ALBERTA

Alberta is the westernmost of what are considered Canada's three Prairie Provinces, lying between the 49th and 60th parallels, at virtually the same latitude as the United Kingdom. Alberta is 1,217 kilometres from north to south and between 293 and 650 kilometres in width from west to east. Nearly equal in size to the state of Texas, the province covers an area of some 661,185 square kilometres.

Roughly half of the south-western section of the province is dominated by mountains and foothills, with striking reminders of the glaciers that, over millions of years, formed, moved and receded in the area. Peaks of the Rocky Mountains located in Alberta range from 2,130 to 3,747 metres in elevation. The foothills, which form a gentle link between mountain and prairie landscapes, feature heavily forested areas and grasslands used for grazing cattle. Beneath their surface, the foothills contain some of the province's richest deposits of sour gas and coal.

The remainder of the province and approximately 90 percent of the land area forms part of the interior plain of North America. The plains include the forested areas that dominate the northern part of the province and the vast stretches of northern muskeg that overlay much of Alberta's oil and gas deposits and oil sands.

Alberta has what is known as a continental climate. It is characterised by vivid seasonal contrasts in which long, cold winters are balanced by mild to hot summers and an unusually high number of sunny days, no matter what the season. Although cold air covers the whole province in winter, it is frequently replaced in the Southwest by a mild wind, the "Chinook", funnelling through the mountains from the Pacific Ocean.

The native people, whose ancestors are thought to have crossed the Bering Sea from Asia thousands of years ago, were the first people to live in what is now Alberta. The Blackfoot, Blood, Piegan, Cree, Gros Ventre, Sarcee, Kootenay, Beaver and Slavey Indians, speaking a variety of Athapaskan and Algonkian languages, were the sole inhabitants of what was then a vast wilderness territory. The early Albertans, particularly the woodland tribes of the central and northern regions, became valuable partners of the European fur traders who arrived in the 18th century.

The first European explorer to reach what is now Alberta was Anthony Henday, in 1754. Peter Pond, of the North West Company, established the first fur-trading post in the area in 1778. The Hudson's Bay Company gradually extended its control throughout a huge expanse of northern North America known as Rupert's Land and the North West Territory, including the region occupied by present-day Alberta.

Expeditions led by Henry Youle Hind and John Palliser found parts of the region to have exceptionally good land for farming, especially the fertile belt north of the Palliser Triangle, a particularly arid zone. As a result of these findings, the British decided not to renew the licence of the Hudson's Bay Company and, in 1870, the North West Territory was acquired by the Dominion of Canada and administered from the newly formed province of Manitoba.

Beginning with the arrival of the railway in 1883, the population started to grow quickly, helped by the discovery of new strains of wheat particularly suited to the climate of the Canadian Prairies. On 1st September 1905, Alberta, named for Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, fourth daughter of Queen Victoria, became a province of Canada with Edmonton as its capital city. The province of Alberta was created by joining the District of Alberta with parts of the districts of Athabasca, Assiniboia and Saskatchewan.

Today, roughly 44 percent of Albertans are of British descent; other large ethnic groups are the German, Ukrainian, French, Scandinavian and Dutch and close to 150,000 people are of Indigenous or Métis origin. With two thirds of the population under the age of 40, the province has one of the youngest populations in the industrialised world. This is, in part, due to the high level of international and interprovincial migration to Alberta over the past 25 years. Approximately 80 percent of Albertans live in urban areas, and more than half live in the two main cities of Edmonton, the province's capital, and Calgary.