I lived in Montana for about 4 months, we drove from the east coast it was about 39 hours of driving and when we hit Montana at one point we drove for about 5 HOURS without seeing a single car and when night fell it felt like we where driving into a endless void because it was so pitch black. I was terrified of dear I kept falling asleep and jumping up. With all that said, Montana is by far THE most beautiful state I've ever been to, and we didn't even go to yellow stone or glacier. I was in constant awe of the grandeur and beauty of the vast mountains and endless fields.
I live in a city with a population of over 250,000 people in Japan. People often ask me how I feel about living in the “countryside.” I always pull out Google maps and ask them to pick any spot in the middle of the US and zoom in so I can show them what “countryside” actually means. It’s hard for them to imagine how empty that area is when they are just used to images from movies.
When people live 'rural' here in Canada they mean very very different things. In the west it means "It takes a few minutes by car to my nearest neighbour." In the area I live, it means "I see a farm on my commute to work". In the shield it means "I need to take a plane to buy a new shirt". People always adjust terms to suit their local reality. lol
Here in Winnipeg the closest major city to our south is Minneapolis which is a nearly 8 hour drive. It really feels like you're on an island of civilisation in the middle of an ocean of farmland out here. It always confused me why this is the case but now it makes a lot more sense.
Albertan here - I cant believe how much I'm learning here. I've heard of things like Aspen-Parkland and Pallisers Triangle, but I'd never put together what it all means and how it impacts settlement, land use, and our economy. I did always wonder why Alberta supported two cities over a million while Montana had nothing. Thank you for this!
I hadn’t heard of this until looking it up a few years ago, but it explains why so many landmarks are named after Palliser in Alberta. It also explains why Parkland is a recurring place name as well.
Yes some of the best farm land in the world the parkland in Alberta where i live 125 bushels of Barley is common and Canola a 85 is not un heard of either can make a thousand dollars a acre farming quite easily
I always thought it was because Americans could just live further south. After all Denver and Salt Lake City exist despite the surrounding lands still being quite barren. Not to mention Phoenix and Vegas...
@@ALuimes That’s part of it but not the whole story. The harsh wind and the dryness of the North American steppe due the the lack of good soil and other resources are the reasons why this area is so thinly populated. There are no major cities fully located in this area of the continent but Calgary and Denver are located on or near the edges of it.
As a Canadian living in the corridor we're taught that even with all the factors you mentioned, Alberta is still pretty empty. I had no idea the north midwestern states are even EMPTIER than that.
I'm a long time fan of your videos and I was so impressed and happy that you made a video about my home! I'm from Edmonton, Alberta and I can say that yes, it is a great place to live. Despite the colder months, we have nice and long days during the summer and some of the best festivals in the world. Thanks for making this great video!
As someone who only recently moved to Edmonton (this past summero), I agree it really is a nice place to live. Can't say I enjoy it looking already like midnight at just 5pm these days though 😅
I've been in Edmonton for nearly two years and I haven't seen this Alberta advantage people keep talking about. Heating my place is about 4X more expensive than in BC. There are charms to Edmonton like seeing the northern lights. The city definitely needs to work on it's transit though, thirty minute waits or more between buses when it's -30 or colder is unacceptable.
It's also worth noting that the Canadian region in this video is dramatically growing in population too. Both in big cities and rural cities. Mostly through immigration.
The number one growing demographic in Canada is Chinese and the number two is Indian. So no it is not internal immigration, it is mass immigration from countries that are essentially cast based dictatorships. Which would explain why Canada isn't such a horrendous state.
@@Anonymous______________ Ehh, you're both kinda right here. Canada is bringing in record numbers of new immigrants as a whole, but the Western Prairie provinces, principally Alberta, are seeing large influxes of internal migration. Much of this brought on by increases to the already ridiculously unaffordable cost of living surrounding Vancouver and Toronto.
@@jordancornelius7061 That and a big rebound in new oil and gas jobs. Alberta had been seeing relatively stagnant population (and net outflow of young people) for the last 5-10 yrs while oil and gas prices were low and the industry was slow.
@GFkilla17 right? I'm a Texan and most of texas is empty and a lot of the population is concentrated in major cities just like anywhere else. If they really wondered why "this was the case," they would do research on social and civil engineering ie: slavery, gerrymandering, genocide etc.
Though we have larger urban areas, the Canadian prairies are still incredibly sparse. In between the major cities are hundreds of kilometres of farms, nature, small towns, and the occasional minor city. That’s one of the reasons why I love living here. It feels empty and crowded at the same time if you can understand that.
It’s quite shocking to discover that my whole life was basically summed up by this video: a migrant to Alberta, whose family are ethic Ukrainians settled in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, who moved to Edmonton Alberta for a job in the energy sector. And here I’ve always thought I was a special snowflake 😂
Next you’re gunna tell met that you live in vegreville or somethin but say you’re from edmonton because no one knows where vegreville is. Maybe not exactly vegreville but spruce grove, fort sask, St. Albert etc 😂
A couple of months ago I flew back and forth between Seattle and St. Louis. I had a window seat both ways and the sky was cloudless for 80% of the trips. I looked out the window almost the entire time. Once I left the two anchor cities, I literally did not see one town with more than a dozen or two houses in it. I was wondering how this could be the case in a country with 330,000,000 people in it. Now I know why.
The first time I drove down to Montana from Alberta it shocked me how different it was. The grass was browner, big farms and grain bins were rarer, and even fashion and hairstyles were more outdated
@asentientfirtree8631 Vancouver Island is really cool, you ride the ferry to Victoria or Nanaimo then drive around the coast. For outdoor activities Squamish and Whistler are fantastic just a couple hours N of Vancouver
Thanks for finally producing the only detailed video about this area of North America on TH-cam. It's probably one of the most overlooked areas of North America by most people (outside of maybe the Canadian Maritimes of the Far North). You even went the extra mile and discussed the Aspen Parkland Region and Palliser's Triangle, which are largely unknown to most Americans. The 49th parallel being drawn to the south of this area and the fact that most Americans don't think much about it really made this question baffling to many. The Edmonton-Calgary corridor probably has to be the most populated region in North America that's not talked about much in geography circles. Due to the border, there isn't much cross-border contact in this area. From what I've seen, most social groups don't extend across the border like they do in other border regions. Cross-border contact only seems to be mostly between farmers and ranchers in this area (save for a little bit of industrial trade). Unlike in other border states, Hockey has only recently become a thing in Montana and its popularity isn't nearly as big as in Alberta or Saskatchewan. It's mainly only popular among younger generations. Montana has only ever produced 2 NHL Players. South Dakota has only produced 1. North Dakota has done well with 18, but 7 of them are from Grand Forks. All pale in comparison to the 500+ players that come from Alberta and Saskatchewan, each. When it comes to restaurants, there are no Tim Hortons locations in MT or SD and the locations in ND closed a few years ago. Like many other border regions, it seems like more Canadians head south to these states than vice versa. Also, you can't even get a direct flight from Alberta to Montana or from Saskatchewan/Manitoba to North Dakota.
I mourn the closing of the Tim Hortons in Fargo to this day. The owner thought they could make more money if they ran the shop without paying franchise fees, and quickly fell flat on his face.
@@ALuimes That’s not saying much. Alberta May have some American influences but most Albertans identify with the Canadians that they are. Cowboy culture isn’t as prevalent north of Calgary/Southern Alberta. It’s like saying that Vermont or Minnesota are the most Canadianized provinces culturally.
There is also the "Great Clay Belt" of immensely fertile land in Ontario from about Cochrane to Timiskaming and continuing into Quebec. But the growing season is too short for most agriculture. Canadians attempting to colonize the region in the 1920s gave up due to July frosts and blackflies. They said, "Follow the isotherms" that rise northward into Alberta, being that it is nearer the mild winds of the Pacific Ocean. The land in Alberta and Saskatchewan is beautiful in its rick blackness The sun is never as severe as in the U.S. lands to the south, and it seems to rain easier than in the arid western states. Winters are always severe. I once saw a lady in a bathing suit on a Lake Michigan beach on a snowy day in April. She said she was from Saskatchewan and could only drive as far south as Michigan to have her spring break before she had to return and get back to work. She said Michigan was warm compared to Saskatchewan, though everybody I knew in Michigan who could get away for spring break had driven to Florida.
I wondered about this. My wife's family used to vacation every summer just west of the Timiskaming area near Gowganda and I remembered literally being able to see the geography change as we drove from Gowganda to Timiskaming. You could see the trees and rocks stop and the farmland begin.
@@craigbomer8962 I used to drive that country between Cochrane, Temiskaming Shores and Rouyn and loved going through the countryside of a land only a couple days north of the United States, but seemingly so far away as to be in a different world. Having worked in Canada, I had occasion to study the Great Canadian Claybelt Hoax of the 1920s when the Canadian government attempted to massively settle the area they called "New Ontario" with returning WWI veterans. Most failed to farm successfully due to the short growing season and moved back to Toronto or westward to the Prairies. There are a couple TH-cam videos about it. With the climate warming and extending the growing season, it will be interesting to see if another attempt is made to bring the land under widespread cultivation.
@@alansewell7810 There currently is, at least anecdotally. Long fallow fields all around us are being cleared and tiled. Growing degree days have noticeably increased. There has been a big push from OMAFRA to redevelop the region and a big driver of turning fallow lands into productive lands are coming from the Mennonites; at least up near Timmins-Matheson.
@@ExploreTheBackcountry Thank you, this is interesting information. I have not been there since 2016. I will be looking to see how it has changed when I go back. I can imagine OMAFRA is keeping this quiet, because they don't want to say the climate changing for the better in Canada.
As someone who grew up in regina, my family would drive to Denver for vacations, and whenever we got here/got home after the drive, it felt like we had returned back into civilization from how empty it is between there.
I find that funny because when I got back to Manitoba from going to Saskatchewan multiple times (once to Yorkton, then on a band trip in Moose Jaw and Regina, and then passing through on the way to Alberta) it felt like I got back to civilization. Near highway 1, it’s so flat that you can’t get lost, but if you somehow get lost, you just have to stand up.
I drove from Calgary to Arizona, and I had the same experience. Going straight south, the next urban area that is comparable to Calgary in terms of size is Las Vegas. Most of Montana, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, and Nevada is VERY sparsely populated. Getting back to Calgary felt like getting back to civilization.
On one family vacation, we drove from Regina to Lincoln, Nebraska. Along the way we saw Mount Rushmore and took a tour of a cave in the Black Hills. It was during the height of the Cold War and some stores had signs pointing to where the bomb shelter was. At the legislative building in Bismarck, we saw piles of provisions in the event of war. The highlight of the trip was a tornado warning. Other than that, the land was mostly flat and not much different from back home.
I really appreciate watching this video as somebody from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Very few people are really aware of the unique geography we have here, and because it in large part lacks the flashy and romanticized terrain of BC and Alberta to our west, it is often disregarded as plain and boring to people. I also appreciate the depth you went into regarding where many of the inhabitants of this area came from. Like you touched on in the video, my ancestors fled here from Ukraine during the Bolshevik revolution essentially because of a genocide being committed against them. Unfortunately, as a result of that, as well as Canada's own cultural genocide against Indigenous people here (the prairies have some of the largest proportions of Indigenous people in Canada), there is a lot of generational trauma and subsequent mental health and addiction issues around here.
I guess English is your first language, given that your family has migrated to this region nearly a century ago. However, do you still speak Ukrainian?
