Alberta
Alberta is a western province of Canada. With an estimated population of 4,067,175 as of 2016 census, it is Canada's fourth most populous province and the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces, its area is about 660,000 square kilometres. Alberta and its neighbour Saskatchewan were districts of the Northwest Territories until they were established as provinces on September 1, 1905; the premier has been Rachel Notley since May 2015. Alberta is bounded by the provinces of British Columbia to the west and Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Territories to the north, the U. S. state of Montana to the south. Alberta is one of three Canadian provinces and territories to border only a single U. S. state and one of only two landlocked provinces. It has a predominantly humid continental climate, with stark contrasts over a year. Alberta's capital, Edmonton, is near the geographic centre of the province and is the primary supply and service hub for Canada's crude oil, the Athabasca oil sands and other northern resource industries.
About 290 km south of the capital is the largest city in Alberta. Calgary and Edmonton centre Alberta's two census metropolitan areas, both of which have populations exceeding one million, while the province has 16 census agglomerations. Tourist destinations in the province include Banff, Drumheller, Sylvan Lake and Lake Louise. Alberta is named after the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria. Princess Louise was the wife of Marquess of Lorne, Governor General of Canada. Lake Louise and Mount Alberta were named in her honour. Alberta, with an area of 661,848 km2, is the fourth-largest province after Quebec and British Columbia. To the south, the province borders on the 49th parallel north, separating it from the U. S. state of Montana, while to the north the 60th parallel north divides it from the Northwest Territories. To the east, the 110th meridian west separates it from the province of Saskatchewan, while on the west its boundary with British Columbia follows the 120th meridian west south from the Northwest Territories at 60°N until it reaches the Continental Divide at the Rocky Mountains, from that point follows the line of peaks marking the Continental Divide in a southeasterly direction until it reaches the Montana border at 49°N.
The province extends 660 km east to west at its maximum width. Its highest point is 3,747 m at the summit of Mount Columbia in the Rocky Mountains along the southwest border while its lowest point is 152 m on the Slave River in Wood Buffalo National Park in the northeast. With the exception of the semi-arid steppe of the south-eastern section, the province has adequate water resources. There are numerous lakes used for swimming, fishing and a range of water sports. There are three large lakes, Lake Claire in Wood Buffalo National Park, Lesser Slave Lake, Lake Athabasca which lies in both Alberta and Saskatchewan; the longest river in the province is the Athabasca River which travels 1,538 km from the Columbia Icefield in the Rocky Mountains to Lake Athabasca. The largest river is the Peace River with an average flow of 2161 m3/s; the Peace River originates in the Rocky Mountains of northern British Columbia and flows through northern Alberta and into the Slave River, a tributary of the Mackenzie River.
Alberta's capital city, Edmonton, is located at about the geographic centre of the province. It is the most northerly major city in Canada, serves as a gateway and hub for resource development in northern Canada; the region, with its proximity to Canada's largest oil fields, has most of western Canada's oil refinery capacity. Calgary is about 280 km south of Edmonton and 240 km north of Montana, surrounded by extensive ranching country. 75% of the province's population lives in the Calgary–Edmonton Corridor. The land grant policy to the railroads served as a means to populate the province in its early years. Most of the northern half of the province is boreal forest, while the Rocky Mountains along the southwestern boundary are forested; the southern quarter of the province is prairie, ranging from shortgrass prairie in the southeastern corner to mixed grass prairie in an arc to the west and north of it. The central aspen parkland region extending in a broad arc between the prairies and the forests, from Calgary, north to Edmonton, east to Lloydminster, contains the most fertile soil in the province and most of the population.
