Edmonton is the capital of Alberta and the largest city in the province. Edmonton is located on the North Saskatchewan River, near the geographical centre of the province. Commonly known as the "Gateway to the North," it is strategically situated on an economic divide between the highly productive farmlands of central Alberta and a vast, resource-rich northern hinterland.
Settlement : Edmonton's valley setting, with its abundance of water, timber and wildlife, has attracted settlement for several thousand years.
The archaeological record is scanty, but in 1976 a large campsite containing stone tools from the Middle Prehistoric period (between 3000 and 500 BC) was discovered on a high bluff overlooking the North Saskatchewan River, likely a place where bands of semi-nomadic hunters and gatherers met regularly.
Europeans began to penetrate the western plains in the 18th century. Settlement followed in 1795, when the Hudson's Bay Co and the North West Co built the first of a series of fortified trading posts.
After the 2 companies merged (1821), Fort Edmonton became the dominant centre of the western fur trade. The fort was reputedly named for Edmonton, now part of London, England, the birthplace of a deputy governor of the HBC.
In 1830 the fort was rebuilt for the last time, on the present site of the Alberta Legislature Building. It gradually fell into disuse after the HBC surrendered its rights to Rupert's Land in 1870.
Development : Permanent settlement outside the fort did not begin until the 1870s, and even then was slow to develop. The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway through Calgary (1883) did not help. A branch railway came north in 1891, but it terminated at Strathcona, a community on the south bank of the North Saskatchewan River. Edmonton did not receive its own transcontinental connection of the Canadian Northern Railway until 1905.
A year later it was designated the capital of the newly created province of Alberta and became the natural service centre for a huge agricultural region then coming under intensive development.
With Strathcona, Edmonton entered a frantic boom period. When the two cities amalgamated in 1912, their combined population was over 40,000 and may have reached 70,000 soon after, only to drop to 50,000 in WWI. For the next tenty five years Edmonton's fortunes were closely linked with those of its agricultural hinterland. It grew in the good times, stagnated or declined in the bad.
By 1941 it was still a small city (92,409), only the ninth largest in Canada. Its economy was built around local wholesale trade, transportation and the processing of agricultural produce, notably meat packing.
During WWII Edmonton began a sustained period of growth and assumed a distinctive new character:
first as a strategic centre for northern military operations, including the construction of the ALASKA HIGHWAY, and later as a servicing and processing centre for the petroleum industry. It has since become the major location of oil refining and the petrochemical industry in Western Canada, and has become prominent politically as well as economically.
Edmonton's modern development, together with that of Calgary, has completely overshadowed Winnipeg, the historic commercial centre of the Prairie region. In recent years, Edmonton and Calgary have competed more with each other than with Winnipeg for economic development. Edmonton also has to compete more directly with Vancouver, as it tries to expand its influence in Pacific Rim countries, while Vancouver intrudes upon Edmonton's traditional sphere of influence in the Mackenzie Valley and western Arctic.
Cityscape : In the process of growth, the city of 1941 has been engulfed. The main street of Strathcona was a rare exception and is protected today as part of the Old Strathcona conservation area. Edmonton's central area, by contrast, has been rebuilt continually since the 1950s.
A few noteworthy buildings have survived and several have been restored to fashionable use, but they are dwarfed by the clustered towers that now dominate the Edmonton skyline. Only a few older buildings on open riverbank sites (the Legislature Building, Government House and the Macdonald Hotel) have retained some prominence.
The river valley, which is Edmonton's outstanding natural feature, has had a profound influence. It is both a barrier, crossed by many bridges, and a magnificent amenity. High-rise apartments and elite residential areas compete along both banks for views of the river, and parks, golf courses and woodland trails stretch through the valley.
In 1994 Edmonton was designated as Canada's forestry capital, in part because of the extensive "urban forest" that persists within the valley system. Modern architecture, typified in the descending terraces of the Edmonton Convention Centre, complements the valley setting.
Downstream (northeast) to Fort Saskatchewan and beyond, the valley has developed over the past 45 years into the largest industrial complex in Alberta.
Fort Saskatchewan's industrial base makes it unusual; most of Edmonton's other satellites are bedroom communities for people working throughout the widespread metropolitan region. Metropolitan development came with postwar growth and led in 1950 to the establishment of the first regional planning organization in Canada. A city planning department was created at the same time and has been especially successful in keeping control over Edmonton's expansion. Development has been well regulated, though Edmonton has not been spared the problems of urban sprawl that beset other Canadian cities.
In 1941 the city's territory covered 110 km2; by 1991 it had reached 670.08 km2, making it the largest major Canadian city in area. Edmonton's area includes some of Alberta's richest farmland .
Population : From the 1940s to the early 1980s, Edmonton was one one of the fastest-growing cities in Canada. Until about 1961, natural increase was high, but migration was the chief factor in the city's growth, as rural-urban migration from within Alberta and migration from Europe were both at a peak. Over the next decade, foreign migration dropped sharply and natural increase became more important, a fact reflected in the youthfulness of Edmonton's population.
