How neighbours and communities are divided over COVID-19 in this rural Alberta county

Visitors driving into La Crete are greeted by a wooden welcome sign declaring it "Alberta's Last Frontier."

The small town about 670 kilometres north of Edmonton — a tidy patch of light-coloured homes and orderly looking businesses — made headlines during the pandemic for its resistance to public health orders, and a number of its residents continue to defy them. 

On a late November day, with temperatures hovering around -20 C, people rushed from vehicles into the post office, grocery stores, banks and other businesses with little evidence that anyone was wearing a mask.

More than two months after Alberta brought in its version of a vaccine-passport program, several restaurants in this community refuse to enforce it and continue to flout masking and capacity rules. At least one under a closure order was still open for dine-in service, with staff and customers unmasked.

La Crete is one of a handful of small towns in Mackenzie County, a massive stretch of farmland and forest in northwest Alberta that covers an area bigger than New Brunswick. 

A year into Alberta's COVID-19 vaccine rollout, the county makes up the bulk of what is the province's least-immunized health region. 

Just 29 per cent of the roughly 25,000 residents are fully immunized. It's the only health region in Alberta where less than 30 per cent of the total population have had both doses — far lower than the provincewide total of 72 per cent.

Still, attitudes about COVID-19 and immunization in this vast region are not homogenous, and those diverse views have created challenges for those who live there.

Daniel Wall, 35, has come to hate going into town.

His life on his farm with his wife and two young daughters is largely self-sufficient. A wood stove warms their living room, a cow provides more than enough milk for the family of four, and crates of vegetables for Wall's market garden business are piled high in the room where his wife teaches music lessons. 

He travels into La Crete about once a week to pick up other things they need. 

Like most Canadians living in places with public health restrictions, he pulls on a mask when he goes into stores. In La Crete, he's often the only one.

"I know what people are thinking: 'You're scared of the disease,'" Wall said in a recent interview.

Wall and his family are Mennonite, like many families who live in the farming community. But unlike some of their friends, relatives and neighbours, they try, for the most part, to follow the provincial public health restrictions in place to limit the spread of COVID-19.