Alberta

The province of Alberta is located in Western Canada. Along with Manitoba and Saskatchewan, it is known as one of the "prairie provinces." Alberta is bordered on the south by the United States border and the US state of Montana, on the west by British Columbia, on the east by Saskatchewan, and on the north by the Northwest Territories.

Edmonton, the provincial capital, is a major commercial and cultural center, while oil-rich Calgary is the province's most populous city. Once mostly known for agriculture and cattle-raising, Alberta became immensely wealthy in the mid-twentieth century through the discovery of large deposits of petroleum and natural gas. The province is known for its friendly inhabitants and "cowboy" heritage.

General Information

Name: Alberta was named for Princess Louise Caroline Alberta (1848–1939), the fourth daughter of Britain's Queen Victoria. In 1871, the princess became the wife of John Campbell, Lord Lorne, who served as governor-general of Canada from 1878 until 1883.

Provincial Symbols

• Bird: Great Horned Owl
• Flower: Wild Rose
• Tree: Lodgepole Pine
• Motto: "Fortis et Liber" (Latin, "Strong and Free")

Capital: Edmonton has served as the capital of Alberta since the province was established in 1905. The city dates back to 1795, when it was established as Fort Edmonton, a Hudson's Bay Company trading post. The city is a major commercial center and home to many corporate offices. Both Edmonton and its rival city of Calgary vie for the nickname of "oil capital of Canada."

People & Culture

Population: Alberta's population is largely urban, and about 83 percent of the population lives in urban areas. In 2021, the population of Alberta was estimated at 4,442,879. The province's largest cities are Calgary (1,239,220 residents) and Edmonton (932,546 residents), which are the third and fifth largest cities in Canada, according to the 2016 census. The province's other urban areas are far smaller.

The population of Alberta is predominantly of British heritage. There are large Ukrainian, German, and French minorities. According to the census, approximately 136,585 First Nations people and 114,370 Métis were living in Alberta in 2016. The province has forty-five First Nations in three treaty areas, 140 reserves, and approximately 812,711 hectares of reserve land. The most commonly spoken First Nations languages include Blackfoot, Cree, Chipweyan, Dene, Sarcee, and Stoney (Nakoda Sioux).

Indigenous People: Alberta's aboriginal peoples began settling the region between ten and fifteen thousand years ago. The First Nations began making treaties with the Canadian government in the 1870s, establishing reservations. Relations between White and Indigenous populations have historically been strained, due to differing interpretations of land agreements and scandals involving religious "residential schools," which sought to assimilate First Nations children into White culture.

Arts and Entertainment: The rival cities of Calgary and Edmonton are the province's major cultural centers. Calgary has a reputation for being more down-to-earth, with many reminders of its "cowboy" heritage. The Calgary Stampede, held for ten days every July since 1912, is an international rodeo that draws nearly one million visitors from around the world. Edmonton has a reputation for being more cosmopolitan and avant-garde, and the capital city is home to venues such as alternative-movie houses.

The province has many institutions of higher education. Schools in Edmonton include the University of Alberta and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. Calgary is home to the University of Calgary and the Alberta College of Art and Design.

There are many professional sports teams in Alberta, including two professional hockey teams: the Calgary Flames and the Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League (NHL). There are also two Canadian Football League teams: the Calgary Stampeders and the Edmonton Eskimos. Other popular sports are soccer and rodeo.

Alberta has a large and thriving mass media. Newspapers in Calgary include the Calgary Herald and Calgary Sun. Edmonton has the Edmonton Examiner, Edmonton Journal, and Edmonton Sun. There are numerous radio and television stations.

Environment & Geography

Alberta is a mixture of flat plains, rolling hills, and stark mountain ranges. The province covers 661,848 square kilometers (255,541 square miles), making it the sixth largest Canadian province or territory by land area. It extends 1,223 kilometers from north to south and 660 kilometers from east to west. The province's largest lakes are Lake Claire and Lake Athabasca. The longest rivers are the Peace and the Athabasca. The Rocky Mountains form the province's southwestern border. The Rockies' highest point in Alberta is Mount Columbia (3,747 meters/12,293 feet).

Topography: Alberta consists mostly of flat prairie land. The rugged Rocky Mountains run through the southwestern part of the province. The southeastern part of Alberta is known as the "badlands," a largely desolate and rocky region through which runs the Red Deer River. In the northeastern corner, there is a region covered with crystalline rock formations.

There are six major topographical regions: boreal ("northern") forest, Canadian Shield, foothills, the Rocky Mountains, parkland, and grassland. The southeastern corner of the province, covered mostly with parkland and grassland, is where most of the population is located. Edmonton is in the southcentral parkland region; Calgary, Medicine Hat, and Lethbridge are located to the south in the grasslands. The Canadian Shield, in the northeastern corner of the province, is a rocky region with little vegetation.