@@JINGLI-sf7tz My great-grandfather who came here spoke four languages: English, Ukrainian, Russian, and Low German (a sort of bastardized language between Dutch and German developed and spoken by Mennonite people as they migrated eastwards through Europe.). After coming to Canada, the only non-English language that was commonly spoken by the mennonites was low-German, which was only spoken in the home. Eventually, after a couple of generations, people stopped even speaking low-German as we assimilated and English became the default. By the generations, here’s more or less how it is for my family as well as the vast majority of Mennonite people here (I’m born in 1998, for generational context): my great grandparents fled to Canada, spoke all four languages. My grandparents were born here in the 30s and 40s, and they grew up speaking both English and low German. My parents grew up hearing their parents speaking low German in the home, and can understand it but not speak it fluently, and my generation only has an extremely fragmented understanding of the language, as our parents rarely spoke it. Low German at this point an endangered language. Technically the Mennonite dialect is called Plautdietsch, if you ever want to read more about it. Sorry for the overly long response!
As someone who has lived in Minnesota for a few years and have travled up to Winnipeg, it's truly remarkable how you can see such a hard line where the farming ends and the Canadian shield begins.
I grew up in Winnipeg and often drove with my parents to Kenora. Even as a kid I always thought the same thing. What a contrast! Almost as soon as the trees begin you get into that rocky land covered in the most beautiful lakes I've ever seen. I've always wished I could live in Kenora, and in my old age that dream might come true. Better late than never!
@@cattymajivI'm from southern on, but I did that drive last week. I flew to Winnipeg and drove to Kenora. You can easily see where the shield ends and prairies begin on the flight into Winnipeg.
@@cattymajiv: I grew up in the Canadian Shield, then moved to Ottawa for university. My sister had a cottage just north of Ottawa in Quebec and there is a lookout point, where you can stand on the Shield and see exactly where the St. Lawrence Lowlands are. What an awesome view! I have never been far west as Kenora area, but I get the striking contrast! Stay safe, stay sane, stay strong Ukraine 🇺🇦
@@goldenretriever6261The thing that strikes me most flying over the area is how big the two lakes are north of Winnipeg. They look big visiting from on the ground too. At night I try to spot Fargo and Duluth as we fly over.
In the citie maybe. Some of us live in the middle of nowhere and it's still fairly affordable. Not that we have literally anything to do with the money we're actually saving.
Hope not. With alberta having an 'apperently' "high quality of life", our healthcare system is quite literally collapsing. Alberta is crumbling, and I want out.
Alberta doesn't have a PST and insurance options are not even comparable to places like Saskatchewan, they are way better in Alberta. Alberta really isn't as expensive in comparison as people think
As an Australian who lives within 20km of the coast (central Sydney) it's baffling that such large settlements are inland. I realise inland Australia is far too dry for large settlements and any such settlements would take up the small percentage of arable land we have but you get my point. I of course know there are many large cities inland around the world but it still feels weird. Our largest inland city is Canberra at about 400k
Yeah, it should be noted that literally all of these large prairie cities here in Canada are on major rivers, notably the Saskatchewans, the Red and the Assiniboine. Even Calgary sits at a confluence of two large rivers.
As a North Dakotan, I need everyone to know, that "tall" building the video shows when ND is first mentioned, is not only the tallest building in North Dakota, but also the state capitol.
I was born in Montana but haven’t stayed there mostly because it’s so desolate and my family moved on. But I still hear the quiet prairie winds and its quite beckoning. It’s a wild and beautiful, mysterious land.
I was born and raised in Calgary and this explains so much of my life and family history. My grandfather worked in Oil and Gas, my parents were able to start a heavy equipment leasing company, and when I talk to my international friends about my education I can’t help but be grateful for it. I speak 2 languages since all my designated school were bilingual, I loved the theatre and arts programs growing up, and after graduation I was accepted to the University of British Columbia for science, one of the highest ranking universities in Canada
How did u like it? as an american, I never actually been to canada and it just seems so much colder and worse than here in ohio where 4 months of the year I can go outside and swim, enjoy the weather and fill holes my dogs dig in the yard
@@pyrojkl It is cold, but not necessarily worse. Winters are a similar length to what you have in Ohio, just a little more intense. Then again, if you live in Alberta long enough, you will see snow in every month of the year.
@@pyrojklareas near the mountains frequently get Chinooks in the winter where the weather will be above freezing for a week or longer at a time. Further away from the mountains it is usually quite cold throughout the winter. There are lots of winter sports and great ski hills in the mountains to the west. Enjoying winter activities makes it easier to live here in the winter
Canada is a lot like the USA, except that your kids are less likely to get shot. And if they do, you don't have to worry about the cost of the ambulance.
When I lived in Colorado I wound up working as a Courier, and drivers in Denver have a surprising amount of work. It's the largest population center for about 500 miles in any direction and it's the only place in the region many companies have hubs. So when Chiles in Albuquerque needed a refill on their seasonal soup, I would drive 450 miles down with a single box of soup in my car. My rate was about $1 a mile and I would spend about 1/3 on gas so it could be an easy $300 for about 14 hours of driving. Runs like that weren't super common though, it was mostly stuff like driving urine from the children's hospital to the airport for $12 which is barely even worth the gas let alone my time.
Bingo. Edmonton and most of the OG settlements on unseeded treaty lands before the railroads were fur trading posts on the Saskatchewan River systems. Then Canadian Northern, Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Pacific showed up and changed the game and flooded the west with immigrants mostly from England, Scotland, Scandinavia, Germany and Ukraine... My roots here are from 3 of those groups even though I personally grew up in Little Ukraine aka Eggtown and am not of slavic background myself...
Canada was made by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Scotchmen. The fur traders and the Voyageurs provided the Blood And Muscle!!! Incredibly tough people. There are many really good books on. The Company.
@@fangslaughter1198Specifically, Orkneymen. There are more people of Orkney ancestry living on the Prairies than anywhere else on Earth, including Orkney itself.
Canadian here that lives in Alberta. This has got to be one of my favourite videos from RealLifeLore just because there is so much focus on Canada. But i can also attest, it's pretty damn nice living here in Alberta! :)
It's also interesting that the locations of Edmonton and Calgary are a direct result of where it was deemed to be most economical to get rail lines through the Rockies to the west. Edmonton is directly east of the smoothest route through the mountains, where the north Saskatchewan River requires the shortest bridge. Calgary is east of the hot springs that were discovered and Banff and developed for tourism by the rail companies.
@@JasonMorrisRTLLand speculation is what initially drove some of the early settlement to the present day Edmonton region and included people such as Frank Oliver. The route of the transcontinental railway shifted south in 1882/83, long before Edmonton would be named the capital. Edmonton was named the capital largely because of Matthew McCauley, Edmonton’s first mayor. He was a Liberal and had close ties with the Federal Liberal’s who were in power. William Franklin Puffer also played a role in this decision. Several cities and towns wanted to be named the capital including Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer, and Banff (which was posited by Norman Luxton, a prominent Banff resident and booster, to be the “non-political” option). Edmonton did end up winning, much to Calgary’s dismay.
Edmonton was founded as a fur trading post, close to where the land route between the North Saskatchewan (Hudson Bay basin) and Athabasca (Arctic Basin) is shortest. The North Saskatchewan is navagible up to Rocky Mountain House, but veers south and further away from other vast fur trading basins. Edmonton's location also benefits from rich coal reserves and farmland. Calgary is a city that shouldn't exisit as it is one of the few globally that isn't on a navigable body of water. It was established as a police fort just to the north of an incursion of American settlers into southern Alberta. It likely would have withered if the railway hadn't routed through it. Another important dimension is the the railways more or less had to invent reasons for Calgary to exist which imbued it with an entrepreneurial culture.
@@jpkottaMost Americans (and some Canadians) tend to ignore the border when thinking of the closest city to them. For Bellingham, the big city is Seattle and not Vancouver. For Alaska, the big city is also Seattle (or maybe Anchorage) and not Vancouver or Edmonton. For Montana it’s Denver (or SLC) not Calgary. For Burlington it’s NYC and not Montreal.
@@AbeYousef Yes, Winnipeg grew as a transshipment point. Goods from eastern Canada passed through Winnipeg and fanned-out through western Canada. Agricultural products from the west passed through Winnipeg on their way east. Winnipeg prospered because it was at the eastern pinch point between parkland and the shield. This all changed because World War 1 dried-up immigration, and the Panama Canal meant Winnipeg could be bypassed. Today Calgary is taking the role Winnipeg once had because it is at a more central location in the Canadian prairies.
I moved from BC to Alberta about a year ago. Alberta may be rich but many of its small towns look poor. I travel around the northern part of the province for work and have been unpleasantly surprised by how unappealing the small towns are. There is a lack of investment in public spaces such as walking paths, trails, and parks. Downtown main streets often feature faded, tired looking and uninviting store fronts. It just all lacks imagination. Everyone drives everywhere in their big trucks (home- school- grocery stores- hockey arena, etc) and there is a lack of street life of any kind. For me, it's quite depressing. Although BC suffers from a heavier burden of homelessness and drug addiction, its small towns and cities are much more pleasant to be in and aesthetically pleasing ( if you subtract the junkies).
@@coachpaytonparker I went before the fires but I enjoyed it. Nice little city filled with crazy sporting/gym amenities paid for by the oil companies.
From Ontario here, but I have family in Winnipeg, who I visited yearly while growing up. The over-dependence on cars in the Prairies is why I could never live there -- I can't drive due to a disability. I'd literally be *stuck* in Winnipeg if I ever moved there! Not that I would -- my son's half Indigenous, and Native peoples are not treated with the respect they deserve out there (not that the rest of Canada is much better, but the Prairies are worse in that regard). I'll stay in Ontario.
The same holds true for most of Saskatchewan. By comparison, small towns in North Dakota always seemed more developed. In high school I visited a former classmate who had moved to Greenwood, ND. I was surprised at how developed the small town was with good sidewalks on all the pretty, tree-lined streets, a golf course and a place to get ice cream. I couldn’t think of a single place of the same size in Saskatchewan that was as nice. In those days, Americans seemed to have nicer towns, bigger houses and more stuff.
I live in Washington state and will freely admit that we have many, many difficult to pronounce location names. Especially for those who did not grow up here. Our host made the common mistake of pronouncing Spokane with the hard vowel sound [spo-kān] not the correct soft vowel of [Spo-kan]. After all that is exactly how it is spelled. It makes us natives (compassionately) giggle a little every time.
I giggled when he said "Le-duck" for Leduc in Alberta (it's pronounced like Le-dook). I'd never heard it mispronounced before because this video might be the first time anyone outside of Alberta has ever said "Leduc". A true Heritage Moment.
Didn't hear it mentioned, but Edmonton is the warmest area of the northern plains. Counter intuitively, in the region discussed in this video, the further north and west you go, the warmer it gets because of lower elevation and winds.
It's also worth noting that the main railway and highway system in Canada roughly straddle the US border, so in a way the southern edge is the economic centre of Canada. Edmonton is the most obvious outlier here. The Canadian shield is a truly inhospitable but beautiful set of places. If you have to drive between Eastern and Western Canada without transiting through the USA you have to go through some of the most desolate and amazing places it's possible to see.
That was a political decision at the time because the 49th parallel as a border didn't exist. It was canada's way of declaring sovereignty and telling the Americans to bug out. President Polk solved the controversy.
As a resident Albertan living in Edmonton since 1998 (originally from New Brunswick in Atlantic Canada), seeing this video pop up in my feed was a pleasant surprise 😁 *Edit: Just one minor note-the correct pronunciation of Leduc is "Le Duke", as opposed to "Le Duck". It's primarily known as the site of the Edmonton International Airport. Otherwise, this is a _very_ well-researched video that actually taught me a few things that I didn't previously know. The Eastern European migration of the late 1800s, for instance, explains why Edmonton has such a large ethnically Ukrainian population (our city is sometimes jokingly referred to as "Edmonchuk" for this reason).
Lived my whole life in Florida and after college I took whatever job I could get, it was a one year contract as a chemist in Billings. Most beautiful place you'll ever see, pictures and videos don't do it justice. Ofc great people as well
Hello from Montana. I always wondered why Alberta had large metros compared to the emptiness of Montana. Having visited Alberta many times, the Aspen Parkland ag and oil production is no joke. A land of bounty.