The pattern changed again in the 1970s, as birthrates fell and migration increased, though the majority of migrants now came from other Canadian provinces. That largely ceased in the 1980s, and Edmonton experienced its lowest growth of modern times.
Nonetheless, over the 50-year period, 1941-91, Edmonton's metropolitan population increased more than 8-fold and the city's boundaries were extended many times to accommodate expected growth.
Economy and Labour Force : Edmonton's economy has always been driven by resource wealth. It is the major supply and service centre for a vast territory extending from central Alberta to the Arctic Ocean. Agriculture, oil and natural gas and, most recently, forestry provide the staples on which Edmonton's trade and service functions are based. Processing and manufacturing have increased in importance as well, especially as Edmonton has sought to broaden its economic base.
A resource economy can swing quickly between boom and bust, as Edmonton learned in the depression of the 1980s.
In terms of employment, Edmonton's greatest growth since 1951 has been in the tertiary or service sector. It is particularly notable as a centre for public administration (federal and provincial) and for educational and medical services of the highest calibre. In turn, these are spawning an array of high-tech industries vital to the restructuring of Edmonton's economy.
Transportation : Since the 1830s Edmonton has been a major hub in the transportation network of Western Canada. As a modern rail centre, it occupies a key position in the transcontinental freight system of the Canadian National Railway, and has strong links to the Canadian Pacific Rail system as well.
It also dominates the transmission system for petroleum products of all kinds, a pattern that arose from the proximity of the Leduc, Redwater and Pembina oil fields, where exploitation began.
Leduc is also the location of the Edmonton International Airport, opened in 1957. It caters to main-line service to Canadian, American and European cities; the original airport, near the city centre, handles non-commercial flights.
In intra-urban transportation, Edmonton was the first medium-sized Canadian city to construct a Light Rapid Transit (LRT) system (1978).
Government and Politics : Until 1984 Edmonton had a council-commission-board form of Municipal Government, with each council serving a three-year term. The Commission Board has now been replaced by an executive committee which has a rotating membership. The council comprises a mayor elected at large and twelve aldermen representing six wards. Candidates normally stand as Independents, though party slates have occasionally achieved some success.
The most notable, known as URGE (Urban Reform Group of Edmonton), originated in the citizen protest movements of the 1970s. URGE is now defunct, but it was indicative of a political pattern in which Edmonton affords the Liberal and New Democrat parties, these parties' main support in Alberta. City councils tend to be similarly split between conservative or pro-business groups and supporters of a strong public sector.
Edmonton has a long history of municipal ownership, including the local electricity and telephone systems (privatized in 1995). These have generated much revenue for the city government and have helped keep property taxes among the lowest in Canada.
Edmonton is also fortunate in having been able to annex territory to meet its growth needs, though this has often brought it into conflict with suburban municipalities, where a quarter of the metropolitan population lives. Regional Government or the unification of the metropolitan area under Edmonton's jurisdiction has been proposed at times but never implemented. There is a variety of regional service authorities instead.
Cultural Life : The Edmonton Symphony Society, the Edmonton Opera Association and the Citadel Theatre are three of the largest performing arts organizations in Canada, but they are merely the most visible elements in a prolific arts scene in Edmonton. There are musical and theatrical performances for every taste, and numerous talented painters, potters, actors, directors, writers, poets, filmmakers and artists are based in the city.
In August 1994 the Fringe Theatre Event, a nine day showcase for local, regional and international performing artists, attracted some 503,000 people, making it the largest annual festival of its kind in Canada and the third-largest theatre festival in the world.
The many different ethnic groups also contribute a lively folk culture, and artistic and ethnic festivals are increasingly popular. The chief facilities for artistic performances and displays are the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, the Edmonton Art Gallery, the Edmonton Public Library, the Citadel Theatre and Francis Winspear Centre for Music (1996) and the Timms Centre for the Arts (1995) of the University of Alberta, one of Canada's leading universities.
Other major educational institutions are the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and Grant MacEwan Community College. These are complemented by a range of popular facilities, including the Provincial Museum and Archives, the Muttart Conservatory, the John Janzen Nature Centre, Fort Edmonton Historical Park and the Edmonton Space Sciences Centre.
In sports, Edmonton holds 3 professional franchises: the Edmonton Eskimos of the CFL, the Edmonton Oilers of the NHL and the Edmonton Trappers of the Pacific Coast Baseball League. The main facilities are Commonwealth Stadium (built for the 1978 Commonwealth Games and expanded to 60,000 seats for the World University Games in 1983), the Kinsmen Sports Centre (also built for the Commonwealth Games), the Edmonton Northlands complex of hockey arena, racetrack and exhibition space and Telus Field, home of the Trappers. In 1996 Edmonton hosted the World Figure Skating Championship.
Author: P.J. SMITH
The Canadian Encyclopedia Plus Copyright c 1996 by McClelland & Stewart Inc.