Check out our reasons why Alberta winters are the best:. That's right. Alberta's captial city, Edmonton, is so dedicated to celebrating winter, they've come up with activities all season-long. WinterCity features ice carving competitions, deep freezer races that's right, you push a deep freeze on skis , and skating accompanied by an orchestra. No where is the commitment to the season stronger. So maybe experts say there is no difference between a 'dry cold' and a 'wet cold,' but we beg to differ.
In our experience, Alberta's bone-dry air ensures you'll warm up a lot quicker once you come inside from a deep freeze. Perhaps it's a lack of moisture in our clothing that makes it less likely to catch a chill.
Or, it may just be a way to justify the harsh winter temperatures, but we're sticking to our 'dry cold' defense.
Alberta's consistently cold temperatures, proximity to the mountains and sheer length of the season make it the best province for almost any winter sport you can think of. Ski season starts in October and ends in May. Ponds and lakes stay frozen for almost half the year.
Dog-sledding, snow tubing and cross-country skiing are also popular, and enjoy long seasons in Alberta. Some of North America's finest ski resorts are on our doorstep.
From Calgary, there are several world-class ski hills accessible in less than two hours and some of the most picturesque skating and pond hockey backdrops in the world.
Edmonton's beautiful River Valley make cross-country skiing and tobogganing available within city limits. Local residents can keep costs down with shorter commute times, reduced housing prices, and affordable consumer goods. In recent years, the fossil energy industry has led to an economic boom that has further developed into a flourishing manufacturing sector. Alberta is one of the more popular immigrant destinations due to the abundance of well-paying jobs in the oil, finance, and tourism fields.
This makes Alberta a wonderful place to start your new life as an immigrant, with promising opportunities and great benefits for its citizens. Alberta's population has grown rapidly in recent years, overtaking every other province and territory in Canada. Over half a million immigrants have chosen to settle in Alberta over the past decade, with most newcomers being young men looking for better job opportunities.
As a multi-cultural society, Alberta is home to a variety of ethnicities and religions with immigrants moving from India, China, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. Alberta is a fascinating place for students, and it provides wonderful educational opportunities for its citizens. Home to an impressive 6 universities, 13 colleges and several trade schools, Alberta has something for everyone.
The UCP campaigned on a platform that pledged, among other initiatives, to eliminate the provincial carbon tax and climate change action plan, freeze the minimum wage and introduce components of private health care.
The Provincial Court, whose judges are appointed by the provincial government, hears the majority of both civil and criminal cases in the province, and represents the lowest trial court in the province. The Alberta Court of Appeal is the highest provincial court. Alberta has 34 elected seats in the House of Commons. The seats in the House of Commons are based roughly on population, and are subject to redistribution after each decennial census.
Furthermore, Alberta has six seats in the Senate ; this number is set constitutionally and is not based on population, but rather, regional representation. The perceived inequalities of the seat distribution and the fact that senators are appointed, not elected, has long been a point of dissent for Albertans. In , the Alberta government passed the Senatorial Selection Act in order to have more control over their senators and to democratize the Senatorial appointment system.
These nominees are then presented to the prime minister as candidates to replace any vacancies. Alberta is the only province to have this type of process as part of their Senate selection. Residents of Alberta pay among the lowest income taxes in Canada and pay no provincial sales tax. The province depends instead on various fees, rentals and royalties from oil, natural gas, coal and other mineral companies as major sources of income; this income once accounted for 45 per cent —82 of total government revenue, but by it had declined to about 20 per cent.
As of the income from non-renewable resources has remained fairly steady with its level, still accounting for about 20 per cent of the provincial income. Before all revenue became part of the general budgetary fund used to finance all government expenditures. However, following the energy-pricing crisis of the mids, revenues increased dramatically and the government was faced with large surpluses.
The result was the creation of the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund known popularly as the Heritage Fund , into which non-renewable resource revenue is set aside and invested. The fund aims to provide financial resources for periods of provincial deficit, to strengthen and diversify the provincial economy by investing in education and research, and to undertake special capital projects such as health care facilities, irrigation and recreation projects, and the development of oil sands technology.