@@robertodagostini4946 I feel like the areas of Siberia further south of Tomsk, such as Novosibirsk and Omsk, _might_ be a better match geographically-speaking. The latter two are basically surrounded by farmland (or almost-completely in Novosibirsk's case) in the same ways that Edmonton is. On a climatic note, the Siberian cities see colder winters and slightly-warmer summers than Edmonton does. Southern Siberia is somewhat like the Canadian Prairies in terms of average temperatures, though; the climactic averages of the Siberian cities are similar to that of Winnipeg.
It's also fun to mention that since the Calgary-Edmonton corridor is so densely populated, interconnected and wealthy, there are serious considerations to build high-speed rail there. Imagine driving up from Montana and seeing that!
I spent two years living along the QE2 (the major highway between Calgary and Edmonton). Given the amount of traffic along that highway, I do think high speed rail would make sense there.
Speaking as a former Albertan: It would make a lot of sense to have a reliable, fast rail connection between the cities. But, there seems to be near-zero political or social will to do so - Alberta is just pretty conservative, and public transportation in general is... tolerated, at best. I'd be extremely surprised if anything like it happened in my lifetime.
@@EggTamago7 From what I hear, Calgary has a pretty decent light-rail transit system, at least for a Canadian city. Never actually have experienced it myself though...
As a current Edmontonian, I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of the rail system, but the major flaw hs to do with just how much we Albertans live our cars, and for good reason. Once you get from one city to the other, how are you supposed to navigate around without a car? These are two very large cities by landmass, and so it would be hard and expensive to just taxi or Uber around, as well as being too cold 6 months of the year to walk or bike anywhere. While I do think it’s a good idea, I don’t think it’ll be this revolutionary new thing that’ll totally change Calgary and Edmonton.
@@picklenik9658 public transit mate. idk what the transit systems actually look like in the two cities, but the impression I get is that Calgary's light passenger rail is one of the better public transit systems in Canada. Granted, that's not saying much, and I've never actually used it so I have no firsthand experience, but with a good public transit system one should be able to safely get anywhere in the city from anywhere else in the city with significantly less expense than taxis or ubers.
Hey RLL, it seems a mistake was made in the graphic at 2:00, where the population listed for Fargo and Billings seem to have been swapped. Thanks for the great video as always!
You talked about Sudbury but forgot Fermont, Qc, which is much further north and also a mining town located inside the Canadian Shield. It has one huge building that's used as a wall to protect the town from the harsh and cold winds.
Idk where you come up with these ideas that you develop into these videos, but they're vastly interesting especially given the fact I didn't know I was even interested before watching it! I do love geography & history, learning demographics of areas and the like, and I encourage you to keep these coming, I look forward to them!!
Good analysis as someone how lives in the midwest I can confirm this, it is very wild and many people come for outdoor activities (eg hunting fishing, off roading, skidooing and skiing in the winter. Edit: Also as a Canadian I never thought I would see a real life lore video on my own country this is so weird.
But the vast prairies in tha centre are mind numbingly boring, and the attitudes of a lot of a lot of the people there leave a lot to be desired. I know, I've spent most of 60 years here, in different spots. Those were lucky enough to leave have left.
I live in Lethbridge which is a city in Alberta just north of the Montana border and I never even thought about how desolate the US prairies are compared to Canada. Even Lethbridge has over 100k people and is bigger then most the US citys. It’s just crazy to think if I went farther south there would be less people
@@danielzhang1916 Actually, the comparison to the adjacent lightly inhabited areas, for the reasons given in the video, makes sense. Denver and Salt Lake City have their own reasons for being. (There's a reason that Colorado has a School of Mines; the Mormons fled from Illinois to Utah and comprise the overwhelming majority of the population to this day.)
I’ve never learned so much about a region I knew nothing about then from this single video. I was always curious about this region and you summed it up perfectly. 👍 Also it’s great to finally have a clip about geography and not about war and politics.
Born and raised in Saskatoon. Really appreciate you covering this topic. I would say my only critique is the way you say "Saskatchewan". Most local people from Sask say it like "Sa-scatch-oo-wun" rather than "Sask-atchu-wan". The end is more like the word "one" than like "James Wan." Great video as always!
It's pretty obvious he was just taking his best guess at many of the place names in this video, like "Spo-cain" (it's "Spo-CAN"), "Sood-bury" ("SUD-"), "Atta-bass-ca" (Ath-ah-bass-ca"), etc. Really could have used a pronunciation guide.
I always thought that Calgary and Edmonton were kind of like Denver and Salt Lake City in the US, in CO and UT respectively. Big, plains cities in front of large mountainous regions of the continent that really grew to prominence in the mid to late 1800's. They aren't colossal cities, but they're still some of the biggest in the country and have heavy tourism sectors that have seen big migrations in recent decades due to their growing tech and medical economies.
They are very similar to Salt Lake and Denver in those aspects, although Edmonton differs a little as its not all that close to the mountains compared to the other 3. Calgary, Salt Lake, and Denver are all
Greetings from a North Dakota resident (though I am from Wisconsin originally). At least this area now makes a little more sense geographically to me. Besides the oil sands listed, that part of Canada north of North Dakota and Montana also has a substantial portion of Bakken shale oil deposits as well.
Very cool video. Thanks for sharing. Beyond the Prairie provinces, the Far North of Canada is incredibly empty. Check out these numbers: The three Canadian territories have a combined land area of 3,496,000 km² or 1,365,735 mi² and they are home to only 118,160 people according to the 2021 Census. This is a density of 0.0865 people per square mile. Montana and the Dakotas have a combined area of 298,000 square miles and population of 2,640,000 people. The density of the Dakotas and Montana combined is 8.86 people per square mile. These states are literally 100 times MORE dense than the Canadian territories. Another pretty empty region of Canada is on the east coast - Labrador (not to be confused with the entire province Newfoundland and Labrador), has a population of 27,120 people and an area of 113, 641 square miles - there the pop. density is 0.24 people per sq mi. Nord-du-Quebec has a population of 45,740 and the land area is 288,500 sq mi. yielding a population density of 0.15 people per sq mi. These three regions altogether have a combined area of 1,787,000 sq mi. and a population of 191,600 - fewer people than Sioux Falls, SD. By comparison, all of the land in the US east of the Mississippi has a combined area of only 960,000 sq mi.
You forgot to mention why the Aspen Parkland region has so much chernozem soil. Well, you kinda did at one point in the video but you never made the connection. Much of the soil scraped from the Canadian Shield by the glaciers ended up in the the Aspen Parkland region.
You should check out Australia. I'm not from there, but I saw a map depicting population density which showed that the majority of the Australian human population lives on the borders of the country. Most of the central landmass is an untouched grassland (according to the map I saw). Would love if you did a take on that
he has a video depicting population density as indicated by light, and Australia has but a few infinitesimal dots within the central landmass; the largest of these central dots being a CIA installation.
@@MSHNKTRLno, Alice Springs is a town on its own. The Pine Gap base is just exciting to people who like stories about spies etc. It doesn't have that mamy people and is not the reason for the dots on the map.
Informative and well done, but I think it's important to remember the influence the north western company has using waterways via the Hudson Bay. Early Alberta settlements like Rocky Mountain House were navigable by waterway all the way to Thompson Manitoba and beyond. Also I'm sure it's been mentioned, but it's 'Le Duke's. It is hard to keep up with using both miles and kilometers
@@mephisto6486Syrup not juice (You would most definitely not want to drink maple syrup like it was juice) and the plural of Moose is confusingly still Moose. Please don’t judge us based on the actions of Trudeau.
Minnesota represents a unique blend of all of these geographical realities. There is extremely fertile soil, mineral wealth, forestry, and flat plains areas.
British Columbia does, too. We have pockets of fertile farmland in the northeast, southwest, and northwest but also a lot of mountains, trees, and extractable minerals. British Columbia's population was and is higher than Alberta's, although nearly half of our province's population lives concentrated in Metro Vancouver.
As someone who grew up in one of the most densely populated citiy (manila) and now has been living in Winnipeg for about 6 years. This makes me feel that winnipeg has more people than I used to think when I first moved here.
fun fact. the famous gaming Bioware studio, which is located in Edmonton, was created by Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, later they invited their friend Drew Karpyshyn. As you can guees, these three people have last names that are derived from slavic languages.
as a resident of southern alberta who has been to montana, idaho, wyoming, colorado and the dakotas quite a few times thank you for making this video that I can relate to and has to deal with the demographics of the region I am from :)
@@liuyifei1989 Red deer here. I was almost surprised not to see it pop up as a "Even Alberta's Third largest city is bitter than almost any city in these 5 states! " lol
It's crazy. I'm an Asian living in Calgary. I felt people staring at me at gas stations and restaurants between Reno and the border. All their minimum wage workers down there are white, too. But when I crossed into Lethbridge, I immediately felt at home where people are diverse.
@@stormblind1654This is true. Red Deer is larger than any city in Montana except Billings, which it’s still comparable in size with. Pretty interesting since it’s crammed into an area that’s half the size of Great Falls.
Since you like going into why populations are large or small in different places, could you do an episode on why Vermont has so few people? For one of the oldest states in the union so close to major population centers like Boston and Montreal. I took a cursory glace at why and the only answer I saw was there just haven't been any major cities built so there wasn't a major drive for growth.
Rivers. New England is a comparatively old settlement by US standards. River transportation and water power was a huge driving force in city building in the 1700-1800's. New Hampshire had the Merrimack which opened up to the ocean. Nashua, Concord, and Manchester are all along the river. The Merrimack dips into Massachusetts and you see major towns like Lowell and Lawrence spring up. All of these towns are a whole lot closer to Boston than anything in Vermont. Vermont's main river runs north/south through Massachusetts and Connecticut before dumping out in Long Island Sound. Those two states are a good 10 degrees warmer in winter and get less snow. Why freeze when there's the same river and plenty of real estate further south?
This leads me to wonder why North Dakota is so sparsely populated. It has even higher concentrations of Chernozem soil than the Canadian provinces to its north (as shown in the video at 17:24) which does in fact make it an agricultural powerhouse, it also has massive oil reserves, and it does not sit on the Canadian Shield. Is a ND population explosion imminent?
Also it factors in that there are SO MANY places to move to and live in the US. Canada you don't have many options and with how expensive the country is there are shrinking options. Calgary is now out of reach, now Edmonton is one of the last few affordable major cities in Canada.
That’s probably the biggest reason, better and warmer choices farther south. However Fargo and Grand Forks are located in the areas where the Chernozem soil. As for the oil. It was mostly discovered only a few years ago and it’s probably too late to establish a city there. A few centuries ago, large oil deposits needed to be managed right where the oil was but nowadays with planes and the internet much of the operations can already be handled from anywhere.
I think because a lot of the Canadian Shield (especially the trees) does extend into the areas of Northern Minnesota and the Dakotas (see 20:00) so there is not as much ability to easily farm.
It's an overall good analysis as to the reasons why Alberta grew... up to a point. The story is a little incomplete. Oil and gas was certainly a large driver of migration for decades, but the industry peaked around 2012. Commodity prices have mostly recovered, but employment on the sector has been declining, wages in the sector have declined, and capital expenditure is much less than it was ten years ago. The focus is on production, not expansion, and finding efficiencies through automation. Meanwhile, Alberta is facing one of it's biggest growth spurts in the province's history. Why? Housing. Relative to Vancouver or Toronto, it's much easier to obtain housing in Calgary or Edmonton. Both cities are large and cosmopolitan enough (by Canadian standards) and there's been a major focus (and some success) in attracting tech jobs, most notably perhaps in fintech.
as a quebecer, i would LOVE to hear more about canada in your videos, even tho i watch them all, i feel always a bit sad that my country/province does not get talked about a lot. (love your videos tho)
Yeah maybe I’m just not looking hard enough lol. As an Albertan/Saskatchewanian I notice a lot more about those two provinces than the others. I just think Quebec is cool is all.
