Alberta
Fast facts
- Capital
- Edmonton
- Largest city
- Calgary
Alberta is a province in western Canada. It is bounded by the provinces of British Columbia on the west, Saskatchewan on the east, the US state of Montana on the south and the Northwest Territories to the north.
Alberta is the fourth-largest Canadian province, after Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia, with an area of 642,317 square kilometres. Alberta has over five million (5,000,000) people living there, making it the fourth-most populous province in Canada.
Alberta’s capital, Edmonton, is located near the middle of Alberta. The city of Calgary, Alberta’s most populous city and other major centre, is located about 300 kilometres to the south of Edmonton and approximately 240 kilometres north of the United States border.
History
Canada became a country in 1867. It was much smaller than it is now, and did not include the parts of the country to the west. From 1670 to 1870, parts of Alberta were included in “Rupert’s Land”, land owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company in support of its trading monopoly over a vast area of Canada and parts of the United States. Northern part of Alberta was part of the what was then called “Northwestern Territories”.
Alberta was made a province of Canada in 1905, at the same time as Saskatchewan.
The Aboriginal peoples of Canada are referred to as First Nations or by the Name of their Nation. Mixed (European/Aboriginal) People are called Metis.
Weather
Alberta is very cold in the winter and has a lot of snow during the very cold season. There is a dry part of Alberta in the south.
Work in Alberta
Alberta has a huge amount of oil (in the Athabasca Oil Sands) and natural gas.
There are also a lot of farms in Alberta. Farmers grow several different types of crops Farmers mainly grow wheat. There are also a lot of cows on Alberta farms, and Alberta beef is exported.
Written for younger readers
Alberta, in simpler words
This version comes from Wikijunior, a set of books written for children aged 8 to 11. It is shorter and uses plainer language than the article above.
From Wikijunior: North America
Alberta is located in western Canada, bounded by the provinces of British Columbia to the west and Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Territories to the north, and the U.S. state of Montana to the south. Alberta is one of three Canadian provinces and territories to border only a single U.S. state. It is also one of the only two Canadian provinces that are landlocked, the other being Saskatchewan.
Alberta is one of the western provinces of Canada, with only British Columbia blocking it from the Pacific Ocean. To the east is Saskatchewan, to the north are the North-West Territories, and to the south is Montana in the United States. The capital of Alberta is Edmonton, but the city with the most people is Calgary (1.336 million as of 2017). Alberta is the fourth largest province in Canada, at about 660,000 sq km.
Alberta has warm summers and cold winters.
Where this page comes from
The article above is adapted from “Alberta” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact. The simpler version is adapted from Wikijunior on Wikibooks.
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