Much of the unforested part of Alberta is given over either to grain or to dairy farming, with mixed farming more common in the north and centre, while ranching and irrigated agriculture predominate in the south. The Alberta badlands are located in southeastern Alberta, where the Red Deer River crosses the flat prairie and farmland, features deep canyons and striking landforms. Dinosaur Provincial Park, near Brooks, showcases the badlands terrain, desert flora, remnants from Alberta's past when dinosaurs roamed the lush landscape. Alberta has a humid continental climate with cold winters; the province is open to cold arctic weather systems from the north, which produce cold conditions in winter. As the fronts between the air masses shift north and south across Alberta, the temperature can change rapidly. Arctic
Edmonton Transit Service
The Edmonton Transit Service called ETS, is the public transit service owned and operated by the city of Edmonton, Alberta. It operates light rail systems. ETS provides service on buses and light-rail transit within the City of Edmonton limits, in addition to Fort Saskatchewan, Spruce Grove and the Edmonton Garrison at Namao, it provides connections to suburban transit services operated by the City of St. Albert and Strathcona County. ETS provides service to the Edmonton International Airport, while Leduc Transit provides bus service to Leduc. ETS operates an entire fleet of accessible low floor buses, which have been progressively introduced into the system since 1993; these include the 858 40-foot New Flyer D40LF, the 33 60-foot D60LF articulated models. ETS uses the timed-transfer system, where suburban feeder routes run to a transit centre, passengers can transfer to a base route/LRT to the city centre or the university; some feeder routes provide direct express service to and from the city centre.
The Ookspress was a free express route that ferried people from Churchill LRT Station directly to the main NAIT campus that used electric buses. The Ookspress was cancelled when the Metro Line opened on 6 September 2015. A new feature on ETS, Smart buses have since July 2013, seen operating on several routes, the trial routes were 111 which went from West Edmonton Mall to Downtown and 128 which went from Castle Downs to University, This system used 45 buses; as of November 2014, there are 22 routes equipped. Real time departure boards are installed at University Transit Centre as well as West Edmonton Mall Transit Centre, as well as real time bus arrival information on personal computers and mobile data, branded together as ETS LIVE. A mobile app, ETS Live to Go, has been released. Over 750 buses have Smart Bus technology as of May 2016; the buses equipped possess automatic audio visual stop announcers of the next bus stop described by its nearest intersection, a computer aided dispatch which informs the control centre where a bus is, as well as monitor incidents.
Mobile data terminals inform the drivers how to drive a route if they are unfamiliar, as well as if they are late or not. The buses equipped have internal covert cameras to monitor safety. City council has approved funding for Smartbus deployment on all bus routes as of 2019 and 2020. On 4 September 2016, all 928 busses in the ETS fleet had been equipped with Smart bus technology, earlier than planned. Night service began in September 2015, on routes 1, 4, 8, 9 and 512; these buses operate until 3:30 AM. Morning service resumes around 5:00 AM. LRT route night service is provided by Route 512 which stops close to each Capital Line LRT station overnight, from Clareview to Downtown. Other routes end service at varying times. In May 2007, Edmonton Transit Security were appointed Peace Officers under the Alberta Peace Officer Act. Transit Peace Officers can issue tickets for Provincial Statutes and Edmonton bylaws on Transit property. Transit Security uses Ford Taurus police interceptors as their primary transportation, but are seen riding the LRT enforcing bylaws.
Transit Centres in Edmonton serve as hubs which allow people to transfer bus routes or onto the LRT system. These hubs have a heated shelter, have multiple bus bays to accommodate many buses at a time. Abbottsfield Transit Centre Belvedere Transit Centre* Capilano Transit Centre Castle Downs Transit Centre Century Park Transit Centre* Clareview Transit Centre* Coliseum Transit Centre* Eaux Claires Transit Centre Government Centre Transit Centre* Jasper Place Transit Centre Kingsway/Royal Alex Transit Centre* Lakewood Transit Centre Leger Transit Centre Lewis Farms Transit Centre Meadowlark Transit Centre Meadows Transit Centre Millgate Transit Centre Mill Woods Transit Centre Northgate Transit Centre South Campus/Fort Edmonton Park Transit Centre* Southgate Transit Centre* Stadium Transit Centre* University Transit Centre* West Edmonton Mall Transit Centre Westmount Transit Centre* Transit Centre at LRT station ETS numbers its bus routes based on the community they serve, with numbers 1-23 being base routes.