It is Spo-KANN, not Spo-KAIN (have said this before!). Alberta is hugely more important to the Canadian economy than are the bordering states to the US. Alberta's importance is more like taking those states PLUS adding Colorado, Utah and Texas. As we all know, those three states all have significant population centers. Alberta is the energy and cattle capital of Canada and thus its large population centers make sense. Similarly, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are somewhat equivalent to taking the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa and parts of Nebraska. Winnipeg is a major ag business and transport center in a manner similar to the Twin Cities, Omaha and even Chicago. This pattern repeats elsewhere in Canada. While the country's overall population is only about 10% of the US (but growing very rapidly because of greater immigration), nearly all of the pop is located near the US border. This is in part due to climate (it is really no more harsh in Alberta than Montana BTW) and also because of good transport links to the south. It has often been said that there is more affinity between Canadian provinces and their neighboring states than there is east-west across Canada. This is true economically and cultrually to a large extent. It is not so much that Calgary and Edmonton are outliers in bein. big, It is more that these two cities effectively perform many of the same functions one would find in Denver, Salt Lake City, and Dallas. Out west Vancouver has many of the same functions as Seattle, San Francisco, and LA. Out east Toronto is both the Chicago and New York of Canada. By US standards all these cities are mid-sized but by Canadian standards they are proportionately just about right.
@gummypuss69 actually it's named after the local Native American tribe but the settlers added an "E" to the end for some dumb reason. Spokan to Spokane
When I was a kid my parents had land in Montana and we'd go down for July 4th the boarder folks would joke about it being second Alberta. You'd see more Alberta plates around Kalispell on that weekend then the Montana plates
Especially from people who live in Southern Alberta... When I lived in Pincher Creek most of the wealthier families wouldn't ski locally at Castle Mountain for example, they went to Whitefish... I think at the time it was cheaper, more to do, etc.
As an Edmonton resident my whole life, i feel like this area is misrepresented and misunderstood. Thanks for the great info, nice to see home on one of these videos!
Yeah, as a Calgary resident I definitely feel like Alberta is treated like a joke by many in Canada when in fact the Calgary-Edmonton corridor is one of the wealthier and more economically productive jurisdictions in North America...
13:30 this is not that important because winters are still to cold go grow things in the Great Lakes and most agriculture involves annual crops (rather than orchards/vineyards). And the growing season in a place like southern Minnesota is comparable to that of southern Ontario, is not warmer (and longer). Ex Orangeville, ON has a Jun-Sep average temperature of 17.25C compared to Mankata, MN which has a growing season almost 3C warmer, and of comparable length (late May to late September, maybe early October).
You can't go more than 5 minutes outside any town or city in Alberta and not see a huge ranch.. Believe me even with our booming population like NZ and Texas our primary livestock out number us several fold... Even Buffalo ranching is making a comeback... And yes Edmonton and Austin are twins from the weird counter-cultural hipster/college town/capital vibes to the skylines. Stantec Tower looks identical to a recent Austin addition for example. Same builder/engineer too I think... We even had a NXNW Fest that knocked off the SXSW event for a few years...@@Ithoughtthiswasamerica
We also have the same issue of people out east and west moving here and bringing their politics, homelessness, crime, welfare and drugs with them. Just brutal now. What is the Austin blue flip to Texans, is our Edmonton orange flip to Albertans.
@@undisputed6034 if they were on welfare or addicts, they wouldn't be able to afford to move in the first place. Don't blame the rest of the country for the troubles in *your* backyard.
I owned a bar in Montana when I was younger - the local cop would hang around and often played poker with us. The cop once told me "the only people who come to Montana are either coming here to kill themselves, or running from the law and want to be left alone. No one else comes here." Very true words
As a long time resident on the Canadian Shield I can confirm it is darn hard to even dig a hole in many places without hitting giant rocks! And as for the largest Canadian Shield city of Sudbury, it’s either pronounced Sud-berry or Sud-burry (sud like soap suds, and burry sounds like furry)
Sudbury is fascinating. The local economy is based on nickel and copper mining because, some 1.8 billion years ago, a meteorite crashed into the planet and created the 3rd-largest known meteor crater on earth. Today there are mines in a broad loop around the Sudbury Basin, the eroded crater rim, where nickel and other metals are extracted. We're mining a meteorite!
@@Mrtheunnameable there hasn’t been noticeable acid rain issues for decades and Sudbury has done some amazing work to regreen the area… but when I was a kid in the 80s it looked like the moon.
Omg the pronunciations are awesome. LeDuck its locally pronounced LeDook. Id also mention the reduction of Montreal also had to do with french political issues in Quebec as much as the canal systems. The oil pipelines also have roots ininitial US investment from texas and a disinterest in investment from central Canada. Siriously, though, I appreciate the video on our overlooked weird little (and big) country.
Lol, that is only the beginning of his humorous way of saying Canadian places and products. Even Bitumen ("Bitchumen"). Somebody else here already noticed he said Spokane differently each time he said it. And yes, he flubbed on Regina as well. Regina has a long "I". Funny how people act too embarrassed to say it properly.
As European who never even thought about Montana, I can confidently say that this information will be very useful to me.
I'm a European watching this from Alberta, heeeey!
How can it be useful?
@@bronball7881sarcasm, is useful for the joke he just made
I've been to Montana, it's quite beautiful
As somebody moving to alberta calgary Its good to hear about this also am 1hour before less go
It’s great to finally have a clip about geography
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Nailed it
Educative👍
I lived in Montana for about 4 months, we drove from the east coast it was about 39 hours of driving and when we hit Montana at one point we drove for about 5 HOURS without seeing a single car and when night fell it felt like we where driving into a endless void because it was so pitch black. I was terrified of dear I kept falling asleep and jumping up. With all that said, Montana is by far THE most beautiful state I've ever been to, and we didn't even go to yellow stone or glacier. I was in constant awe of the grandeur and beauty of the vast mountains and endless fields.
yellowstone is pretty much Wyoming...
Everytime we go to or through Montana it's good bye people.
Ya i gotta get to Montana.
My kinda place....
Montana is full. We are happy not having any more people move in.
A year ago, I never thought I spend 30 mins glued to my screen learning about why Montana is empty...
The video just came out 7 minutes ago how did u do that? Stop sucking TH-camrs off. They don't know you exist.
Claim Your "Here Before 1k Likes" Ticket Here
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i did
@@SneakyLlamaMC
I didn't know montana existed until i was 14 years old
I thought this would be about Montana too. Lol
I live in a city with a population of over 250,000 people in Japan. People often ask me how I feel about living in the “countryside.” I always pull out Google maps and ask them to pick any spot in the middle of the US and zoom in so I can show them what “countryside” actually means. It’s hard for them to imagine how empty that area is when they are just used to images from movies.
Yeah same with the Netherlands. The rural areas are always like 5 km away from a 30k town or some city with more than 100k population.
IS the same in Israel and south Korea
When people live 'rural' here in Canada they mean very very different things. In the west it means "It takes a few minutes by car to my nearest neighbour." In the area I live, it means "I see a farm on my commute to work". In the shield it means "I need to take a plane to buy a new shirt".
People always adjust terms to suit their local reality. lol
@@haroeneissa790 well the Netherlands is small small, they have no room. West Virginia and San Bernardino county in California are bigger.
Thank you for the perspective 😅
Here in Winnipeg the closest major city to our south is Minneapolis which is a nearly 8 hour drive. It really feels like you're on an island of civilisation in the middle of an ocean of farmland out here. It always confused me why this is the case but now it makes a lot more sense.
_looks outside_
“Civilization”
Murderpeg, Garbo city.
To be fair you have Fargo quite a lot closer, I am guessing 3-4 hours away
Yeah Fargo would definitely be considered a city. It might not be a metropolis, but a decently sized city nonetheless.
@@Antonio_Serdar
Winnipeg to Fargo:
3hrs 30min
350 kms
218 miles
Albertan here - I cant believe how much I'm learning here. I've heard of things like Aspen-Parkland and Pallisers Triangle, but I'd never put together what it all means and how it impacts settlement, land use, and our economy. I did always wonder why Alberta supported two cities over a million while Montana had nothing. Thank you for this!
I hadn’t heard of this until looking it up a few years ago, but it explains why so many landmarks are named after Palliser in Alberta. It also explains why Parkland is a recurring place name as well.
ok
Yes some of the best farm land in the world the parkland in Alberta where i live 125 bushels of Barley is common and Canola a 85 is not un heard of either can make a thousand dollars a acre farming quite easily
I always thought it was because Americans could just live further south. After all Denver and Salt Lake City exist despite the surrounding lands still being quite barren. Not to mention Phoenix and Vegas...
@@ALuimes That’s part of it but not the whole story. The harsh wind and the dryness of the North American steppe due the the lack of good soil and other resources are the reasons why this area is so thinly populated. There are no major cities fully located in this area of the continent but Calgary and Denver are located on or near the edges of it.
As a Canadian living in the corridor we're taught that even with all the factors you mentioned, Alberta is still pretty empty. I had no idea the north midwestern states are even EMPTIER than that.
Yep, going to Wyoming you literally see nothing for 50+miles at a time. Most of Alberta has a lot more going on
@@justsam7919 Wyoming is like the second lowest population density in the world only after antarctica XD
@@RexZShadow Parts of Australia are even emptier.
@@waynehampson9569 Well ya if we start narrowing down parts I'm sure we can all find parts with no one living in it lol.
@@RexZShadowyeah, like most tundra and deserts. There are parts of the arctic and Sahara that have nobody in areas larger than some US states.
I'm a long time fan of your videos and I was so impressed and happy that you made a video about my home! I'm from Edmonton, Alberta and I can say that yes, it is a great place to live. Despite the colder months, we have nice and long days during the summer and some of the best festivals in the world. Thanks for making this great video!
As someone who only recently moved to Edmonton (this past summero), I agree it really is a nice place to live. Can't say I enjoy it looking already like midnight at just 5pm these days though 😅
@@AS_210 But in the summer the sun sets at 10:30 pm....can't complain about that right?
I've been in Edmonton for nearly two years and I haven't seen this Alberta advantage people keep talking about. Heating my place is about 4X more expensive than in BC. There are charms to Edmonton like seeing the northern lights. The city definitely needs to work on it's transit though, thirty minute waits or more between buses when it's -30 or colder is unacceptable.
GO STARS
It's also worth noting that the Canadian region in this video is dramatically growing in population too. Both in big cities and rural cities. Mostly through immigration.
It’s growing from internal migration too
The number one growing demographic in Canada is Chinese and the number two is Indian. So no it is not internal immigration, it is mass immigration from countries that are essentially cast based dictatorships. Which would explain why Canada isn't such a horrendous state.
@@Anonymous______________ Ehh, you're both kinda right here.
Canada is bringing in record numbers of new immigrants as a whole, but the Western Prairie provinces, principally Alberta, are seeing large influxes of internal migration. Much of this brought on by increases to the already ridiculously unaffordable cost of living surrounding Vancouver and Toronto.
Open borders replacement policies.
@@jordancornelius7061 That and a big rebound in new oil and gas jobs. Alberta had been seeing relatively stagnant population (and net outflow of young people) for the last 5-10 yrs while oil and gas prices were low and the industry was slow.
As an Albertan, I’ve always wondered why this is the case. Needless to say, I appreciate your coverage of the topic
Only thing that sucks is that there are no big box American stores right across the border like you have back east to take weekend drives to.
You're an Albertan and couldn't put 2 and 2 together?
@@MickJonesHogSmacks💀🤡
@GFkilla17 right? I'm a Texan and most of texas is empty and a lot of the population is concentrated in major cities just like anywhere else. If they really wondered why "this was the case," they would do research on social and civil engineering ie: slavery, gerrymandering, genocide etc.
