VIII.

History

Henry Kelsey, a fur trader and member of the Hudson’s Bay Company, may have been the first European to see what is now Alberta when he explored the west from 1690 to 1692. He was followed by Anthony Henday, also sent by Hudson’s Bay, who arrived in Alberta in 1754 or 1755. When Henday explored the foothills of the Rockies in 1754, he encountered many different indigenous peoples. The Cree and Chipewyan lived in the woodlands north and west of the plains and depended on forest animals for food and clothing. The Blackfoot, Assiniboine, and Plains Cree roamed the grass-covered prairies and lived by hunting bison.

A.

Fur Trade

Traders from the Hudson’s Bay Company encouraged these indigenous peoples to trade with the company and conducted a profitable business in furs. In the 1780s Scottish and French fur traders from Montréal, assisted by American adventurers, journeyed to the Canadian northwest to seek their fortunes. With them they brought firearms, axes, knives, iron pots and kettles, blankets, and cloth to exchange for furs. These independent traders harassed the Hudson’s Bay Company by intercepting trappers bound for the company’s posts and buying their best furs. In 1783 organized competition to the Hudson’s Bay Company began when a group of Montréal merchants formed the North West Company and established trading posts in the west.

The intense rivalry that sprang up between the two companies hastened exploration of the territory. The explorer Sir Alexander Mackenzie followed the Mackenzie River northward to the Arctic Ocean in 1789. Four years later he set out from Alberta on his famous voyage to the Pacific Ocean, which he reached by way of the Peace, Finlay, and Bella Coola rivers. David Thompson explored and mapped much of Alberta between the Bow River and the Peace River. He later crossed the Rocky Mountains and followed the Columbia River to its mouth, producing invaluable maps of western Canada.

The rivalry between the two fur-trading companies ended in 1821, when they merged under the name of the Hudson’s Bay Company. For the next 50 years the company was the only authority in the Canadian interior, including Alberta.

B.

First Settlers

After 1821 settlers began to arrive in the territory. Among the first were fur traders who chose to make their homes there. They were followed in the 1840s by missionaries, who worked to avert conflict between indigenous peoples and the settlers. The Methodists were first represented by Robert Rundle, who spent eight years in central Alberta, ministering to traders and Métis. Early in the 1860s, George McDougall and his son John, both Methodist ministers, established missions among the indigenous peoples of the woodlands and foothills, just west of Calgary. John McDougall was instrumental in bringing some of the first cattle into the foothills. During this period three Roman Catholic missions were established near Fort Edmonton, two of them at Lac Sainte Anne and one at St. Albert. Albert Lacombe, the priest who founded the St. Albert mission in 1861, spent more than 60 years in central and southern Alberta and was one of the first to encourage farming among the settlers. The first Anglican missionary, William Newton, went to Alberta in 1875. He was followed in the next decade by Presbyterian and Baptist missionaries.

C.

Settlement

In 1867, when Canada became a dominion of Britain, the dream of a united British North America stretching from coast to coast came close to realization. Two years later the Hudson’s Bay Company agreed to sell its rights in the northwest to the federal government. Manitoba joined the Dominion of Canada as a province in 1870, and British Columbia joined in 1871. But areas between those two provinces—including what would become Alberta—remained virtually without government.

Independent traders from Montana took advantage of this situation to set up trading posts, where they exchanged whiskey for furs. This trade led to lawlessness and disorder. It came to a halt after the North-West Mounted Police (now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) was organized in 1873 and the subsequent founding of police posts at Fort Macleod, Calgary, and Fort Saskatchewan, 29 km (18 mi) east of Edmonton. Government was restored to the region by the establishment, in 1875, of the Northwest Territories Council, with headquarters at Battleford, Saskatchewan. For administrative purposes, the Northwest Territories south of latitude 60° north were organized in 1882 into the four districts of Assiniboia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Athabasca, with the council seat in Regina, Saskatchewan.

The disappearance of the whiskey trade attracted more settlers. The new settlements and the accompanying increase in the slaughter of bison, however, posed a serious threat to the livelihood of the indigenous peoples who lived on the plains. In 1877 the Canadian government and the indigenous peoples south of the Red Deer River signed a treaty whereby the indigenous peoples forfeited their general rights to the land and agreed to live on reservations in return for certain gifts and annuities. In 1876 and 1899 similar treaties were concluded with the indigenous peoples of the North Saskatchewan River valley and with those north of the Athabasca River.

In 1885 an uprising of Métis and indigenous peoples broke out in the district of Saskatchewan. The rebellion was short-lived, and Alberta was not seriously affected, since the powerful Blackfoot nation under Chief Crowfoot refused to join the rebels.