Routes numbered. For example, routes 60 to 79 are located in Mill Woods, while routes 160-179 are located in Castle Downs. Due to a shortage of numbers in allocation of route numbers, there are a number of exceptions. Furthermore, commuter routes have been allocated numbers in the 500's. All routes are serviced by accessible low floor buses. Centennial Garage - bus facility: historic fleet storage. D. L. MacDonald Yard - LRT storage and repair facility. Trolley bus service in Edmonton started on September 24, 1939, operating on route 5 from 101 St/Jasper Ave to 95 St/111 Ave. By the end of October of that year, service had started on another route running to 99 St/Whyte Ave via the Low Level Bridge. In Edmonton, trolley buses were referred to as "trolleys"; the trolley bus system used a mixture of Ohio Brass and K&M Elastic suspension for holding up the overhead wires. The 47 vehic
North Saskatchewan River
The North Saskatchewan River is a glacier-fed river that flows from the Canadian Rockies continental divide east to central Saskatchewan, where it joins with another major river to make up the Saskatchewan River. Its water flows into the Hudson Bay; the Saskatchewan River system is the largest shared between the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Its watershed includes most of Saskatchewan; the North Saskatchewan River has a length of 1,287 kilometres, a drainage area of 122,800 square kilometres. At its end point at Saskatchewan River Forks it has a mean discharge of 245 cubic metres per second; the yearly discharge at the Alberta–Saskatchewan border is more than 7 cubic kilometres. The river begins above 1,800 metres at the toe of the Saskatchewan Glacier in the Columbia Icefield, flows southeast through Banff National Park alongside the Icefields Parkway. At the junction of the David Thompson Highway, it turns northeast for 10 kilometres before switching to a more direct eastern flow for about 30 kilometres.
At this point, it turns north where it arrives at Abraham Lake. Bighorn Dam constricts the north end of Abraham Lake, where the North Saskatchewan emerges to track eastward to Rocky Mountain House. At Rocky Mountain House, the river abruptly turns north again for 100 kilometres where it switches east towards Edmonton, Alberta. In Edmonton, the river passes through the centre of the city in a northeasterly direction and out towards Smoky Lake at which point it changes to the southeast and more to the east as it makes its way to the Alberta–Saskatchewan boundary. From the border, the river flows southeast between North Battleford and Battleford and on in the direction of Saskatoon. About 40 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon, near Langham, the river veers to the northeast where it passes through the City of Prince Albert. About 30 kilometres downstream of Prince Albert, the North Saskatchewan River joins the South Saskatchewan River at Saskatchewan River Forks to become the Saskatchewan River. From there, the river flows east to Tobin Lake and into Manitoba emptying into Lake Winnipeg.
The river course can be divided into five distinct sections. The first, the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, is the smallest area geographically, although the largest in terms of run-off and contributed water flow; the glaciers and perpetual snows of the mountain peaks feed the river year-round. Mountains, with little vegetation, experience fast-melting snow cover; the second section of the river comprises the foothills region. The terrain is rough, with a deeper and more defined valley; this area is well covered with forest and muskeg, run-off into the river is much more constant and stable than in the mountains. From Edmonton to the mouth of the Vermilion River, the North Saskatchewan flows through the plains-parkland divide, with occasional stretches of prairie; the North Saskatchewan River valley parks system. Cutting across Edmonton and the Capital Region; the river runs in a well-defined valley with deep cuts in the landscape. The fourth section, from the Vermilion River to Prince Albert is principally prairie with a few small stretches of timber and secondary forest cover.
The valley of the river is much wider, the river itself spreads out across shallow water and flows over many shifting sand bars. Low-lying, flat areas, border the river for much of this section; the final section of the river, from Prince Albert to the Saskatchewan River Forks, has many rapids. The valley is more shallow than the previous sections of the river, the channel is much better defined. There is little prairie and much tree cover in this section; the Bridge River Ash is in the vicinity of the North Saskatchewan River, which erupted from the Mount Meager massif in southwestern British Columbia about 2350 years ago. The river is shown on a Hudson's Bay Company map from 1760, labeled as the Beaver River, its Cree name is kisiskâciwanisîpiy. From this name is derived the name Saskatchewan, used as well for the South Saskatchewan River and the Saskatchewan River, the province of that name, its Blackfoot name is omaka-ty. The section of the North Saskatchewan river that falls within the Banff National Park boundaries has been designated a Canadian Heritage River in 1989, for its importance in the development of western Canada.