@@GFkilla17tagged.
As someone who lives on a island in the south pacific this information is useless to me but yet here i am
albertan oil is exported from vancouver to the pacific, so who knows, you might be importing some in your country
Though we have larger urban areas, the Canadian prairies are still incredibly sparse. In between the major cities are hundreds of kilometres of farms, nature, small towns, and the occasional minor city.
That’s one of the reasons why I love living here. It feels empty and crowded at the same time if you can understand that.
Still it’s got a very large human footprint and higher population density then south of it even in the areas in between cities
It’s quite shocking to discover that my whole life was basically summed up by this video: a migrant to Alberta, whose family are ethic Ukrainians settled in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, who moved to Edmonton Alberta for a job in the energy sector. And here I’ve always thought I was a special snowflake 😂
Next you’re gunna tell met that you live in vegreville or somethin but say you’re from edmonton because no one knows where vegreville is.
Maybe not exactly vegreville but spruce grove, fort sask, St. Albert etc 😂
You just described my family history verbatim, berta boys wya
Guilty! Except I'm a WASP from Vegreville@@pat9353
You are special. Always.
It's all about the geology.
A couple of months ago I flew back and forth between Seattle and St. Louis. I had a window seat both ways and the sky was cloudless for 80% of the trips. I looked out the window almost the entire time. Once I left the two anchor cities, I literally did not see one town with more than a dozen or two houses in it. I was wondering how this could be the case in a country with 330,000,000 people in it. Now I know why.
Going between either side of the cascades is crazy. Endless clear skies vs endless clouds
Even China, with its 1.4 billion people, still has a lot of empty and uninhabited areas, even India has some less inhabited places.
The first time I drove down to Montana from Alberta it shocked me how different it was. The grass was browner, big farms and grain bins were rarer, and even fashion and hairstyles were more outdated
i came from Washington and noticed the exact same things
Speaks boldly how Canada persevered.
I'm thinking of visiting BC is there cool towns I could visit beside Vancouver
@asentientfirtree8631 Vancouver Island is really cool, you ride the ferry to Victoria or Nanaimo then drive around the coast. For outdoor activities Squamish and Whistler are fantastic just a couple hours N of Vancouver
That's because in the US, if you're not in any of the major cities you're basically in poor backwaters.
Thanks for finally producing the only detailed video about this area of North America on TH-cam. It's probably one of the most overlooked areas of North America by most people (outside of maybe the Canadian Maritimes of the Far North). You even went the extra mile and discussed the Aspen Parkland Region and Palliser's Triangle, which are largely unknown to most Americans. The 49th parallel being drawn to the south of this area and the fact that most Americans don't think much about it really made this question baffling to many. The Edmonton-Calgary corridor probably has to be the most populated region in North America that's not talked about much in geography circles.
Due to the border, there isn't much cross-border contact in this area. From what I've seen, most social groups don't extend across the border like they do in other border regions. Cross-border contact only seems to be mostly between farmers and ranchers in this area (save for a little bit of industrial trade). Unlike in other border states, Hockey has only recently become a thing in Montana and its popularity isn't nearly as big as in Alberta or Saskatchewan. It's mainly only popular among younger generations. Montana has only ever produced 2 NHL Players. South Dakota has only produced 1. North Dakota has done well with 18, but 7 of them are from Grand Forks. All pale in comparison to the 500+ players that come from Alberta and Saskatchewan, each. When it comes to restaurants, there are no Tim Hortons locations in MT or SD and the locations in ND closed a few years ago. Like many other border regions, it seems like more Canadians head south to these states than vice versa. Also, you can't even get a direct flight from Alberta to Montana or from Saskatchewan/Manitoba to North Dakota.
zzz
I mourn the closing of the Tim Hortons in Fargo to this day. The owner thought they could make more money if they ran the shop without paying franchise fees, and quickly fell flat on his face.
Yet oddly Alberta is the most Americanized province culturally.
@@ALuimes That’s not saying much. Alberta May have some American influences but most Albertans identify with the Canadians that they are. Cowboy culture isn’t as prevalent north of Calgary/Southern Alberta. It’s like saying that Vermont or Minnesota are the most Canadianized provinces culturally.
zzz
Northern Albertan here. I had no idea the area I lived in was this awesome. I feel pretty lucky to be in such a wealthy, fertile spot on the earth.
There is also the "Great Clay Belt" of immensely fertile land in Ontario from about Cochrane to Timiskaming and continuing into Quebec. But the growing season is too short for most agriculture. Canadians attempting to colonize the region in the 1920s gave up due to July frosts and blackflies. They said, "Follow the isotherms" that rise northward into Alberta, being that it is nearer the mild winds of the Pacific Ocean. The land in Alberta and Saskatchewan is beautiful in its rick blackness The sun is never as severe as in the U.S. lands to the south, and it seems to rain easier than in the arid western states. Winters are always severe. I once saw a lady in a bathing suit on a Lake Michigan beach on a snowy day in April. She said she was from Saskatchewan and could only drive as far south as Michigan to have her spring break before she had to return and get back to work. She said Michigan was warm compared to Saskatchewan, though everybody I knew in Michigan who could get away for spring break had driven to Florida.
I wondered about this. My wife's family used to vacation every summer just west of the Timiskaming area near Gowganda and I remembered literally being able to see the geography change as we drove from Gowganda to Timiskaming. You could see the trees and rocks stop and the farmland begin.
@@craigbomer8962 I used to drive that country between Cochrane, Temiskaming Shores and Rouyn and loved going through the countryside of a land only a couple days north of the United States, but seemingly so far away as to be in a different world. Having worked in Canada, I had occasion to study the Great Canadian Claybelt Hoax of the 1920s when the Canadian government attempted to massively settle the area they called "New Ontario" with returning WWI veterans. Most failed to farm successfully due to the short growing season and moved back to Toronto or westward to the Prairies. There are a couple TH-cam videos about it. With the climate warming and extending the growing season, it will be interesting to see if another attempt is made to bring the land under widespread cultivation.
@@alansewell7810 There currently is, at least anecdotally. Long fallow fields all around us are being cleared and tiled. Growing degree days have noticeably increased. There has been a big push from OMAFRA to redevelop the region and a big driver of turning fallow lands into productive lands are coming from the Mennonites; at least up near Timmins-Matheson.
@@ExploreTheBackcountry Thank you, this is interesting information. I have not been there since 2016. I will be looking to see how it has changed when I go back. I can imagine OMAFRA is keeping this quiet, because they don't want to say the climate changing for the better in Canada.
You should write a book Sir.
As someone who grew up in regina, my family would drive to Denver for vacations, and whenever we got here/got home after the drive, it felt like we had returned back into civilization from how empty it is between there.
I find that funny because when I got back to Manitoba from going to Saskatchewan multiple times (once to Yorkton, then on a band trip in Moose Jaw and Regina, and then passing through on the way to Alberta) it felt like I got back to civilization. Near highway 1, it’s so flat that you can’t get lost, but if you somehow get lost, you just have to stand up.
I drove from Calgary to Arizona, and I had the same experience. Going straight south, the next urban area that is comparable to Calgary in terms of size is Las Vegas. Most of Montana, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, and Nevada is VERY sparsely populated. Getting back to Calgary felt like getting back to civilization.
On one family vacation, we drove from Regina to Lincoln, Nebraska. Along the way we saw Mount Rushmore and took a tour of a cave in the Black Hills. It was during the height of the Cold War and some stores had signs pointing to where the bomb shelter was. At the legislative building in Bismarck, we saw piles of provisions in the event of war. The highlight of the trip was a tornado warning. Other than that, the land was mostly flat and not much different from back home.
I really appreciate watching this video as somebody from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Very few people are really aware of the unique geography we have here, and because it in large part lacks the flashy and romanticized terrain of BC and Alberta to our west, it is often disregarded as plain and boring to people. I also appreciate the depth you went into regarding where many of the inhabitants of this area came from. Like you touched on in the video, my ancestors fled here from Ukraine during the Bolshevik revolution essentially because of a genocide being committed against them. Unfortunately, as a result of that, as well as Canada's own cultural genocide against Indigenous people here (the prairies have some of the largest proportions of Indigenous people in Canada), there is a lot of generational trauma and subsequent mental health and addiction issues around here.
I guess English is your first language, given that your family has migrated to this region nearly a century ago. However, do you still speak Ukrainian?
@@JINGLI-sf7tz My great-grandfather who came here spoke four languages: English, Ukrainian, Russian, and Low German (a sort of bastardized language between Dutch and German developed and spoken by Mennonite people as they migrated eastwards through Europe.). After coming to Canada, the only non-English language that was commonly spoken by the mennonites was low-German, which was only spoken in the home. Eventually, after a couple of generations, people stopped even speaking low-German as we assimilated and English became the default. By the generations, here’s more or less how it is for my family as well as the vast majority of Mennonite people here (I’m born in 1998, for generational context): my great grandparents fled to Canada, spoke all four languages. My grandparents were born here in the 30s and 40s, and they grew up speaking both English and low German. My parents grew up hearing their parents speaking low German in the home, and can understand it but not speak it fluently, and my generation only has an extremely fragmented understanding of the language, as our parents rarely spoke it. Low German at this point an endangered language. Technically the Mennonite dialect is called Plautdietsch, if you ever want to read more about it. Sorry for the overly long response!
@@Elliottklassen Thank you for your answer.
@@JINGLI-sf7tz Thanks for your interest.
@@Elliottklassen Thank you. No need to apologise as it was a great response.
This guy always answers questions I never thought about
That's his channel bio alright ;)
@@fred_redstoneit's a bot 😊
@@internet_userr oh
That not obvious
I always think about them
@@internet_userr brother i aint no bot wtf 😂😂😂😂
As someone who has lived in Minnesota for a few years and have travled up to Winnipeg, it's truly remarkable how you can see such a hard line where the farming ends and the Canadian shield begins.
I grew up in Winnipeg and often drove with my parents to Kenora. Even as a kid I always thought the same thing. What a contrast! Almost as soon as the trees begin you get into that rocky land covered in the most beautiful lakes I've ever seen. I've always wished I could live in Kenora, and in my old age that dream might come true. Better late than never!
@@cattymajivI'm from southern on, but I did that drive last week. I flew to Winnipeg and drove to Kenora. You can easily see where the shield ends and prairies begin on the flight into Winnipeg.
@@cattymajiv: I grew up in the Canadian Shield, then moved to Ottawa for university. My sister had a cottage just north of Ottawa in Quebec and there is a lookout point, where you can stand on the Shield and see exactly where the St. Lawrence Lowlands are. What an awesome view!
I have never been far west as Kenora area, but I get the striking contrast!
Stay safe, stay sane, stay strong Ukraine 🇺🇦
@@goldenretriever6261The thing that strikes me most flying over the area is how big the two lakes are north of Winnipeg. They look big visiting from on the ground too. At night I try to spot Fargo and Duluth as we fly over.
I love the way you love the words "vastly" and "thus"
When I think of the word "vast", I always think of RealLifeLore.
😂
Exacerbate
"VaAAAAast..."
Best drinking/toking game ever... I did my with a YouCan and some Pineapple Express this go round... ;-)
My man speaking italics
_vast_
As a Canadian I appreciate you covering this. More people are going to want to move to Alberta now, it's getting a bit unaffordable though.
Alberta currently is just as expensive as Ontario :/
In the citie maybe. Some of us live in the middle of nowhere and it's still fairly affordable. Not that we have literally anything to do with the money we're actually saving.
Hope not. With alberta having an 'apperently' "high quality of life", our healthcare system is quite literally collapsing. Alberta is crumbling, and I want out.
sad that the economic impact has hit even alberta now, new brunswicks economy is even worse than usual.