In , Albertans, in a provincial survey, indicated the Heritage Fund should remain a top investment priority of the government. Local municipal authority originates from the provincial government and is based on various municipal acts. Municipalities provide local services such as police and fire protection, garbage and sewage disposal, water and other utilities, road maintenance and public transportation, and parks and recreational services. Urban municipalities include cities, towns, villages and summer villages i.
However, new summer villages can no longer be designated in Alberta. As of there were 17 cities, towns, 93 villages and 51 already existing summer villages in Alberta. Rural authority is vested in municipal districts, composed of various townships. Municipal districts are alternatively known as counties.
Municipal districts have a population of 1, or more, and the majority of properties in a municipal district must be on pieces of land of at least 1, m 2. Within municipal districts, a small group of residential dwellings with a name may be designated as a hamlet. A second type of rural municipality is the improvement district — an outlying area which does not elect its own council but is directly administered by the provincial government through Alberta Municipal Affairs or, in the cases of the national parks in the province, by the federal government.
The provincial and federal governments are directly responsible for the functions of local government in improvement districts with the exception of school affairs. In July Alberta entered the federal medicare scheme and continues to provide publically-funded universal healthcare. The Alberta Ministry of Health is responsible for health policy, and Alberta Health Services, a department of the Ministry of Health, is responsible for providing health services throughout the province.
Like other provinces, some privatization of healthcare exists in Alberta; nonessential services, such as optometry, dentistry and cosmetic surgery, are not part of the publically-funded health care.
Prescription medication is only partially covered by government funding. The first schools in Alberta were founded by Catholic and Protestant missionaries in the mids. Religious groups such as Hutterites , Mennonites and the Christian Reformed Church gained their own educational privileges, either within the framework of public education or through self-supported private schools.
However, subsequent Protestant settlement and the determination of territorial political leader F. Haultain saw the gradual weakening of religious duality in education.
Alberta became a province, and therefore became responsible for providing public education, in The new province established a system based on the Ontario model — one provincial educational system, allowing local provision for the dissenting religious minority, known as separate schools, but excluding mandatory province-wide separate schools. Ontario also provided the initial model for programs of study, course content and grade structures, a model that lasted until the s.
In the s, however, Alberta made a number of innovations in their public education system and introduced the separate junior high school and a new course, social studies, which combined history, geography and political science. Alberta further altered the administration of rural education, expanded adult education and initiated programs for the economic and professional betterment of teachers in the s.
Public education in Alberta is a shared responsibility of the provincial government, through the Ministry of Education, and the local public and separate school boards. As part of the financial cutbacks initiated by the Klein government, Alberta led the nation in reducing public expenditures on education in Post-secondary education is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Innovation and Advanced Education.
Provincial grants, which have been cut drastically since the s, partially fund the public post-secondary institutions in the province; the remaining funds needed to operate come from tuition fees and other sources. The University of Alberta, the University of Calgary and the University of Lethbridge are classified as Comprehensive Academic and Research Institutions, offering undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as extensive research programs. Athabasca University is also classified as a Comprehensive Academic and Research Institution but differs as it is primarily a distance learning institution.
Grant MacEwan University and Mount Royal University are classified as Baccalaureate and Applied Studies Institutions, offering some undergraduate degrees, and various applied diplomas and degrees. The province also has 11 comprehensive community colleges and two specialized arts and culture institutions — The Banff Centre and the Alberta College of Art and Design. These colleges offer a variety of university transfer, vocational and high school upgrading courses.
Amendments in to the Public Colleges and Technical Institutes Acts permit the public colleges and technical institutions to offer applied degree programs, subject to ministerial approval. Alberta is also home to a number of independent academic institutions. Additionally, there are licensed private vocational schools throughout the province.
Cultural life in Alberta is coloured by a persistent "frontier ethos" that emphasizes economic materialism and rugged individualism. A rich physical landscape, diverse population and periodic governmental, corporate and private affluence have benefited the cultural sector. The primary source of funding for Alberta arts and culture is derived from the Alberta Lottery Fund and federal funding.