The river demarcates the prairie–parkland divide for much of its course and acted as a natural boundary between plains Blackfoot and woodland Cree First Nations people for thousands of years. With the westward expansion of the fur trade spearheaded by the North West Company and followed by the Hudson's Bay Company, the river became an important transportation route for fur trade brigades' York boats, to which it was well suited as it follows an eastern trend toward Hudsons Bay, the entry point for the HBC into Canada. Many fur trade posts were constructed on the river, including Fort Edmonton and Rocky Mountain House, the uppermost post reached by canoe navigation; the river's importance continued after the amalgamation of the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company. The river was plied by a number of steamboats right up to WWI, although for everyday freight the growing web of railway lines in the western prairies replaced them; the river was used commercially for many years - to carry flatboats of settlers goods and construction materials downstream from Edmonton, to float thousands of logs in the annual log drive downstream to Edmonton prior to WWI, as a source of ice blocks for
109 Street, Edmonton
109 Street is an arterial road in central Edmonton, Canada. It takes travelers out of Downtown to the south to Old Strathcona, to the north to the Kingsway area, it passes several Edmonton landmarks including the Garneau Theatre, Alberta Legislature Building, MacEwan University, RCMP "K" Division Headquarters, Kingsway Mall. It is a one-way street, from 97 Avenue to Saskatchewan Drive, to cross the North Saskatchewan River on the narrow High Level Bridge. Before Edmonton's amalgamation with Strathcona in 1912, the Edmonton portion was known as 9th Street while the Strathcona portion was known as 5th Street W. 109 Street between Whyte Avenue and Kingsway is part of the original alignment of Highway 2 through Edmonton, the designation was moved to Whitemud Drive in the 1980s. List of neighbourhoods 109 Street runs through, in order from south to north: Pleasantview Parkallen Allendale McKernan Queen Alexandra Garneau Downtown Oliver Queen Mary Park Central McDougall This is a list of major intersections, starting at the south end of 109 Street.
The entire route is in Edmonton. List of streets in Edmonton Transportation in Edmonton
Canadian Pacific Railway
The Canadian Pacific Railway known as CP Rail between 1968 and 1996, known as Canadian Pacific is a historic Canadian Class I railroad incorporated in 1881. The railroad is owned by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001. Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, it owns 20,000 kilometres of track all across Canada and into the United States, stretching from Montreal to Vancouver, as far north as Edmonton, its rail network serves Minneapolis-St. Paul, Detroit and New York City in the United States; the railway was first built between eastern Canada and British Columbia between 1881 and 1885, fulfilling a promise extended to British Columbia when it entered Confederation in 1871. It was Canada's first transcontinental railway, but no longer reaches the Atlantic coast. A freight railway, the CPR was for decades the only practical means of long-distance passenger transport in most regions of Canada, was instrumental in the settlement and development of Western Canada.
The CPR became one of the largest and most powerful companies in Canada, a position it held as late as 1975. Its primary passenger services were eliminated in 1986, after being assumed by Via Rail Canada in 1978. A beaver was chosen as the railway's logo in honor of Sir Donald A Smith who had risen from Factor to Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company over a lengthy career in the beaver fur trade. Smith was a principal financier of the C. P. R. Staking much of his personal wealth. In 1885, he drove the last spike to complete the transcontinental line; the company acquired two American lines in 2009: the Dakota and Eastern Railroad and the Iowa and Eastern Railroad. The trackage of the IC&E was at one time part of CP subsidiary Soo Line and predecessor line The Milwaukee Road; the combined DME/ICE system spanned North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Iowa, as well as two short stretches into two other states, which included a line to Kansas City, a line to Chicago and regulatory approval to build a line into the Powder River Basin of Wyoming.