Alberta doesn't have a PST and insurance options are not even comparable to places like Saskatchewan, they are way better in Alberta. Alberta really isn't as expensive in comparison as people think
As an Australian who lives within 20km of the coast (central Sydney) it's baffling that such large settlements are inland. I realise inland Australia is far too dry for large settlements and any such settlements would take up the small percentage of arable land we have but you get my point. I of course know there are many large cities inland around the world but it still feels weird. Our largest inland city is Canberra at about 400k
Australia lacks big navigable rivers like North America. Every big inland city is on a river, with a few rare exceptions like Las Vegas.
Yeah, it should be noted that literally all of these large prairie cities here in Canada are on major rivers, notably the Saskatchewans, the Red and the Assiniboine. Even Calgary sits at a confluence of two large rivers.
As a Manitoban, this touches on some very important topics that are almost always overlooked by even other Canadians.
Western Canadian separation is the only answer. Look at the heating oil debacle. It’s clear the Laurentian hate us
That there's things about Manitoba other than 🦟 🦟 🦟 ??
😂😂
@smileywarhead5178 lol. It aint that bad honestly. Compared to sask. Winnipeg has some fun stuff to do.
Manitoba is the bane of the prairies ngl. Such an unproductive ndp voting province 🤮
You guys are nothing more than just a heavy equalization burden!!
@@impressivedark2685 nobody asked. Go play in traffic.
Having lived in Winnipeg all my life, I never realized how big we actually are comparatively to our southern neighbors.
As a North Dakotan, I need everyone to know, that "tall" building the video shows when ND is first mentioned, is not only the tallest building in North Dakota, but also the state capitol.
the original was much prettier
I was born in Montana but haven’t stayed there mostly because it’s so desolate and my family moved on.
But I still hear the quiet prairie winds and its quite beckoning. It’s a wild and beautiful, mysterious land.
I was born and raised in Calgary and this explains so much of my life and family history. My grandfather worked in Oil and Gas, my parents were able to start a heavy equipment leasing company, and when I talk to my international friends about my education I can’t help but be grateful for it. I speak 2 languages since all my designated school were bilingual, I loved the theatre and arts programs growing up, and after graduation I was accepted to the University of British Columbia for science, one of the highest ranking universities in Canada
you look like a Calgarian 😉
How did u like it? as an american, I never actually been to canada and it just seems so much colder and worse than here in ohio where 4 months of the year I can go outside and swim, enjoy the weather and fill holes my dogs dig in the yard
@@pyrojkl It is cold, but not necessarily worse. Winters are a similar length to what you have in Ohio, just a little more intense. Then again, if you live in Alberta long enough, you will see snow in every month of the year.
@@pyrojklareas near the mountains frequently get Chinooks in the winter where the weather will be above freezing for a week or longer at a time. Further away from the mountains it is usually quite cold throughout the winter. There are lots of winter sports and great ski hills in the mountains to the west. Enjoying winter activities makes it easier to live here in the winter
Canada is a lot like the USA, except that your kids are less likely to get shot.
And if they do, you don't have to worry about the cost of the ambulance.
When I lived in Colorado I wound up working as a Courier, and drivers in Denver have a surprising amount of work. It's the largest population center for about 500 miles in any direction and it's the only place in the region many companies have hubs. So when Chiles in Albuquerque needed a refill on their seasonal soup, I would drive 450 miles down with a single box of soup in my car. My rate was about $1 a mile and I would spend about 1/3 on gas so it could be an easy $300 for about 14 hours of driving. Runs like that weren't super common though, it was mostly stuff like driving urine from the children's hospital to the airport for $12 which is barely even worth the gas let alone my time.
This is a great time for this video to come out because this is the start of winter in Alberta where everyone questions why they're living here.
Truth.
More history on the fur trade, the Canadian fur trade in particular, would have been very useful to understand the settlement patterns better.
Yes. They're called rivers
Bingo. Edmonton and most of the OG settlements on unseeded treaty lands before the railroads were fur trading posts on the Saskatchewan River systems. Then Canadian Northern, Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Pacific showed up and changed the game and flooded the west with immigrants mostly from England, Scotland, Scandinavia, Germany and Ukraine... My roots here are from 3 of those groups even though I personally grew up in Little Ukraine aka Eggtown and am not of slavic background myself...
Canada was made by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Scotchmen.
The fur traders and the Voyageurs provided the Blood And Muscle!!!
Incredibly tough people.
There are many really good books on. The Company.
@@stickynorth
Little Yukon.
There’s a “Uke on”, every street.
Lol.
We have towns like that in Saskatchewan 👍👍
@@fangslaughter1198Specifically, Orkneymen. There are more people of Orkney ancestry living on the Prairies than anywhere else on Earth, including Orkney itself.
These videos should be shown to students, they're extremely well done and informative!!
Love how Billings population rose from 117000 (1:09) to 131000 ( 2:19) in the space of a minute!
it's a live update, watch again it's now at 142000
I was wondering if anyone else noticed this
And let's not forget what happened at 5:12
The 131,000 is Fargo, not Billings
@@ThursdayNext67 did you even look at the graphic I timestamped for you?
Canadian here that lives in Alberta. This has got to be one of my favourite videos from RealLifeLore just because there is so much focus on Canada. But i can also attest, it's pretty damn nice living here in Alberta! :)
As an Albertan it was heartwarming to hear someone say something positive about us for once. Thankee 😊
100% yes!
Well, unfortunately Alberta has socially become the black eye of Canada, all because of the propaganda pushed by the tiny little sector in Ontario...
It's also interesting that the locations of Edmonton and Calgary are a direct result of where it was deemed to be most economical to get rail lines through the Rockies to the west. Edmonton is directly east of the smoothest route through the mountains, where the north Saskatchewan River requires the shortest bridge. Calgary is east of the hot springs that were discovered and Banff and developed for tourism by the rail companies.
I wouldn't say direct. They were founded before the railways. Being convenient transport links didn't hurt though.
@@wouttheelen2759 lots of forts existed, but Edmonton became the capital because of land speculation based on the expected route of the TCR.
@@JasonMorrisRTLLand speculation is what initially drove some of the early settlement to the present day Edmonton region and included people such as Frank Oliver. The route of the transcontinental railway shifted south in 1882/83, long before Edmonton would be named the capital.
Edmonton was named the capital largely because of Matthew McCauley, Edmonton’s first mayor. He was a Liberal and had close ties with the Federal Liberal’s who were in power. William Franklin Puffer also played a role in this decision. Several cities and towns wanted to be named the capital including Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer, and Banff (which was posited by Norman Luxton, a prominent Banff resident and booster, to be the “non-political” option). Edmonton did end up winning, much to Calgary’s dismay.
Edmonton was founded as a fur trading post, close to where the land route between the North Saskatchewan (Hudson Bay basin) and Athabasca (Arctic Basin) is shortest. The North Saskatchewan is navagible up to Rocky Mountain House, but veers south and further away from other vast fur trading basins. Edmonton's location also benefits from rich coal reserves and farmland.
Calgary is a city that shouldn't exisit as it is one of the few globally that isn't on a navigable body of water. It was established as a police fort just to the north of an incursion of American settlers into southern Alberta. It likely would have withered if the railway hadn't routed through it. Another important dimension is the the railways more or less had to invent reasons for Calgary to exist which imbued it with an entrepreneurial culture.
As a Manitoban.. Hearing Winnipeg refered to as "the big city" in Fargo tv show and other random media has always been hilarious to me.
As someone from Fargo, the big city is Minneapolis. It is weird to have a significantly bigger city even farther north though.
@@jpkottaMost Americans (and some Canadians) tend to ignore the border when thinking of the closest city to them. For Bellingham, the big city is Seattle and not Vancouver. For Alaska, the big city is also Seattle (or maybe Anchorage) and not Vancouver or Edmonton. For Montana it’s Denver (or SLC) not Calgary. For Burlington it’s NYC and not Montreal.
Winnipeg population is around 915,000 right now and will hit 1 million by 2030
Winnipeg was the most important settlement for a good 50 odd years in the prairies as it warehoused all of the goods flowing east and west
@@AbeYousef Yes, Winnipeg grew as a transshipment point. Goods from eastern Canada passed through Winnipeg and fanned-out through western Canada. Agricultural products from the west passed through Winnipeg on their way east. Winnipeg prospered because it was at the eastern pinch point between parkland and the shield. This all changed because World War 1 dried-up immigration, and the Panama Canal meant Winnipeg could be bypassed.
Today Calgary is taking the role Winnipeg once had because it is at a more central location in the Canadian prairies.
I moved from BC to Alberta about a year ago. Alberta may be rich but many of its small towns look poor. I travel around the northern part of the province for work and have been unpleasantly surprised by how unappealing the small towns are. There is a lack of investment in public spaces such as walking paths, trails, and parks. Downtown main streets often feature faded, tired looking and uninviting store fronts. It just all lacks imagination. Everyone drives everywhere in their big trucks (home- school- grocery stores- hockey arena, etc) and there is a lack of street life of any kind. For me, it's quite depressing. Although BC suffers from a heavier burden of homelessness and drug addiction, its small towns and cities are much more pleasant to be in and aesthetically pleasing ( if you subtract the junkies).
Unfortunately you can’t subtract the junkies😅
Whats your opinion on Fort Mac ?
@@coachpaytonparker I went before the fires but I enjoyed it. Nice little city filled with crazy sporting/gym amenities paid for by the oil companies.
From Ontario here, but I have family in Winnipeg, who I visited yearly while growing up. The over-dependence on cars in the Prairies is why I could never live there -- I can't drive due to a disability. I'd literally be *stuck* in Winnipeg if I ever moved there! Not that I would -- my son's half Indigenous, and Native peoples are not treated with the respect they deserve out there (not that the rest of Canada is much better, but the Prairies are worse in that regard). I'll stay in Ontario.
The same holds true for most of Saskatchewan. By comparison, small towns in North Dakota always seemed more developed. In high school I visited a former classmate who had moved to Greenwood, ND. I was surprised at how developed the small town was with good sidewalks on all the pretty, tree-lined streets, a golf course and a place to get ice cream. I couldn’t think of a single place of the same size in Saskatchewan that was as nice. In those days, Americans seemed to have nicer towns, bigger houses and more stuff.
I live in Washington state and will freely admit that we have many, many difficult to pronounce location names. Especially for those who did not grow up here. Our host made the common mistake of pronouncing Spokane with the hard vowel sound [spo-kān] not the correct soft vowel of [Spo-kan]. After all that is exactly how it is spelled. It makes us natives (compassionately) giggle a little every time.
I giggled when he said "Le-duck" for Leduc in Alberta (it's pronounced like Le-dook). I'd never heard it mispronounced before because this video might be the first time anyone outside of Alberta has ever said "Leduc". A true Heritage Moment.
As a Washingtonian, I die a bit inside whenever someone says Spokane’s name wrong
Here is a real place in Alberta: Waskatenau ( /wəˈsɛtnə/ wə-SET-nə)
@firegoat5853 Same with Puyallup, Snohomish, and Snoqualmie. Lol. Hell they pronounced Skagit wrong to lol.
I always laugh hearing people pronounce Sequim & Shi Shi also
These videos should be shown to students, they’re extremely well done and informative!
Thanks RLL 🇨🇦
Didn't hear it mentioned, but Edmonton is the warmest area of the northern plains. Counter intuitively, in the region discussed in this video, the further north and west you go, the warmer it gets because of lower elevation and winds.
If Calgary did not have Chinooks, you would be right
@@RobertProctor1945 Edmonton has a longer growing season in spite of cold winters
It's also worth noting that the main railway and highway system in Canada roughly straddle the US border, so in a way the southern edge is the economic centre of Canada. Edmonton is the most obvious outlier here.
The Canadian shield is a truly inhospitable but beautiful set of places. If you have to drive between Eastern and Western Canada without transiting through the USA you have to go through some of the most desolate and amazing places it's possible to see.
