Beautiful Alberta [antikvár]

Running along the eastern edge of the Rocldes and stretching out across the endless plains is the dynamic Province of Alberta. The province has a thriving economy based on oil, coal and a^culture. The cities are booming in prosperity and population while the great natural beauties of the Province are preserved in her National Parks. But the prairies that today throb to the sound of mechanised harvesters once echoed to the thundering of hooves as millions of bison roamed the land. The scale of progress is all the more dramatic vsfhen it is remembered that it is a mere hundred years since the first plough broke the rich Albertan soil.In fact it was orJy in the 1750s that the first white man came to the region at all. Anthony Henday came in search of furs, and he found them. Unfortimately, the Blackfoot Indians were more interested in hunting for food and fighting wars than in trapping, and the trade languished for forty years. Towards the close of the century a string of trading posts sprang up throughout what was then called Rupert's Land and the Indians were convinced of the value of money One of these early settlements was named Fort Edmonton and it has since become the Provincial capital.For more than half a century the vast area of land was left to the fur trappers and the Indians. But the land was not at peace. European diseases decimated the Indian population, as did alcoholism, and the area rapidly declined into lawlessness. In 1869, the Dominion Government bought Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company. It then sent in the famous Royal North West Mounted Police to bring law and order to the region; a job they performed admirably The following decade saw the arrival of the cowboys and their vast herds. But the rip-roaring days of cowpunching and gunfighting were to last less than a generation in the Canadian West.In the 1880s the transcontinental railway was completed and miners and farmers started to pour into Alberta. The great rush came in the 1890s and by the turn of the century the population had topped the 70,000 mark. Four years later, a hardier strain of wheat was developed so that ^ain farming was a reliable and profitable business. Even more people poured in and by 1911 more than a third of a million people lived in the province. The agricultural side of Alberta has never waned and today grain elevators are a common sight on the open prairies. The booming area demanded recognition, and in 1905 Alberta became a province and elected its own government to sit at Edmonton.But even as the agricultural economy that was to make Alberta more than just a name on a map was developing, a smaller industry was getting under way. In 1886 John Brown, known more romantically as 'Kootenai', was selling machine grease that he found seeping out of the ground near the Waterton Lakes. In 1914 a viable oilfield was found in Turner Valley and the great rush was on.The city that has, perhaps, gained most from the oil boom is Calgary. This thriving metropolis of some half a million inhabitants stands on the edge of the prairies, where they meet the towering bulk of the Rockies. As a centre for industry, commerce and transportation it rivals the Provincial capital of Edmonton. The fields of culture and entertainment are also well looked after in the city There are concerts, operas and stage shows for evening entertainment, while daytime leisure can be enjoyed in any of the five hundred parks and gardens of Calgary.But, despite its modem face, Calgary still remembers its rough-and-ready cowboy days. Every July the Stampede bursts upon the scene. Cowboys from across the continent, and across the seas, converge on the city to take part in the 'greatest outdoor show on Earth'. They ride horses, cattle and even bison while others drive chuck wagons, play covmtry music and generally indulge in all kinds of western fun and high jinks.Ear to the north, and covering some 318 square kilometres, stands the beautiful capital of Edmonton. Tliis city, too, remembers its past with an annual festival. Almost as soon as the Stampede is over the Klondike Days start in Edmonton. Citizens and visitors dress up in the fashions of the 1890s, go to dances and recreate the atmosphere of the Gold Rush days. One of the craziest and most exciting events is the sourdough raft race. Thousands line the banlis of the North Saskatchewan River to watch dozens of home-made rafts flounder and capsize in one of Canada's strangest races.But the greatest glories of Alberta are her natural wonders. The sweeping grasslands of the prairies, the lakelands of the mighty Peace River area and the mountains of the west. The towering peaks and icefields are the greatest beauties of Alberta and large areas have been set aside in the Banff and Waterton Lakes National Parks.Alberta has come a long way since the first fur trapper treklced across the plains and bartered with the Indians. Wheat grows where bison once roamed and the earth has yielded up her riches to the technology of man. The thriving cities form the heart of a dynamic province which can look towards a bright future.