, Canada: Frontiers and Fusions in North America's "Last Best West"

Max Foran

Alberta, Canada! Sunny, beautiful, brash, Hudson's Bay, and the Gulf of Mexico. Their and rich. Home to over three million people, harnessed strength gives life to dry soil, and Alberta is Canada's fourth largest prov­ power to towns and cities. But below the fields ince, larger than California and almost as of grain and prairie sod, beneath the stands of big as Texas. It straddles the eastern slopes poplar, spruce, and pine, are the resources that of the Great Divide and extends south to support Alberta's rise to global prominence. the American border and north nearly to Fossil fuel deposits in the form of coal, oil, the Arctic. Though one of the youngest of and natural gas are the forces driving Alberta's Canada's provinces it is perhaps the most economic engine and enticing people from dynamic, with a rich heritage and a promising around the world to this "last best West:' future. Successive waves of frontiers-some Human activity in Alberta dates back at physical, some economic, some occupational, least twelve thousand years. Surviving teepee and some cultural-have defined its character rings, pictograph art, and medicine wheels give and forged a distinct identity. evidence of several distinct nomadic hunting Nature has richly endowed Alberta. societies. Alberta's European heritage was first Breathtakingly beautiful in its wide variety shaped by the frontier. Beginning in of landscapes, Alberta is a land of contrasts, the late-eighteenth century, fur traders from where mountains give way to foothills and the Hudson's Bay and North-West Companies prairie, where desert meets parkland, and traveled the northern river highways seeking where agriculture yields to vast boreal forests. prime beaver pelts for a thriving European Though hundreds of miles from the sea, it is a hat-making industry. From their fortified land defined by water. Several impressive rivers, river-based posts, they established trading headed by the mighty Peace, Bow through rich partnerships with the Woodland . The fur farming country and semi-arid rangelands, trade had seen its best days by the mid-nine­ linking the province with the Arctic Ocean, teenth century, but its legacy can still be seen in the settlement patterns of many northern communities, the most outstanding example being Edmonton, the province's capital.

(Top) Rosebud is typical of small prairie towns established along the route of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Photo by Nancy Groce, Smithsonian Institution

(Left} Coal was the earliest of Alberta's energy re sources to be exploited . The Atlas Coal Mine in the Drumheller Valley is now a National Historic Site. Photo by Nancy Groce, Smithsonian Institution

42 ALBERTA AT THE SMITHSONIAN Southern Alberta was subject to a very industry transformed itself into a billion Farmhouse and barn built by early settlers different frontier. Too far south to enable dollar diversified mixed-enterprise industry. stand amid canola a profitable fur trade, it was inhabited by The popular term, "good Alberta beef," is an fields in northern the , whose nomadic enduring tribute to this legacy. Alberta. Photo courtesy Travel Alberta lifestyle was sustained by the buffalo (plains The construction of the Canadian Pacific bison). By the mid-nineteenth century, a lucra­ Railway across Canada in the mid 188os tive trade in buffalo robes had produced the enabled both the urban development and hunting patterns that ultimately led to the agricultural settlement of Alberta. Many near extinction of the "monarch of the prai­ towns and cities in the province owe their ries." Smallpox, a whisky trade, and starvation very existence to Canada's railroad. Beginning contributed further to the decimation of the around 1900 and culminating in 1913, succes­ Blackfoot. The arrival in Alberta of the North­ sive waves of immigrants from the British Isles West Mounted Police in 1874 ended some of and Europe established homesteads across the the worst abuses of Aboriginal peoples by province. One early result was the achievement European incomers. The "Mounties" estab­ of provincial status in 1905. The new agricul­ lished a network of forts, including one at tural frontier defied climate. Aided by extensive Calgary, that became a nucleus of pre-urban irrigation projects and by early ripening wheat activity. Most important, their stabilizing pres­ strains, it occupied marginal dry lands in the ence ensured a peaceable frontier and paved south and east, and opened up Alberta's Peace the way for future European settlement. River country. It was the continent's most The disappearance of the buffalo led to northerly and last settled agricultural fron­ an open range ranching frontier in the Alberta tier. In this new order, wheat was the domi­ foothills in the early 188os. Characterized by nant crop. In spite of droughts and other soil sprawling ranch leaseholds financed in part and climatic variables, Alberta farmers were by British capital, and augmented by cowboy inspired by the lure of "King Wheat." This know-how from the United States, the early was further evidenced between the World Wars ranching experience laid the foundations of a by extensive railroad and elevator construction, Canadian "western" tradition, and provided the creation of small town Alberta, and the the impetus for the world-famous Calgary consolidation of a rural order based around Exhibition & Stampede. In time the ranching wheat that lasted until the 196os.