National Parks: Alberta has five national parks and more than sixty provincial parks. National parks include Banff, Elk Island, Jasper, Waterton Lakes, and Wood Buffalo. Banff, established in 1885, was Canada's first national park. Alberta is home to five World Heritage Sites, as designated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO): Wood Buffalo National Park, home to the largest population of wild wood bison in North America; Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, which includes to contiguous national parks of Banff and Jasper in Alberta and Kootenay and Yoho in British Columbia; the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, the site of a former aboriginal camp where ancient hunters killed bison by strategically chasing them over a cliff; the Dinosaur Provincial Park, home to many important fossils; and Waterton Glacier International Peace Park, which includes the Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta and the Glacier National Park in Montana.

Natural Resources: Oil and gas are two of the most important natural resources, having made Alberta one of the richest provinces in Canada. The grassy plains of Alberta are highly suited for cattle-raising. Much of northern Alberta is boreal forest containing largely coniferous trees, which are used for the forestry industry.

Plants & Animals: Many Alberta place names come from animal names, showing the population's once close connection with the land. Alberta is home to many wild species that have become scarce in other parts of North America, such as the wild bison. Wood Buffalo National Park is home to the largest wild wood bison population in North America. Other northern species, found in the boreal forest region, include moose, caribou, and wolves.

In the southwestern mountains, one can find large mammals such as grizzly bears and mountain lions, and herbivores such as bighorn sheep and mountain goats. In the grasslands roam the pronghorn antelope and coyote. Bird species include the Canada goose, the trumpeter swan, and the golden eagle, which inhabits the grasslands. The parkland region is home to many animal species, including the beaver and white-tailed weasel.

Climate: Alberta has several widely divergent climatic regions, because of the province's great length (1,200 km) from north to south and width (600 km) from east to west. The southeastern part of the province enjoys relatively temperate weather, making that region suitable for agriculture and cattle-ranching. The southeast receives approximately 30 centimeters of rain annually, while the north receives 40 to 45 centimeters. The foothills region, however, receives an average of 55 to 60 centimeters each year.

The southern part of the province, particularly the foothills, is warmed by the "Chinook" winds coming from the Rockies. In southern Alberta, average high temperatures in July range from 20 to 25 degrees Celsius (68 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit) and the average low temperature is approximately 9 degrees Celsius (48 degrees Fahrenheit), while in the north, the daily high temperatures in the summer average 16 degrees Celsius (61 degrees Fahrenheit). Winter temperatures average –8 degrees Celsius (17 degrees Fahrenheit) in southern Alberta, while temperatures in the northern part of the province average –15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit), although winter temperatures may reach as low as –30 to –40 degrees Celsius (–22 to –40 degrees Fahrenheit) for brief periods of time.

Economy

(Unless otherwise noted, all monetary amounts are given in Canadian dollars.)

Alberta's economy was once predominantly based on agriculture, forestry, and cattle-ranching. In the twentieth century, huge deposits of oil and natural gas were discovered, leading to an extended economic boom. In 2015, Alberta's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was $78,100, the highest level of any province, despite decline due to lower oil and gas prices that year. Other important industries in Alberta are technology, telecommunications, manufacturing, and tourism. The provincial government has promoted Alberta as a favorable place to do business, working to reduce taxes and balance the budget. In 2016, the province's exports were worth $78.9 billion. As was the case in all parts of the world, Alberta's economy experienced significant challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic that began in early 2020. Alberta's GDP fell by 8.2 percent in 2020—the largest decline of all of the Canadian provinces—largely due to decreases in oil and gas demand. However, in 2021 the province's economy began to rebound quicker than experts had predicted.

Petroleum, natural gas, and coal are important parts of Alberta's economy. Alberta contains almost three-quarters of Canada's total reserves of coal, and more than two-thirds of Canada's coal reserves are located in Alberta. In addition, the Athabasca oil sands in the northeastern municipality of Wood Buffalo are thought to have unconventional oil reserves approximately equal to the entire conventional oil reserves of the rest of the world. Extraction of oil from the oil sands increased as the price of oil rose in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and proved very profitable for Alberta, but many have raised concerns about both the deforestation required to mine the sands and the spike in greenhouse emissions caused by the process of refining them into usable oil.

Tourism: Alberta's natural beauty, along with its wide range of climates and landscapes, make it a popular tourist destination. Winter sports are hugely popular—Calgary was the site of the 1988 Winter Olympics. The tourism industry employs over one hundred thousand jobs in the province. In 2016, tourism and consumer services made up 5 percent of Alberta's GDP.

In 2019, nearly 35 million people visited Alberta. This figure includes visits by other Canadians, US residents, and other international visitors (many of them from Britain, Germany, Japan, China, and Australia).

Agriculture: Alberta has traditionally been heavily agricultural, though energy production and other industries have made agriculture relatively less significant to the overall provincial economy. More than 25 million acres were dedicated to cropland in 2016. In 2016, Alberta accounted for approximately 40 percent of the national cattle herd, with roughly 3.34 million beef cattle and 80,014 dairy cows. Total farm cash receipts for 2017 were $14.1 billion.

