The westernmost of Canada's three Prairie provinces, equal in size to the state of Texas, Alberta lies between the 49th and 60th parallels, at virtually the same latitude as the United Kingdom. Named for Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, fourth daughter of Queen Victoria, Alberta became a Canadian province on September 1, 1905.
Alberta shares more than size with Texas: it is probably known as Canada's most Western province… cowboy style! The foothills, between mountains and prairie landscapes, feature heavily forested areas and grasslands used for grazing cattle! Beneath their surface lie some of the province's richest deposits of sour gas and coal, while in the North, much of Alberta's oil and gas deposits and oil sands are covered by the forested areas and vast stretches of northern muskeg that form the interior plain of North America.
What attracts thousands of visitors each year is Alberta's Rockies, a region of spectacular beauty. The landscape is dominated by snow-topped peaks ranging from 2,130 to 3,747 m (6,390 to 11,241 ft) in elevation, luminous glaciers, and iridescent glacier lakes, now protected in a series of national parks. The discovery of natural hot springs at Banff in 1883 prompted the federal government to create Canada's first National Park. Since 1985 Banff and Jasper, along with Yoho and Kootenay in the BC Rockies, have all become UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Alberta has what is known as a continental climate, with long, cold winters, (tempered by a mild wind, the "chinook," funnelling through the mountains from the Pacific Ocean) and mild to hot summers. Alberta receives more days of sunshine than any other province in Canada, no matter what the season!
With two-thirds of the population under the age of 40, Alberta has one of the youngest populations in the industrialized world. This is, in part, due to the high level of international and inter-provincial migration to Alberta over the past 25 years. Today, roughly 44 percent of Albertans are of British descent; other large ethnic groups include the German, Ukrainian, French, Scandinavian and Dutch. Although 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, Albertans love to celebrate their grassroots each year in the famous Calgary Stampede, an exuberant ten-day festival of all things Western!
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