> I agree with most of what was said here, but there are a few points I wish to dispute or clarify.
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> > Alberta's population (based on the website http://www.babelfish.com/travel.ab.ca/About_AB/AB_QS_No_Table.html which I just looked up about five minutes ago) is around 2.6 million people. However, of these 2.6 million people, about half (1.37 million people) live in just two cities, Edmonton and Calgary. An additional two hundred thousand live in just four more cities, Red Deer, Saint Albert, Lethbridge, and Medicine Hat. Each of these four cities is within easy driving distance of Edmonton and Calgary and indeed, many people who live in these cities work in one of these two major urban centers.
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> I think those figures may be out of date. I'm pretty sure that Alberta now has over 3 million people and Calgary has over 900 thousand, which would only leave 470 thousand for Edmonton, and I know Edmonton was bigger than that fifteen years ago. But I could be wrong about the Alberta and Calgary populations-- Those numbers are off the top of my head, and the sources may not be completely reliable.

*Shrug* I pulled the first figures I could find off of the web. I think these ones were '97 or '98 ... it says on the website somewhere. My /point/, though, is that most people in Alberta live in a relatively few cities, and that's as true now as it was three years ago.

> As for the proximity of Medicine Hat and Lethbridge to the major centers (in this case Calgary, since they are both southeast of Calgary), I can say that they are not that close. I live in Calgary, my girlfriend lives in Lethbridge, and my parents live in Medicine Hat. Since it can take up to an hour and a half to cross the city of Calgary, times vary based on where in Calgary you are travelling to or from, but I live near the center of Calgary and it takes me about three hours to get to Medicine Hat and about two-and-a-half hours to get to Lethbridge. (And yes, I drive a little quickly on the highways at times...) These distances are definitely NOT commutable, and I have never heard of anyone living in either of those two cities and working in Calgary. However, St Albert and Red Deer are much closer, and I imagine commuting in from either one would be quite feasible. Of course, I don't dispute your conclusions here-- just your statements regarding how close these cities are. In terms of lifestyle, political beliefs, and such, Medicine Hat and Lethbridge are not too far removed from Calgary.

Your last statement was my whole point. Sam says, "Local culture changes, sometimes accents and dialects change, and the particular social and political issues that crop up locally and affect people's political awareness are different", essentially because Alberta is too big. I don't think that's true. Even if they are several hours away, Medicine Hat and Lethbridge are close enough for there to be occasional contact (an individual might make a monthly trip to Calgary from Medicine Hat, for example, in order to do shopping; or a company in Calgary could have a branch in Lethbridge to which it might ship goods on a weekly, or even daily basis without huge expense.) The fact that you can maintain a relationship at all with another person in one of these cities I think proves my point. People in Medicine Hat, Lethbridge, Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, or Sherwood Park are close enough to have similar cultures and concerns, and can therefore be governed effectively by a single provincial government (with individual municipal governments).

I suppose Calgary is a little different from Edmonton -- here, we have some cities (such as Stony Plain) so nearby that people doing census reports will often count the people in these smaller cities as part of the population of Edmonton. In these cities, it's certainly feasable for the people to commute to Edmonton in order to work.

That, incidentally, is why some census reports will indicate that Edmonton has a larger population thatn Calgary, even though Calgary /proper/ has more people living in it.

(To support my own city, however, I might as well say that Edmonton covers more /land area/ than Calgary -- essentially because we have a municipal airport in the center of the city, so all of the buildings have to be shorter. As a result, there are more of them. Plus, we have a larger park system -- but you have the better city zoo.)

> > Furthermore, it's interesting that provinces tend to be more or less united in their votes for Prime Minister.
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> Again you refer to the concept of voting for the prime minister, and I assume you are using this phrase to simplify things for those unfamiliar with our system (as I think you described how it actually works in a different post.)

I am. And I did, at some length.

>If anyone is uncertain about how our system actually works (we do NOT get to vote directly for who we want to lead the country) please post with your questions and Space or I will probably respond quickly. Anyway, I just wanted to comment that a good example of the provincial unity Space mentions is found in Alberta. In at least one of the last two federal elections, only two ridings in Alberta did NOT go to the Reform Party (now the Canadian Alliance). It seems very likely that this will be the case again in our upcoming election.
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> > -Spacebar
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> Don "The Monkeyman" Jackson

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