Alberta, Canada! Sunny, beautiful, brash, and rich. Home to over three million people, Alberta is Canada's fourth largest province, larger than California and almost as big as Texas. It straddles the eastern slopes of the Great Divide and extends south to the American border and north nearly to the Arctic. Though one of the youngest of Canada's provinces it is perhaps the most dynamic, with a rich heritage and a promising future. Successive waves of frontiers--some physical, some economic, some occupational, and some cultural--have defined its character and forged a distinct identity.

Nature has richly endowed Alberta. Breathtakingly beautiful in its wide variety of landscapes, Alberta is a land of contrasts, where mountains give way to foothills and prairie, where desert meets parkland, and where agriculture yields to vast boreal forests. Though hundreds of miles from the sea, it is a land defined by water. Several impressive rivers, headed by the mighty Peace, flow through rich farming country and semi-arid rangelands