It is publicly traded on both the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CP. Its U. S. headquarters are in Minneapolis. Together with the Canadian Confederation, the creation of the Canadian Pacific Railway was a task undertaken as the National Dream by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, he was helped by Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt, the owner of the North Western Coal and Navigation Company. British Columbia, a four-month sea voyage away from the East Coast, had insisted upon a land transport link to the East as a condition for joining Confederation; the government however proposed to build a railway linking the Pacific province to the Eastern provinces within 10 years of 20 July 1871. Macdonald saw it as essential to the creation of a unified Canadian nation that would stretch across the continent. Moreover, manufacturing interests in Quebec and Ontario wanted access to raw materials and markets in Western Canada; the first obstacle to its construction was political.
The logical route went through the city of Chicago, Illinois. In addition to this was the difficulty of building a railroad through the Canadian Rockies. To ensure this routing, the government offered huge incentives including vast grants of land in the West. In 1873, Sir John A. Macdonald and other high-ranking politicians, bribed in the Pacific Scandal, granted federal contracts to Hugh Allan's Canada Pacific Railway Company rather than to David Lewis Macpherson's Inter-Ocean Railway Company, thought to have connections to the American Northern Pacific Railway Company; because of this scandal, the Conservative Party was removed from office in 1873. The new Liberal prime minister, Alexander Mackenzie, ordered construction of segments of the railway as a public enterprise under the supervision of the Department of Public Works led by Sandford Fleming. Surveying was carried out during the first years of a number of alternative routes in this virgin territory followed by construction of a telegraph along the lines, agreed upon.
The Thunder Bay section linking Lake Superior to Winnipeg was commenced in 1875. By 1880, around 1,000 kilometres was nearly complete across the troublesome Canadian Shield terrain, with trains running on only 500 kilometres of track. With Macdonald's return to power on 16 October 1878, a more aggressive construction policy was adopted. Macdonald confirmed that Port Moody would be the terminus of the transcontinental railway, announced that the railway would follow the Fraser and Thompson rivers between Port Moody and Kamloops. In 1879, the federal government floated bonds in London and called for tenders to construct the 206 km section of the railway from Yale, British Columbia, to Savona's Ferry, on Kamloops Lake; the contract was awarded to Andrew Onderdonk, whose men started work on 15 May 1880. After the completion of that section, Onderdonk received contracts to build between Yale and Port Moody, between Savona's Ferry and Eagle Pass. On 21 October 1880, a new syndicate, unrelated to Hugh Allan's, signed
High Level Bridge Streetcar
The High Level Bridge Streetcar is a historic streetcar ride over the High Level Bridge in Edmonton, Alberta. It travels from the Strathcona Streetcar Barn & Museum, just north of the Strathcona Farmers Market, in Old Strathcona, to Jasper Plaza south of Jasper Avenue, between 109 Street and 110 Street, in downtown, with three intermediate stops, it operates between the Victoria Day weekend in May, Thanksgiving weekend in October. It is operated by the Edmonton Radial Railway Society, which operates five more streetcars on a second line in the river valley at Fort Edmonton Park. Starting from the Strathcona Streetcar Barn & Museum it travels on the former CP Rail line in a north west direction, it first passes the Edmonton Railway Station Museum at present-day 105 Street. After a level crossing stop at 107 Street, the streetcar goes under the Saskatchewan Drive, 109 Street, Walterdale Hill intersection. While turning north, the middle stop is in the neighbourhood of Garneau at 90 Avenue, before getting on the High Level Bridge.