In the 1870s settlers began to bring large herds of cattle and sheep to the southern foothills, and for the next generation the ranchers were successful in raising cattle. In the 1880s homesteaders began to trickle into the territory. By 1883 the Canadian Pacific Railway had reached Calgary on its way across the mountains to the West Coast. Two years later, Canada’s first transcontinental trains were passing through Alberta. Toward the end of the 19th century Canadian Pacific branch lines were built between Calgary and Fort Edmonton, through the fertile Parklands, and between Calgary and Fort Macleod. These and other lines made much of the region accessible to settlers. By 1901 about 73,000 people lived in what is now Alberta province.

D.

Province of Alberta

In 1905 the four southwestern districts of the Northwest Territories, below latitude 60° north, were reorganized into two provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Alberta held its first elections that same year, and in 1906 the legislature convened in Edmonton, which had been chosen as the provincial capital. Alexander Cameron Rutherford, a member of the Liberal Party, served as premier. The Liberals remained in office until 1921.

D.1.

Under the Liberals

Between 1905 and 1922, two major railroads, later united as the Canadian National Railways, were built across the province and were fed by numerous branch lines. Settlers poured into the province. By 1911 the total population had climbed to 374,295, a gain of more than 300,000 in ten years. Although World War I (1914-1918) checked Alberta’s further population growth by shutting off the flow of European immigrants, the farmers enjoyed prosperity because of the high wartime price of wheat. By 1921 the three Prairie provinces were among the world’s main wheat-growing areas.

D.2.

Under the United Farmers

After the war the price of wheat fell sharply. The farmers in Alberta formed a radical political party, the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA), which won the provincial election of 1921. Under UFA administration the province generally prospered until the 1930s, when the effects of the world economic depression, together with a series of prolonged droughts and grasshopper plagues, caused serious hardship in Alberta. Farm prices again fell rapidly, and the UFA government was unable to cope with the economic downturn.

D.3.

Under Social Credit

The depression generated interest in new ideas, such as a redistribution of income. In the early 1930s Scottish economist Clifford Douglas proposed the use of government grants, which he called “social credit,” during a visit to Canada. He convinced William Aberhart, a Calgary school principal and lay teacher. Aberhart became the leader of the new Social Credit Party, which generally adopted Douglas’s doctrines and also proposed to curb the power of banks. Eventually Aberhart promised each Albertan a monthly social dividend of $25.

In 1935 the party was swept into office. Aberhart became premier. The federal government prevented the party from testing its monetary ideas. The party did, however, improve local government, education, health care, highways, and the control of credit. After Aberhart died in 1943, he was succeeded by Ernest C. Manning. Thereafter Social Credit governed conservatively, on the basis of the precedents established by Aberhart.

Alberta was changing, however, as a result of the rapid growth of the oil industry after World War II (1939-1945). In 1971 the Progressive Conservative Party, led by Peter Lougheed, was swept into office. By 1982, with only three of its members left in the provincial legislature, the Social Credit Party was no longer politically important.

D.4.

Oil, Gas, and Postwar Prosperity

In 1947 a large oil field was found at Leduc, south of Edmonton. Even larger oil and also natural gas finds followed at Redwater and Pembina. Transportation was improved, pipelines were built to the United States and across Canada, and support industries were developed. Edmonton became an industrial and refining center, as well as a supply center for the north. Calgary became a business and financial center as well as a supplier for the farms of the south. Agriculture and food processing remained important, but Alberta became increasingly industrial and urban. New demands arose for housing, better transportation, and more social services. The provincial government became increasingly dependent on revenues from oil and gas leases and royalties on production to pay for social services.

During the 1970s more large deposits of natural gas were found, a major new oil field was discovered at West Pembina, and the first significant extractions of oil began from the Athabasca oil sands. As a result of the sharp rises in world oil prices in 1973 and 1974, and again in 1979 and 1980, a major dispute arose between the provincial and federal governments over the price to be charged for Alberta’s oil. While oil consumers wanted cheap oil, oil producers and the provinces that depended on oil royalties for revenue wanted high-price oil. In 1981 an agreement was reached whereby prices would be allowed to rise gradually to 75 percent of the world level and the federal share of royalties would be increased. In the mid-1980s Alberta’s economy fell into a depression when world prices for oil and wheat both plummeted. However, Calgary got an economic boost in 1988 when it hosted the Winter Olympic Games.

The Progressive Conservative government that had come to power in 1971 under Peter Lougheed devoted its efforts to fiscal reform, environmental protection, and the improvement of social services for the elderly and people with disabilities. Although Lougheed retired as premier in 1985, the Progressive Conservatives retained power, winning reelection in 1989, 1993, 1997, 2001, and 2004.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, growth in the oil and gas industries helped fuel a prolonged economic boom in Alberta. Oil production gradually expanded after the mid-1990s as technological advancements—spurred by provincial and federal tax breaks—reduced the cost of mining Alberta’s vast oil sands. The natural gas industry also prospered as it became more important as a source for electricity generation and various industrial applications, including petrochemical production. Alberta’s growing economy attracted workers from across Canada, especially young people in search of opportunity. Although Alberta’s robust economy easily absorbed many of the new immigrants, rapid population growth has strained the province’s infrastructure and led to a shortage of basic services in some areas.