Photographs by Amber Bracken

Reporting from Slave Lake, Alberta

Steven Lovelace is not sure Alberta should break away from Canada and become its own country.

He worries about his landlocked province if it secedes.

Plus, he is a self-described patriot.

“I love Canada, that’s the hard part,” he said in an interview in Slave Lake, a town of 7,300 people in central Alberta, where oil, gas and forestry are big employers. But Mr. Lovelace, a 31-year-old pulp mill tradesman, signed a petition demanding a vote on the question anyway.

After months of high political drama that included a courtship between separatists and the Trump administration, it looks increasingly likely that Mr. Lovelace will get his wish on Oct. 19.

“I don’t go day to day talking about separation,” he said. “But I want to scare Ottawa,” Canada’s capital and the seat of the federal government.

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Alberta, an oil-rich Western Canadian province often referred to as the “Texas of Canada,” is hurtling toward a referendum that will ask citizens: Do you want to stay in Canada, or have a separate, binding referendum to secede?

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By Matina Stevis-Gridneff