CBC News reported on Friday that Alberta’s most influential separatist social media account, an anonymous operation running on X under the name Rise of Alberta, shares the registration email address of websites belonging to Keith Wilson, the Edmonton-area lawyer who leads two organizations at the center of the independence campaign ahead of the province’s separation referendum.
The account, created in the spring of 2025, has drawn almost 100,000 followers with shareable clips and A.I.-generated memes: eastern Canadians as government-loving bureaucrats, Albertans as Wild West builders. It also posts derogatory material about gay and transgender people, echoes President Trump’s description of mass immigration as an “existential threat to Western civilization” and calls climate change “fake and gay.” Roughly one in five of its images is an ad for merchandise, according to researchers at the University of Alberta.
The reach is outsize. Mr. Wilson’s own group, the Alberta Transition Council, has published a transition plan for a smooth exit from Canada, but online the anonymous account dwarfs everything else. Rise of Alberta drives four times the engagement of the second-most popular account and, by itself, 11.8 percent of all online engagement about the referendum, said Chris Ross, lead author of a new report on separatist influencers by the Media Ecosystem Observatory. The runner-up is Mr. Wilson’s personal account; together they take almost 15 percent of the conversation. The stakes are days away, with the referendum following Quebec’s election.
Using DomainTools, a web analytics service, CBC News and Radio-Canada traced the anonymized email on the Rise of Alberta site to an address first used a decade ago for Veritas Litigation Support, a company Mr. Wilson founded. Since last year it has registered 16 other sites, most tied to Alberta independence, including those of the Alberta Transition Council and Let Alberta Decide, a registered third-party advertiser Mr. Wilson co-chairs. An archived version of the site’s mailing address matched his law firm in St. Albert, Alta.
Mr. Wilson told CBC News the account is not his: “Not everybody’s interested in being famous, right?” In a follow-up email he said he knows who runs it — “a website designer and webmaster” who sets up his sites — but declined to identify the person. “The individual has chosen to engage in political commentary anonymously,” he wrote. “I respect that choice.” He said he has no say over its content and gets nothing from its sales, though merchandise returns go to his law firm’s address and he lets the account list its wares on his YouTube channel. “Those blankets are amazing,” he said. “I have three.”
Where the money from the hoodies and charcuterie boards goes remains unclear; the account has said proceeds cover the cost of the “tools” behind its graphics. The account itself has called the anonymity question flattering but wrong. “It’s not, but I am flattered,” it posted last November, with a cowboy emoji, when a user asked whether it was Mr. Wilson. “I am too,” Mr. Wilson replied.
Mr. Ross said the arrangement lets a movement campaign without campaign rules. “The movement is structurally revolving around the Rise of Alberta account online, but no democratic form of scrutiny can interface with it,” he said. Mr. Wilson disputes that, noting the movement predates the account — and that more than 80,000 followers already read him under his own name.