History of Alberta
Plains bands could often congregate into large, pan-tribal hunting or war parties—especially once horses were available—due to the abundant supply of bison for food and the open, easily traversed landscape.
Migrations in the subarctic would include following traplines, snowshoeing onto frozen lakes for ice fishing, searching for moose and other game, and returning to favourite berry patches.
The pre-settlement political history of the Great Plains (and to some extent the Subarctic) is one of shifting membership in a number of large confederacies, consisting of dozens of bands from multiple tribes.
From the northeast the Iron Confederacy (mostly Cree and Assiniboine but also Stoney, Saulteaux and others) were losing their position as middlemen traders as the HBC and the North West Company moved inland, and they were instead taking up horse-mounted bison hunting on the very territory the Blackfoot had recently captured from the Shoshone.
The first Europeans to reach Alberta were the French, such as Frenchman Pierre La Vérendrye or one of his sons, who had travelled inland to Manitoba in 1730, establishing forts and trading furs directly with the native peoples there.
Exploring the river system further, the French fur traders would have likely engaged the Blackfoot-speaking people directly; proof of this being that the word for "Frenchman" in the Blackfoot language means, "real white man".
At the same time the decline of the HBC's power had allowed American whisky traders and hunters to expand into southern Alberta, disrupting the Native way of life.
Building a home, clearing and cultivating thirty acres (12 ha), and fencing the entire property, all of which were requirements of homesteaders seeking title to their new land, were difficult tasks in the glacier-carved valleys.
[19] Wiseman (2011) argues that the heavy influx of 600,000 immigrants from the United States brought along such political ideals such as liberalism, individualism, and egalitarianism, as opposed to traditional English Canadian themes such as toryism and socialism.
Laurier opted to have Lieutenant Governor George H. V. Bulyea appoint the Liberal Alexander Rutherford, whose government would later fall in the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway scandal.
The UFA leadership were leery of such proposals and farmers turned to William Aberhart's Social Credit movement as a weapon to do battle against what were seen as grasping bankers and collection agencies.
The mission was governed by a volunteer board of women directors and began by raising money for its first year of service through charitable donations and payments from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.
Irene Parlby, the UFWA's first president, lobbied for the establishment of a provincial Department of Public Health, government-provided hospitals and doctors, and passage of a law to permit nurses to qualify as registered midwives.
Founded in 1919 to meet maternal and emergency medical needs by the United Farm Women of Alberta (UFWA), the Nursing Service treated prairie settlers living in primitive areas lacking doctors and hospitals.
Nurses provided prenatal care, worked as midwives, performed minor surgery, conducted medical inspections of schoolchildren, and sponsored immunization programs.
The federal government took two main steps in dealing with Indian peoples' health: it built hospitals on reserves, and it created a system of medical officers to staff these facilities.
Working-class attendees probably experienced discomfort among their better-dressed and better-behaved neighbours, and the church leadership maintained strong ties to local business interests but did little to reach out to the lower classes.
The Alberta Temperance and Moral Reform League, founded in 1907, was based in Methodist and other Protestant churches and used anti-German themes to pass legislation putting prohibition into effect in July 1916.
The resulting division of labour and hierarchy permitted Alberta's ranches to function without the direct involvement of investors and owners, most of whom lived in eastern Canada and Britain.
The boom ultimately worked against Alberta's economic interests because the high prices during that period made it unfeasible to establish local cattle finishing practices.
A rancher and brewer with secondary interests in gas, electricity, and oil, Calgary entrepreneur Alfred Ernest Cross (1861–1932) was a significant agent of modernization in Alberta and the Canadian West.
They prepared bannock, beans and bacon, mended clothes, raised children, cleaned, tended the garden, helped at harvest time and nursed everyone back to health.
The role of family enterprise in private banking during the late 19th and early 20th centuries was pivotal in providing an important channel for the flow of credit into southwestern Alberta and facilitated the emergence of the modern economy.
In addition to affording an outlet for civic rivalries, the games between the Edmonton Thistle and Strathcona Shamrock hockey clubs united individuals from different social classes and diverse cultural backgrounds in support of their team.
[68] The province's oil and natural gas furnish raw materials for large industrial complexes at Edmonton and Calgary, as well as for smaller ones at Lethbridge and Medicine Hat.
"Bible Bill" preached that the capitalist economy was rotten because of its immorality; specifically, it produced goods and services but did not provide people with sufficient purchasing power to enjoy them.
Although Aberhart was hostile to banks and newspapers, he was basically in favor of capitalism and did not support socialist policies, unlike the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in Saskatchewan.
At home, prisoner of war and internment camps were maintained at Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Wainwright and in Kananaskis Country, housing captured Axis service personnel as well as Canadian internees.
Major David Vivian Currie, a Saskatchewanian serving with the South Alberta Regiment, was awarded the Victoria Cross as was Calgarian Ian Bazalgette, who was killed in air combat.
Their labour legislation sought to foil the conspiracy's plans in Alberta and incidentally to reassure potential investors, particularly in the oil industry, of a good climate for profit-taking.
