Alberta, which sent only two Liberal MPs to Ottawa in last year’s federal election. The party later added a third after Jeneroux crossed the floor from the Conservatives in February.

But Carney remains a popular politician in the province.

Both he and his federal Conservative rival, Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, grew up in Alberta, something they have been keen to remind voters of as they campaign for unity.

Poilievre, too, seized the Stampede as such an opportunity.

The MP for Battle River-Crowfoot in Alberta framed his pitch for social cohesion around rejecting Liberal policies he blames for a lack of development and a rising cost of living — such as an oil tanker ban on British Columbia’s north coast. It remains in place after the Liberal government and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith recently revealed that a new pipeline from Alberta to the west coast, if approved, would go south through B.C.

“We will fight for the country. We will fight for Canada, including in the upcoming referendum, to win back Albertans. To win back Albertans through hope, not by wagging our fingers or lecturing them, nor by threatening,” Poilievre said to a packed hall during a speech earlier in July.

No united unity campaign so far

Carney and Poilievre have not openly campaigned for unity together, something some Albertans told CBC News they would like to see as the clock ticks closer to the referendum.

“I think that would be an important feature of breaking down some of the polarization,” Calgary resident Andy Graham said. “I think that would be a novel idea and a wonderful step forward.”

“It’s going to be tough to get people of different parties together on the stage, but they should because this transcends party politics,” said Duane Bratt, a political science professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary. “This is an existential question about the future of our country.”

He added: “This should not be conservatives versus progressives.”

While those kinds of alliances currently remain the stuff of imagination, Carney did reach out to First Nations, meeting with Treaty 7, Treaty 8 and Treaty 9 leaders while he was in Alberta — the same groups that sought to halt a question on separation from being asked using the judicial system.

“The First Nations of Alberta are fighting for a strong and united Canada. Our government stands with them, working alongside them as a true treaty partner, so that we can seize the immense possibilities that lie before us,” Carney said in a statement posted on social media platform X.

Meanwhile, the next three months may well become about mobilizing votes rather than convincing the unpersuaded, as polls have repeatedly shown separatist sentiment hovering around the 30 per cent mark.

Keith Wilson, a lawyer who represented some leaders of the convoy movement that blockaded Ottawa for weeks in February 2022, is now with pro-separation group Let Alberta Decide, which held a pancake breakfast of its own on Sunday.

“We can do better for our kids, we can do better for our seniors,” Wilson told a crowd of hundreds. “We can do better for the preserving of our culture. We can do better economically if we can free ourselves from the arbitrary control called Ottawa.”

And while Carney was quick to fix his fashion faux pas at the Stampede, an error by his government on social media remained unchanged for the whole weekend — exactly the kind of mistake a separatist movement might seize on.

“Yeehaw!” a promotional post about the Stampede began on an official Canadian government post on X, instead of using the event’s preferred “Yahoo” greeting. “Canadians have been enjoying what is known as ‘The Greatest Show on Earth.'”

“I’m shook,” Hogan, the Calgary Liberal MP, said when looking at a screenshot of the post, spotting the error immediately. “I will be sending some very angry letters,” he added. “I don’t even know what to say about that, it’s wrong.”