For months now, the motto of the Alberta Party seems to have been "Run Silent, Run Deep."

While party supporters were drinking coffee and Listening Big in kitchens across the province, it was pretty hard for an uninvolved observer like Yours Truly to figure out where the heck this was all supposed to lead, except possibly to more Capital Letters.

Somewhere, someday, we were told, it was going to result in a Big Policy that all Albertans could get behind, and when that day came, the Alberta Party would be ready to run a full slate of candidates in a general election.

What could turn out to be a significant political development in Alberta took place last evening, when the leaders of all three opposition parties with seats in the Legislature showed up in front of a large crowd of agitated rural landowners in the town of Vegreville, about 100 kilometres east of Edmonton along the Yellowhead Highway.

The 500 rural folks at the meeting are riled up about plans to build a high-voltage electrical line through many of their farms. Since there is more than one proposed route, no one is yet sure which farms will be affected -- magnifying the furor all the more.

OK, the fledgling Alberta Party says it's moving onward and upward from meeting, greeting and eating in kitchens and living rooms throughout the province, and that now is the time for Momentum-with-a-Capital-M. Big Momentum.