Until the s, visual arts in Alberta were centred in Calgary around the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art now the Alberta College of Art and Design , and dominated by a British-inspired school of landscape painters. Phillips , H. Glyde , W. Stevenson and Illingworth Kerr were the most prominent artists to paint landscapes of the Alberta prairies, foothills and mountain countryside. Calgarians Maxwell Bates and Marion Nicoll were prominent Alberta painters and modernist exceptions to the traditional landscape artists.
From the s into the s, the abstract formalist theory of the New York school dominated northern Alberta painters such as Douglas Haynes at the University of Alberta. Abstract painters Robert Scott , Terrence Keller and Graham Peacock were among the many artists supported by the Edmonton Art Gallery, which also became the national leader in presenting and developing modern metal sculptors such as Peter Hyde and Alan Reynolds.
The late s saw a re-emergence of figurative painting and sculpture throughout the province and a strong community of printmakers in both Edmonton and Calgary. The professional performing arts are centred in Edmonton and Calgary. The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra dominate orchestral music in the province and there are three opera companies in Alberta, the Edmonton Opera Association, the Calgary Opera Association and the Alberta Opera Touring Association, which specifically develops and performs opera for children.
As well, Edmonton annually plays host to the International Fringe Theatre Festival, a week-long summertime festival of new and old plays at open-air venues and traditional playhouse settings. Many Alberta playwrights including nationally-acclaimed John Murrell and Sharon Pollock have worked with Alberta Theatre Projects, a Calgary company that has encouraged local writers and indigenous themes.
Each summer Edmonton also hosts The Works Arts and Design Festival, which is the national pioneer of visual arts festivals. The Banff Centre School for Continuing Education has emerged as a nationally- and internationally-renowned training centre for young professionals in the performing arts. A number of commercially-successful and critically-acclaimed writers of both fiction and nonfiction come from Alberta, including novelists Robert Kroetsch , W.
Mitchell and Rudy Wiebe. Alberta is home to eight major daily newspapers. The Calgary Herald is the largest, followed by the Edmonton Journal. The Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association has weekly community newspapers serving metropolitan, suburban and rural areas of Alberta and the Northwest Territories.
Alberta is home to a network of 19 provincially-operated historic sites, interpretive centres and museums, covering a broad range of human and natural history. Additionally, there are over community-run museums and over 30 local archives. The lotteries-funded Alberta Historical Resources Foundation assists local groups in heritage building preservation, historical markers, research and publishing efforts. Barr and P. Smith, eds. Hardy, ed. Douglas Francis and Chris Kitzan eds.
Baker, ed. Government of Alberta The official website for the Government of Alberta. Atlas of Alberta Railways Online collection of numerous historical maps, documents, and images pertaining to the major railways that criss-crossed Alberta since the early days of train travel. From the University of Alberta.
Includes selected digitized images from their art, community history, military history, and Native North America collections. Explore the natural and human history of Alberta website. Also, check out the interactive Virtual Collection and online tours. Search The Canadian Encyclopedia. Remember me. I forgot my password. Why sign up? Create Account. Suggest an Edit. Enter your suggested edit s to this article in the form field below. Accessed 12 November In The Canadian Encyclopedia.
Historica Canada. Article published March 26, ; Last Edited June 18, The Canadian Encyclopedia , s. Thank you for your submission Our team will be reviewing your submission and get back to you with any further questions. Thanks for contributing to The Canadian Encyclopedia. Article by Robert M. People Urban Centres Alberta's population in was Labour Force Historically, Alberta has had an unemployment rate lower than the national rate, and often the lowest rate in the country.
Language and Ethnicity The most commonly cited ethnic origin in Alberta is Canadian, followed by English and German, according to the Census. Religion The majority of Albertans are Christian, with about 60 per cent identifying with a Christian denomination in the census. Exploration The first European known to have reached present-day Alberta was Anthony Henday , a Hudson Bay Company employee, who, accompanied by a band of Cree , travelled through the Red Deer area and likely spent the latter months of the winter near the present site of Edmonton in —
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