Forestry is also a major industry. Forests cover roughly 38 million hectares in Alberta, nearly 60 percent of the province. The forestry industry generates billions of dollars annually and directly employs over eighteen thousand people, according to the Alberta Agriculture and Forestry department in 2017.

Transportation: Alberta has a modern transportation network. There are more than 31,000 kilometers of highways and more than 226,000 kilometers of public roads in Alberta, roughly 22 percent of Canada's total network. Roughly 165,000 kilometers of the public roads in Alberta are gravel, treated, or earthen, while the remainder is paved. Several major highways pass through Alberta, including the Trans-Canada Highway.

Government & History

Government: Alberta has a single-house legislature, the Legislative Assembly, which meets in Edmonton. The provincial premier, the head of the government, is a member of the legislature and must retain the legislature's support in order to remain in power.

The lieutenant governor is the head of state, appointed by the prime minister and serving as the viceregal representative of the Canadian monarch. The duties of this office are largely ceremonial: to open and close sessions of the Legislative Assembly, to give royal assent to legislation, and to ensure the election of a new premier when the incumbent resigns.

History: Alberta was first settled between ten and fifteen thousand years ago by aboriginal peoples known today as the First Nations. The first settlers apparently belonged to the Clovis and Folsom cultures. Many tribes were nomadic or seminomadic, hunting large game such as bison and mammoth. First Nations in Alberta at the time of first contact with Europeans included the Assiniboine, Cree, Blackfoot, and Chipewyan.

French explorers and fur trappers reached present-day Alberta in the early eighteenth century. They established several communities, including Bonneville and Fort La Jonquière, near present-day Calgary. The fur-trading North West Company of Montreal laid claim to much of the region. North West employee Peter Pond established Fort Athabasca on Lac La Biche in 1778. The Métis people are the descendents of the French traders with First Nations people.

The British also sent explorers into the region. Roderick Mackenzie, a relative of Scottish explorer Sir Alexander Mackenzie, established Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca in 1788. The English claimed the region as "Rupert's Land," a vast territory comprising much of northern and western Canada. The name was in honor of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, an early director of the powerful Hudson's Bay Company (HBC).

In 1870, the Dominion of Canada abolished the HBC's trade monopoly. The previous year, the company had sold Rupert's Land to the Dominion of Canada, which in 1875 reorganized the new lands as the Northwest Territories. The establishment of the Northwest Territories opened the region up to white settlement. In 1882, Canada created the district of Alberta as part of the Northwest Territories, naming it for Queen Victoria's daughter Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, wife of Governor General Lord Lorne.

During the 1870s, the Canadian government began signing treaties with the First Nations, including many tribes in what is now Alberta. Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald tried to construct a transcontinental railroad, but this effort became embroiled in scandal and brought down his government. A second attempt succeeded in the 1880s, and the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) Company was completed by 1885. The CPR became a major economic force in Alberta and other parts of Western Canada.

The railroad helped bring in settlers, as did the prospect of rich farmlands. By 1891, the entire Northwest Territories had a population of around sixty-seven thousand. Ten years later, this had more than doubled. Calgary and Edmonton were the most prominent new cities, becoming transportation hubs for shipment of agricultural products and cattle. Alberta became a province on September 1, 1905, and Edmonton became the provincial capital. (Saskatchewan became a province on the same day.)

In the 1920s, Alberta was at the center of a major battle over women's rights in Canada. The "Persons Case" involved five Alberta female activists, who wanted to ensure women's right to run for political office. The case established women as "legal persons" under the British North America Act of 1867. The five plaintiffs (Emily Murphy, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, and Irene Parlby) have become known as the "Famous Five."

The Great Depression produced a strong populist response in Alberta. The Social Credit Party came to power in 1935 and governed until 1971. Their philosophy was based on the "social credit" theories of Scottish engineer Major C. H. Douglas. The party promoted price controls and moderate social welfare policies, including a guaranteed minimum income. The first Social Credit premier was William Aberhart, a prominent radio evangelist. His successor, Ernest C. Manning, held office from 1943 until 1968. His tenure was marked by fiscal and social conservatism.

The discovery of vast oil and natural gas deposits after World War II brought immense wealth to Alberta. The Athabasca oil sands contain hydrocarbons that can be processed into petroleum products. Some analysts have argued that Alberta may actually contain more oil than Saudi Arabia, though the Arabian oil is easier to obtain.

Trivia

• 2005 marked Alberta's 100th anniversary as a province.
• West Edmonton Mall (WEM), North America's largest shopping mall and the largest in the world from 1981 to 2004, is located in Edmonton.
• In the late twentieth century, Edmonton was nicknamed "Dedmonton" because of its decaying downtown. The city has since undergone urban renewal.
• The International Peace Park, located on the border with the United States, includes parts of Montana.

Bibliography

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Holt, Faye Reineberg. Alberta: A History in Photographs. Vancouver: Heritage House, 2009. Print.

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