UofC

Alberta, named after the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria, is Canada's fourth largest province stretching 1,223 km north from Montana to the Northwest Territories. Six Englands can fit into the land mass of Alberta. Its landscape reflects a sweeping expanse of hummocky northern wilderness, towering mountain ranges, and cattle-crowded flatlands dotted with oil and gas wells.

• Land Area: 661,190 sq. km.
• Capital: Edmonton
• Largest City: Calgary
• Population of Alberta: 2,974,807 (2001)
• Weekly Newspapers: 152
• Daily Newspapers: 9
• Universities: 4

Recreation and sports are spread throughout the province and include national and provincial parks. Wood Buffalo National Park in northernmost Alberta is Canada's largest national park. Within its wilderness area, beside the buffalo, are the nesting grounds of the near extinct whooping crane. Resorts are especially popular in the mountain and foothills areas. Both Banff and Jasper townsites, favourite tourist destinations, are found in the Banff and Jasper National Parks. These areas provide a myriad of activities including skiing, both downhill and cross-country, hiking, caving, canoeing, mountain climbing, swimming in hot springs, heli-skiing, wild life watching, golf, ice fishing, skating and much more. On the wild side, Banff National Park is the home to hundreds of big horn sheep, grizzly bears and elk. Jasper, the home of the Columbia Icefields, which is the Rockies largest accumulation of ice, feeds three great river systems, the Athabasca, flowing to the Arctic, the Saskatchewan, emptying into Hudson Bay, and the Columbia tumbling into the Pacific.