After travelling high over the surface of the North Saskatchewan River, it continues over River Valley Road, 97 Avenue, entering the Ribbon of Steel multi-use corridor. The Ribbon of Steel is a corridor designated by Alberta Infrastructure and the City of Edmonton for the preservation of streetcar rail in Edmonton, to provide a running/cycling path between 109 Street and 110 Street, from 97 Avenue to Jasper Avenue; the first stop on the Ribbon of Steel is the Grandin stop, with walking access to the Grandin LRT Station, the Legislature grounds. The northern terminus of the High Level Bridge Streetcar ride is at Jasper Plaza, just south of Jasper Avenue; the streetcar system that existed in Edmonton until 1951 ran through the downtown core, including down Jasper Avenue. The former rail line continued north. In the near future, the Edmonton Radial Railway Society hopes to extend the line south towards Whyte Avenue for a new terminus. To do this, the rail crossing on Gateway Boulevard will have to be reconstructed.
During summer festivals, such as the Fringe, service is extended to accommodate the increase in crowds. Three restored streetcars make up the fleet of ERRS cars based at the High Level Bridge Streetcar line. 1912 St. Louis Car Company - Edmonton Radial Railway car 33 1921 Umebachi/Sharyo - Nankai Electric Railway tram #247 1947 M&MTB W6-class tram - Public Transport Corporation tram #930 Media related to High Level Bridge Streetcar at Wikimedia Commons "Edmonton Radial Rail Society"
Trolley buses in Edmonton
The Edmonton trolley bus system formed part of the public transport network in Edmonton, Canada between 1939 and 2009. Operated by Edmonton Transit System, the system had, at its peak, a fleet of 137 trolley buses, a total route length of 127 km. Trolley bus service in Edmonton started on September 24, 1939, operating on route 5 from 101 St/Jasper Ave to 95 St/111 Ave. By the end of October of that year, service had started on another route running to 99 St/Whyte Ave via the Low Level Bridge. In Edmonton, trolley buses were referred to as "trolleys"; the trolley bus system used a mixture of Ohio Brass and K&M Elastic suspension for holding up the overhead wires. The 49 vehicles remaining in use in 2008 were from an order of 100 manufactured in 1981–82 by Brown Boveri & Company, using bodies and chassis supplied to BBC by GM; these 100 vehicles for Edmonton were the only trolley buses built with the GM "New Look" body, whereas more than 44,000 motor buses were built to that design. In 2007, a low-floor model of trolley bus was leased from Coast Mountain Bus Company, Vancouver's bus operating company, for a one-year period, for testing of possible benefits of low-floor trolley buses over hybrid diesel buses.
During its time in Edmonton the bus was numbered 6000, but its Vancouver number, 2242, was restored when it returned to there. On June 18, 2008, city council voted 7 to 6 in favour of phasing out the trolley bus system in 2009 and 2010. However, city council decided in April 2009 that trolley bus service would be discontinued earlier than planned, in order to reduce the city's expected $35 million deficit in 2009; the last day of service was May 2, 2009. Cromdale Garage - Edmonton Radial Railway trolley bus / streetcar barn bus facility and historic fleet storage. Has since been demolished, site being repurposed by ETS. Ferrier Garage - trolley bus barn. Mitchell Garage - trolley bus barn. Westwood Garage - trolley bus barn. Strathcona Garage - bus / trolley bus garage. At least five of Edmonton's 1982 BBC HR150G trolley buses have been preserved by museums or museum-type groups; those at museums are No. 125, at the Seashore Trolley Museum. 181, at the Illinois Railway Museum. 189, at the Trolleybus Museum at Sandtoft.
No. 132 has been preserved by the Transit Museum Society in Vancouver. In addition, a BBC is expected to be added to the City of Edmonton's collection of historic vehicles, which includes three vintage trolley buses: Pullman 113 and CCF-Brills 148 and 202. No. 199 has been preserved by the Reynolds Alberta Museum in Alberta. No. 152 was expected to be preserved for the future public transit museum in Bulgaria. A group of enthusiasts managed to raise the $10.000 needed for its purchase, but the trolleybus had been scrapped in early 2018. History of Edmonton List of trolley bus systems in Canada St. Albert Transit Strathcona County Transit Media related to Trolleybuses in Edmonton at Wikimedia Commons "Trolleybus city: Edmonton". Trolleymotion. Edmonton database / photo gallery and Edmonton trolleybus list at Urban Electric Transit – in various languages, including English