ALBERTA AT THE SMITHSONIAN 43 ~ining began in the late nineteenth The discovery and exploitation of Alberta's century. In the late 188os, the Canadian natural resources, which in recent years have Pacific Railway Company opened up Alberta's also included an increasingly far-reaching vast coal reserves around Lethbridge and in forestry industry, help explain development the Crowsnest Pass in the southwest corner and human habitation within a historical of the province. Though the potential for oil context. They have also engendered fusions in Alberta had been long recognized, it was and imbalances, both of which offer insights not until 1914 that an important discovery into Alberta's character and identity. was made in Turner Valley, southwest of One can see the peculiar nature of Calgary. This modest oil field was superseded Alberta's longstanding political conserva­ in 1947 by the major discovery at Leduc near tism as a fusion of sorts. The fur trade was Edmonton that signaled the beginnings an important centralizing force and an agent of the modern oil era. Since then, sizable of imperial power. The powerful Hudson's discoveries of both oil and natural gas else­ Bay Company was directed from England. where in the province have propelled Alberta Similarly the North-West ~ounted Police into national economic prominence. Alberta's was another highly centralized institution in a oil industry today has a global reach, rein­ country that still maintained powerful imperial forced recently by the commercial develop­ connections. On the other hand, Alberta has Not all early towns ment of the petroleum-rich oil sands near always reflected a significant American influ­ thrived. Dorothy, in ence, via the ~ormon movement from Utah the badlands of south­ Fort ~c~urray, where reserves are unrivaled ern Alberta, is today globally in terms of potential production. into southern Alberta in the late r88os and largely a ghost town. The renaissance of coal as an energy source through the wave of American settlers into Photo by Nancy Groce, Smithsonian Institution is a complementary current trend. central Alberta between 1909 and 1912. This

44 ALBERTA AT THE SMITHSONIAN strong connection to the United States was live in Edmonton and Calgary, where more consolidated by the many American oil execu­ than one in five residents were born outside of tives who lived in the province after 1947. The Canada. This new ethnic diversity has yet to be fusion of various influences is illuminating. widely reflected in Alberta's smaller towns and British sentiment prevailed through an historic villages, but change is coming. attachment to the Mother Country and to Alberta is at a crossroads. As its economy British institutions. Conversely, the province's grows by leaps and bounds, so do the chal­ historic protest mentality and its reputation as lenges and opportunities created by afB.uence. a right-wing political maverick have their roots As waves of newcomers continue to arrive, in Midwestern American populism. Alberta's historic, unswerving adherence to Alberta's rise to agricultural prominence individualism and free enterprise may become within Canada came through a fusion of increasingly contestable. For the present, agriculture and livestock raising. There was Alberta is a beckoning promised land. Those a belated realization that wheat could never seeking growth and prosperity will find a be "King" in Alberta as it had been in more palpable energy in its urban places, on the easterly Canadian provinces and the American drilling rigs, and in the mines and forests where Great Plains. Instead, optimum land-use prac­ the tasks of tapping resources never cease. Yet, tices were tied to mixed farming based on there is another Alberta, in many ways serene specialty crops, oilseeds, and intensive swine and unsullied. One can find it in the quietude and cattle production. This realization changed of a parkland poplar woods, in the sweeping the nature of Alberta's agribusiness. The large rolling grasslands of the Milk River ridge, in number of what are now termed "cattle farms;' the clarity of an alpine meadow, in the eerie many on soils unsuitable for wheat, reflects this magic of a northern lake at sunset, in the transformation. Another fusion is evident in a silent timelessness of the badlands, and in the growing awareness of the importance of heri­ haunting call of the loon and cheery trill of tage and heterogeneity. An enduring commit­ the black-capped chickadee. Future leaders in ment to progress amid social orthodoxy is pursuing "the Alberta way" will want to value complemented by world-class heritage sites and the serenity as much as the energy. a proliferation of festivals that celebrate both past achievements and diversity. MAX FORAN 1 Today, thanks to thriving agricultural, Max Foran is a member of the University of Ca~ary s energy, and technology industries, Alberta is Faculty of Communication and Culture. He has written ex tensively on various western Canadian urban rural enjoying an economic boom. However, with 1 1 wealth has come disequilibrium. One imbal­ and cultural topics with a particular focus on ranching) Alberta and the Great Depression and the urban growth ance is an over reliance on the export of raw 1 materials. Current attempts at economic diver­ and sustainability process. sification through tourism, high-tech, and information and knowledge-based industries, are measured responses. Another is the changing demography created by widespread immigra­ tion. Around two-thirds of Alberta's population

ALBERTA AT THE SMITHSONIAN 45