ALBERTA 



153 



ALBERTA 



LBER'TA, one of the nine prov- 

 inces of the Dominion of Canada. Like all of 

 the great Canadian Northwest, it was for 200 

 years, from 1670 to 1870, a part of Rupert's 

 Land, the domain of the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany. Not until 1882 was the name Alberta 

 given to any part of Canada. In that year the 

 Governor-General, the Marquis of Lome, and 

 his wife, Princess Louise Alberta, daughter of 

 Queen Victoria, paid an extended visit to 

 Western Canada, and in honor of the Prin- 

 cess the name Alberta was given to one of the 

 newly-organized districts of the Northwest Ter- 



MACKENZlE 



UNITE-D STATES 



ALBERTA 



Part In solid black is the former district of 

 Alberta; part shaded in diagonal lines shows 

 portions of other districts added to original 

 t:i to form the present province. 



ritories. The original district of Alberta, as 

 shown on the accompanying map, comprised 

 less than half of the present province. In 1905 

 the provinces of Alberta and Saskat< 



reeled from the area included in the four 

 -i of Alberta, Assiniboia, Athabaska and 

 Saskatchewan. 



Th l).,unl ,nos of Alberta, as fixed by the 



Dominion Parliament, are the 60th parnll. 1 on 



;th. t'nr 49th parallel on the south, and 



tho lioth inmdi.'iM (west) on the east; on 



the west the 120th meridian (west) is the boun- 

 dary to the point where it intersects the main 

 divide of the Rocky Mountains, which is the 

 boundary thence southward. Thus Alberta's 

 neighbors are the Northwest Territories, British 

 Columbia, Saskatchewan and Montana. 



Area and Population. The area of the 

 province is 255,285 square miles, which is 

 about 3,500 square miles larger than Saskatch- 

 ewan or Manitoba. Alberta is nearly 50,000 

 square miles larger than either France or Ger- 

 many, and has more than double the area of 

 the British Isles. Of the states of the Union, 

 only Texas, with 265,896 square miles, is larger. 

 This vast province of Alberta is still sparsely 

 populated. In 1901 it had only 73,000 inhabi- 

 tants, but in 1905, when it became a province, 

 the population was doubled. In the following 

 decade the steady stream of immigration con- 

 tinued until the outbreak of the War of the 

 Nations in 1914. Between 1905 and 1914 ap- 

 proximately 325,000 immigrants, from all parts 

 of the world, made Alberta their new home. 

 The Dominion census of 1911 gave it a popula- 

 tion of 374,663, and estimates for 1917 placed 

 the total at 550,000. This estimate gives Al- 

 berta an average of 2.15 inhabitants per square 

 mile, as compared with an average of 14.6 

 for Texas, 143 for France and 225 for the 

 German Empire. Thus there is yet room for 

 millions of people in this inland empire. 



Of the total population, about one-fourth is 

 of English birth or descent. Another fourth 

 includes Scotch, Irish and other British. The 

 remaining half includes Germans, Austrian*, 

 Scandinavians, French, and many other nation- 

 al it M-H and their descendants. The American- 

 born population, much of which is included in 

 the divisions already mentioned, totals about 

 100,000. 



The urban or town population of Alberta 

 is growing rapidly, but it does not yet equal 

 the rural population. About forty per cent of 

 il>< total is now found in cities or towns. The 

 largest city is Calgary; Edmonton, the provin- 

 next in site. Lethbridge, Medi- 