That was a political decision at the time because the 49th parallel as a border didn't exist. It was canada's way of declaring sovereignty and telling the Americans to bug out. President Polk solved the controversy.
Those glaciers scraped off the good Canadian soil from the shield and deposited it in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Thanks!
@@billfarley9167that’s true but idk about Polk solving the conflict he wanted all of Oregon including British Columbia
As a resident Albertan living in Edmonton since 1998 (originally from New Brunswick in Atlantic Canada), seeing this video pop up in my feed was a pleasant surprise 😁
*Edit: Just one minor note-the correct pronunciation of Leduc is "Le Duke", as opposed to "Le Duck". It's primarily known as the site of the Edmonton International Airport. Otherwise, this is a _very_ well-researched video that actually taught me a few things that I didn't previously know. The Eastern European migration of the late 1800s, for instance, explains why Edmonton has such a large ethnically Ukrainian population (our city is sometimes jokingly referred to as "Edmonchuk" for this reason).
UCP will chase people away so the next video could be "why Montana has a higher population than Alberta"
same!
Thank you. He has the same issue with Bela-"rus". Bless his heart.
Lol currently watching this in rural Leduc county… small world
Athabasca is getting me too. Ath-a-basc-a.
I live in Edmonton and have spent time in Montana and wyoming. Great video!
Lived my whole life in Florida and after college I took whatever job I could get, it was a one year contract as a chemist in Billings. Most beautiful place you'll ever see, pictures and videos don't do it justice. Ofc great people as well
As someone living in Saskatoon, hearing it mentioned by one of my favourite TH-cam channels nearly put a tear in my eyes 🥹
Extremely ininformative. I appreciate your hard work. 🙏
Hello from Montana. I always wondered why Alberta had large metros compared to the emptiness of Montana. Having visited Alberta many times, the Aspen Parkland ag and oil production is no joke. A land of bounty.
I'm watching this from bozeman!
I drove through Alberta once and was blown away by how big Calgary and Edmonton were! It was such a contrast to Wyoming and Montana.
It’s like an entire Denver, but there’s two of them.
Edmonton is the Athens of the American Siberia equivalent to Tomsk in Russia
@@robertodagostini4946 I feel like the areas of Siberia further south of Tomsk, such as Novosibirsk and Omsk, _might_ be a better match geographically-speaking. The latter two are basically surrounded by farmland (or almost-completely in Novosibirsk's case) in the same ways that Edmonton is.
On a climatic note, the Siberian cities see colder winters and slightly-warmer summers than Edmonton does. Southern Siberia is somewhat like the Canadian Prairies in terms of average temperatures, though; the climactic averages of the Siberian cities are similar to that of Winnipeg.
Fascinating and well-executed video. Great piece of work
It's also fun to mention that since the Calgary-Edmonton corridor is so densely populated, interconnected and wealthy, there are serious considerations to build high-speed rail there. Imagine driving up from Montana and seeing that!
I spent two years living along the QE2 (the major highway between Calgary and Edmonton). Given the amount of traffic along that highway, I do think high speed rail would make sense there.
Speaking as a former Albertan: It would make a lot of sense to have a reliable, fast rail connection between the cities. But, there seems to be near-zero political or social will to do so - Alberta is just pretty conservative, and public transportation in general is... tolerated, at best. I'd be extremely surprised if anything like it happened in my lifetime.
@@EggTamago7 From what I hear, Calgary has a pretty decent light-rail transit system, at least for a Canadian city. Never actually have experienced it myself though...
As a current Edmontonian, I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of the rail system, but the major flaw hs to do with just how much we Albertans live our cars, and for good reason.
Once you get from one city to the other, how are you supposed to navigate around without a car? These are two very large cities by landmass, and so it would be hard and expensive to just taxi or Uber around, as well as being too cold 6 months of the year to walk or bike anywhere.
While I do think it’s a good idea, I don’t think it’ll be this revolutionary new thing that’ll totally change Calgary and Edmonton.
@@picklenik9658 public transit mate. idk what the transit systems actually look like in the two cities, but the impression I get is that Calgary's light passenger rail is one of the better public transit systems in Canada. Granted, that's not saying much, and I've never actually used it so I have no firsthand experience, but with a good public transit system one should be able to safely get anywhere in the city from anywhere else in the city with significantly less expense than taxis or ubers.
Hey RLL, it seems a mistake was made in the graphic at 2:00, where the population listed for Fargo and Billings seem to have been swapped. Thanks for the great video as always!
Also at 6:04, where it seems this mistake was corrected, the population of Fargo jumped from 131 000 to 134 000.
You talked about Sudbury but forgot Fermont, Qc, which is much further north and also a mining town located inside the Canadian Shield. It has one huge building that's used as a wall to protect the town from the harsh and cold winds.
Idk where you come up with these ideas that you develop into these videos, but they're vastly interesting especially given the fact I didn't know I was even interested before watching it! I do love geography & history, learning demographics of areas and the like, and I encourage you to keep these coming, I look forward to them!!
Because what is RLL is doing is vastly important from time to time.
Good analysis as someone how lives in the midwest I can confirm this, it is very wild and many people come for outdoor activities (eg hunting fishing, off roading, skidooing and skiing in the winter. Edit: Also as a Canadian I never thought I would see a real life lore video on my own country this is so weird.
Let's be honest tho, being Canadian in general is weird 😋
He’s done videos on Canada in the past.
But the vast prairies in tha centre are mind numbingly boring, and the attitudes of a lot of a lot of the people there leave a lot to be desired. I know, I've spent most of 60 years here, in different spots. Those were lucky enough to leave have left.
It always makes my day when you post a video! I'm excited for your next video! Keep up the amazing work!
I live in Lethbridge which is a city in Alberta just north of the Montana border and I never even thought about how desolate the US prairies are compared to Canada. Even Lethbridge has over 100k people and is bigger then most the US citys. It’s just crazy to think if I went farther south there would be less people
Hello fellow methbridge resident
To be fair, Calgary should be compared to Salt Lake City and Denver, it's misleading to just compare across the border
too far@@danielzhang1916
@@Matthaeus0laughs in Calgarian
@@danielzhang1916 Actually, the comparison to the adjacent lightly inhabited areas, for the reasons given in the video, makes sense. Denver and Salt Lake City have their own reasons for being. (There's a reason that Colorado has a School of Mines; the Mormons fled from Illinois to Utah and comprise the overwhelming majority of the population to this day.)
I’ve never learned so much about a region I knew nothing about then from this single video. I was always curious about this region and you summed it up perfectly. 👍
Also it’s great to finally have a clip about geography and not about war and politics.
7:00 Wow! The visuals are amazing. Learned alot
I'm a simple Canadian, I see Alberta be mentioned, I'm happy
Born and raised in Saskatoon. Really appreciate you covering this topic. I would say my only critique is the way you say "Saskatchewan". Most local people from Sask say it like "Sa-scatch-oo-wun" rather than "Sask-atchu-wan". The end is more like the word "one" than like "James Wan."
Great video as always!
It's pretty obvious he was just taking his best guess at many of the place names in this video, like "Spo-cain" (it's "Spo-CAN"), "Sood-bury" ("SUD-"), "Atta-bass-ca" (Ath-ah-bass-ca"), etc. Really could have used a pronunciation guide.
That... was excellent. I learned more about my country Canada than I have in a long long time.
I always thought that Calgary and Edmonton were kind of like Denver and Salt Lake City in the US, in CO and UT respectively. Big, plains cities in front of large mountainous regions of the continent that really grew to prominence in the mid to late 1800's. They aren't colossal cities, but they're still some of the biggest in the country and have heavy tourism sectors that have seen big migrations in recent decades due to their growing tech and medical economies.
They are very similar to Salt Lake and Denver in those aspects, although Edmonton differs a little as its not all that close to the mountains compared to the other 3. Calgary, Salt Lake, and Denver are all
@@specialcbyeah, you're close enough to see the mountains from Calgary, but definitely not from Edmonton.
I swear ive seen this exact comment on a similar video about Calgary... is that true?
Are you a bot?
@@theZodiacGriller lol, no. It might just be a common connection people make
Greetings from a North Dakota resident (though I am from Wisconsin originally). At least this area now makes a little more sense geographically to me. Besides the oil sands listed, that part of Canada north of North Dakota and Montana also has a substantial portion of Bakken shale oil deposits as well.
Very cool video. Thanks for sharing.
Beyond the Prairie provinces, the Far North of Canada is incredibly empty. Check out these numbers:
The three Canadian territories have a combined land area of 3,496,000 km² or 1,365,735 mi² and they are home to only 118,160 people according to the 2021 Census. This is a density of 0.0865 people per square mile.
Montana and the Dakotas have a combined area of 298,000 square miles and population of 2,640,000 people. The density of the Dakotas and Montana combined is 8.86 people per square mile. These states are literally 100 times MORE dense than the Canadian territories.
Another pretty empty region of Canada is on the east coast - Labrador (not to be confused with the entire province Newfoundland and Labrador), has a population of 27,120 people and an area of 113, 641 square miles - there the pop. density is 0.24 people per sq mi. Nord-du-Quebec has a population of 45,740 and the land area is 288,500 sq mi. yielding a population density of 0.15 people per sq mi.
These three regions altogether have a combined area of 1,787,000 sq mi. and a population of 191,600 - fewer people than Sioux Falls, SD.
By comparison, all of the land in the US east of the Mississippi has a combined area of only 960,000 sq mi.
You forgot to mention why the Aspen Parkland region has so much chernozem soil. Well, you kinda did at one point in the video but you never made the connection. Much of the soil scraped from the Canadian Shield by the glaciers ended up in the the Aspen Parkland region.
You should check out Australia. I'm not from there, but I saw a map depicting population density which showed that the majority of the Australian human population lives on the borders of the country. Most of the central landmass is an untouched grassland (according to the map I saw). Would love if you did a take on that
he has a video depicting population density as indicated by light, and Australia has but a few infinitesimal dots within the central landmass; the largest of these central dots being a CIA installation.
@@MSHNKTRL ah ty for the info
Lol its not grassland.
the population doesn't live on "the borders", they live on the COAST
@@MSHNKTRLno, Alice Springs is a town on its own. The Pine Gap base is just exciting to people who like stories about spies etc. It doesn't have that mamy people and is not the reason for the dots on the map.
Thank you for this hugely informative historic/geographic review explaining the unique Montana/Canadian areas.
Informative and well done, but I think it's important to remember the influence the north western company has using waterways via the Hudson Bay. Early Alberta settlements like Rocky Mountain House were navigable by waterway all the way to Thompson Manitoba and beyond.
Also I'm sure it's been mentioned, but it's 'Le Duke's.
It is hard to keep up with using both miles and kilometers
the pronunciation of Canadian city names by non Canadians always cracks me up.
"I mean, you're technically right, but it sounds so wrong"
He tried so hard so I'll let him slide
"Südbury"
"LeDUCK" hahaha
Also spokane...
I genuinely cringed at Leduck No. 1@@Jimmy_Jazz
I've been living in Alberta for 7+ years. Every minute of the video had me thinking "wow, that makes so much sense". Great job!
As a Canadian, it makes me happy to hear RLL talk about Canadian stuff. Makes me feel like Canada's still noticed....
Im german and everything I know about Canada is ... maple juice, mooses, cold and the stuff trudeau is doing
We'll make them notice
@@mephisto6486Syrup not juice (You would most definitely not want to drink maple syrup like it was juice) and the plural of Moose is confusingly still Moose.
Please don’t judge us based on the actions of Trudeau.
@@mephisto6486I’m Canadian and everything I know about Germany is hitler, the naz*s, and sauerkraut lol
@@mephisto6486I like it better when one knew who the Canadian Prime Minister was
Minnesota represents a unique blend of all of these geographical realities. There is extremely fertile soil, mineral wealth, forestry, and flat plains areas.
British Columbia does, too. We have pockets of fertile farmland in the northeast, southwest, and northwest but also a lot of mountains, trees, and extractable minerals. British Columbia's population was and is higher than Alberta's, although nearly half of our province's population lives concentrated in Metro Vancouver.
@@reillywalker195 Soon to be surpassed though in population
Out of any midwestern state, Minnesota is the state that interests me the most. Duluth especially seems really lovely.
As someone who grew up in one of the most densely populated citiy (manila) and now has been living in Winnipeg for about 6 years. This makes me feel that winnipeg has more people than I used to think when I first moved here.
fun fact. the famous gaming Bioware studio, which is located in Edmonton, was created by Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, later they invited their friend Drew Karpyshyn. As you can guees, these three people have last names that are derived from slavic languages.
My husband worked for them! Where are they located these days? Last I heard they were on White Ave.
Cheers!🇨🇦☺🇨🇦
I mean there's a reason why Edmonton is sometimes referred to as "the chuk"
@@shelleyhender8537google maps seems to show their headquarters in the Epcor tower downtown and some other offices on Whyte at 105 St
Weren't BioWare based in the delta hotel near South Edmonton common for a while?
as a resident of southern alberta who has been to montana, idaho, wyoming, colorado and the dakotas quite a few times thank you for making this video that I can relate to and has to deal with the demographics of the region I am from :)
Hahaha I also share this sentiment as someone who's from calgary.
@@liuyifei1989 Red deer here. I was almost surprised not to see it pop up as a "Even Alberta's Third largest city is bitter than almost any city in these 5 states! " lol
It's crazy. I'm an Asian living in Calgary. I felt people staring at me at gas stations and restaurants between Reno and the border. All their minimum wage workers down there are white, too. But when I crossed into Lethbridge, I immediately felt at home where people are diverse.
@@stormblind1654This is true. Red Deer is larger than any city in Montana except Billings, which it’s still comparable in size with. Pretty interesting since it’s crammed into an area that’s half the size of Great Falls.
This is an exceptional video. I learned so much about the province I live in.
Since you like going into why populations are large or small in different places, could you do an episode on why Vermont has so few people? For one of the oldest states in the union so close to major population centers like Boston and Montreal. I took a cursory glace at why and the only answer I saw was there just haven't been any major cities built so there wasn't a major drive for growth.
Rivers. New England is a comparatively old settlement by US standards. River transportation and water power was a huge driving force in city building in the 1700-1800's. New Hampshire had the Merrimack which opened up to the ocean. Nashua, Concord, and Manchester are all along the river. The Merrimack dips into Massachusetts and you see major towns like Lowell and Lawrence spring up. All of these towns are a whole lot closer to Boston than anything in Vermont. Vermont's main river runs north/south through Massachusetts and Connecticut before dumping out in Long Island Sound. Those two states are a good 10 degrees warmer in winter and get less snow. Why freeze when there's the same river and plenty of real estate further south?
@@ahoneyman That makes a lot of sense. I hadn't considered that before.
Holy crap. Real life lore mentioned the Peace River. All 60,000 of us. I'm star struck.
Got any remote campwork for a person from Edmonton?
Thank for giving this great information
This leads me to wonder why North Dakota is so sparsely populated. It has even higher concentrations of Chernozem soil than the Canadian provinces to its north (as shown in the video at 17:24) which does in fact make it an agricultural powerhouse, it also has massive oil reserves, and it does not sit on the Canadian Shield. Is a ND population explosion imminent?
Also it factors in that there are SO MANY places to move to and live in the US. Canada you don't have many options and with how expensive the country is there are shrinking options. Calgary is now out of reach, now Edmonton is one of the last few affordable major cities in Canada.
That’s probably the biggest reason, better and warmer choices farther south. However Fargo and Grand Forks are located in the areas where the Chernozem soil.
As for the oil. It was mostly discovered only a few years ago and it’s probably too late to establish a city there. A few centuries ago, large oil deposits needed to be managed right where the oil was but nowadays with planes and the internet much of the operations can already be handled from anywhere.
I think because a lot of the Canadian Shield (especially the trees) does extend into the areas of Northern Minnesota and the Dakotas (see 20:00) so there is not as much ability to easily farm.
It's an overall good analysis as to the reasons why Alberta grew... up to a point. The story is a little incomplete. Oil and gas was certainly a large driver of migration for decades, but the industry peaked around 2012. Commodity prices have mostly recovered, but employment on the sector has been declining, wages in the sector have declined, and capital expenditure is much less than it was ten years ago. The focus is on production, not expansion, and finding efficiencies through automation.
Meanwhile, Alberta is facing one of it's biggest growth spurts in the province's history. Why? Housing. Relative to Vancouver or Toronto, it's much easier to obtain housing in Calgary or Edmonton. Both cities are large and cosmopolitan enough (by Canadian standards) and there's been a major focus (and some success) in attracting tech jobs, most notably perhaps in fintech.
As a Montanan I am happy to see somebody else acknowledging the existence of our state
as a quebecer, i would LOVE to hear more about canada in your videos, even tho i watch them all, i feel always a bit sad that my country/province does not get talked about a lot. (love your videos tho)
I’ll summarize. Quebec, while being geographically beautiful, is inhabited by the French. The end. Nobody likes the French
I would love a video on the history and culture of Quebec! Super overlooked even by other Canadians
No province is more overlooked than Alberta, chill there is tons of videos on Quebec
Yeah maybe I’m just not looking hard enough lol. As an Albertan/Saskatchewanian I notice a lot more about those two provinces than the others. I just think Quebec is cool is all.
It is Spo-KANN, not Spo-KAIN (have said this before!). Alberta is hugely more important to the Canadian economy than are the bordering states to the US. Alberta's importance is more like taking those states PLUS adding Colorado, Utah and Texas. As we all know, those three states all have significant population centers. Alberta is the energy and cattle capital of Canada and thus its large population centers make sense. Similarly, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are somewhat equivalent to taking the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa and parts of Nebraska. Winnipeg is a major ag business and transport center in a manner similar to the Twin Cities, Omaha and even Chicago. This pattern repeats elsewhere in Canada. While the country's overall population is only about 10% of the US (but growing very rapidly because of greater immigration), nearly all of the pop is located near the US border. This is in part due to climate (it is really no more harsh in Alberta than Montana BTW) and also because of good transport links to the south. It has often been said that there is more affinity between Canadian provinces and their neighboring states than there is east-west across Canada. This is true economically and cultrually to a large extent. It is not so much that Calgary and Edmonton are outliers in bein. big, It is more that these two cities effectively perform many of the same functions one would find in Denver, Salt Lake City, and Dallas. Out west Vancouver has many of the same functions as Seattle, San Francisco, and LA. Out east Toronto is both the Chicago and New York of Canada. By US standards all these cities are mid-sized but by Canadian standards they are proportionately just about right.
😄 it’s le duke not le duck
True. Americans suck at pronouncing French words and names.@@kentalbertawrex
I bet the only reason it's spo-KAN and not spo-KAIN is because they don't want it to rhyme with cocaine.
@gummypuss69 actually it's named after the local Native American tribe but the settlers added an "E" to the end for some dumb reason. Spokan to Spokane
Oh I see.@@s.w.a.t.3057
Another excellent video.
When I was a kid my parents had land in Montana and we'd go down for July 4th the boarder folks would joke about it being second Alberta. You'd see more Alberta plates around Kalispell on that weekend then the Montana plates
Especially from people who live in Southern Alberta... When I lived in Pincher Creek most of the wealthier families wouldn't ski locally at Castle Mountain for example, they went to Whitefish... I think at the time it was cheaper, more to do, etc.
As an Edmonton resident my whole life, i feel like this area is misrepresented and misunderstood. Thanks for the great info, nice to see home on one of these videos!
Agreed
Yeah, as a Calgary resident I definitely feel like Alberta is treated like a joke by many in Canada when in fact the Calgary-Edmonton corridor is one of the wealthier and more economically productive jurisdictions in North America...
13:30 this is not that important because winters are still to cold go grow things in the Great Lakes and most agriculture involves annual crops (rather than orchards/vineyards). And the growing season in a place like southern Minnesota is comparable to that of southern Ontario, is not warmer (and longer). Ex Orangeville, ON has a Jun-Sep average temperature of 17.25C compared to Mankata, MN which has a growing season almost 3C warmer, and of comparable length (late May to late September, maybe early October).
I've heard Alberta called the Canadian Texas: a lot of flat land, a few enormous cities, a distinct "cowboy" culture, and an eruption of oil money.
Some good BBQ as well
You can't go more than 5 minutes outside any town or city in Alberta and not see a huge ranch.. Believe me even with our booming population like NZ and Texas our primary livestock out number us several fold... Even Buffalo ranching is making a comeback... And yes Edmonton and Austin are twins from the weird counter-cultural hipster/college town/capital vibes to the skylines. Stantec Tower looks identical to a recent Austin addition for example. Same builder/engineer too I think... We even had a NXNW Fest that knocked off the SXSW event for a few years...@@Ithoughtthiswasamerica
We also have the same issue of people out east and west moving here and bringing their politics, homelessness, crime, welfare and drugs with them. Just brutal now. What is the Austin blue flip to Texans, is our Edmonton orange flip to Albertans.
@@undisputed6034 if they were on welfare or addicts, they wouldn't be able to afford to move in the first place. Don't blame the rest of the country for the troubles in *your* backyard.
Not really flat and cowboy culture only exists in southern Alberta. Edmonton gives off portland antifa vibes
I owned a bar in Montana when I was younger - the local cop would hang around and often played poker with us. The cop once told me "the only people who come to Montana are either coming here to kill themselves, or running from the law and want to be left alone. No one else comes here."
Very true words
As a long time resident on the Canadian Shield I can confirm it is darn hard to even dig a hole in many places without hitting giant rocks!
And as for the largest Canadian Shield city of Sudbury, it’s either pronounced Sud-berry or Sud-burry (sud like soap suds, and burry sounds like furry)
Sudbury is fascinating. The local economy is based on nickel and copper mining because, some 1.8 billion years ago, a meteorite crashed into the planet and created the 3rd-largest known meteor crater on earth. Today there are mines in a broad loop around the Sudbury Basin, the eroded crater rim, where nickel and other metals are extracted. We're mining a meteorite!
You don't see Sudbury mentioned in these sort of TH-cam videos very often.
@@DaveGIS123 And the fumes from the mining leech into the air that create acid rain that makes agriculture even harder.
@@DaveGIS123cool!!
@@Mrtheunnameable there hasn’t been noticeable acid rain issues for decades and Sudbury has done some amazing work to regreen the area… but when I was a kid in the 80s it looked like the moon.
Omg the pronunciations are awesome.
LeDuck its locally pronounced LeDook.
Id also mention the reduction of Montreal also had to do with french political issues in Quebec as much as the canal systems. The oil pipelines also have roots ininitial US investment from texas and a disinterest in investment from central Canada.
Siriously, though, I appreciate the video on our overlooked weird little (and big) country.
Was he pronouncing Regina wrong?
Lol, that is only the beginning of his humorous way of saying Canadian places and products. Even Bitumen ("Bitchumen"). Somebody else here already noticed he said Spokane differently each time he said it. And yes, he flubbed on Regina as well. Regina has a long "I". Funny how people act too embarrassed to say it properly.
@@dylanmerritt3396Yep, lol
Well said. It was a great video, but everything you said is correct.
His emphasis on the first a in Saskatchewan got me too.
very good! i learnt a lot!
I can't emphasize how much I enjoyed this video. I'm a resident in Winnipeg. It is amazing, How informative this video was.
You can tell where most Americans or Canadians are from just based on how they pronounce things like Spokane or Regina
or Calgary
reg-i-na
Or "Torono"
Nah, it's T'rana dude!@@bobgreen3950