Battle of Alberta

The Battle of Alberta is a term applied to the intense rivalry between the Canadian cities of Calgary, the province's most populous city (since 1976), and Edmonton, the capital of the province of Alberta (since 1905). Most often it is used to describe sporting events between the two cities, although this is not exclusive as the rivalry predates organized sports in Alberta.

Harvey Locke identifies a longstanding cultural divide in Alberta between the centre and north on one hand and the south on the other as a recurring theme in the province's history going back to pre-contact Aboriginal cultures. The peoples of the boreal forest, and to a lesser extent, the aspen parkland, led a subarctic lifestyle which involved trapping fur-bearing animals and travelling by canoe, which made the region a natural fit for the fur trade. By contrast the plains cultures on the prairie to the south relied on the buffalo. The predominant political force on the prairie during the fur trade, the Blackfoot Confederacy, would not allow the Hudson's Bay Company to establish itself within Blackfoot territory, preferring to ride to Edmonton House (established 1795) to trade. Around this time some Cree and allied peoples (the Iron Confederacy) pushed south onto the plains, and became rivals of the Blackfoot. By the 1810s, explorer Peter Fidler identified the Battle River as a disputed frontier between the two groups. Locke asserts that the lack of an HBC presence in the south set the stage for very different patterns of settlement in the different regions. Calgary was founded as a North-West Mounted Police fort and was not much of a settlement at all until the mid-1880s when the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) suddenly shifted its planned route across Western Canada from a northern one (via Edmonton) to a more southerly path (via Calgary). Therefore, the economic and cultural origins of Calgary and its region, were created up by the NWMP and the CPR, not the HBC. Because of the CPR line, Calgary's agricultural hinterland was settled much sooner, mostly by people of British, and particularly Scottish, origins but it also has an American influence because of the ranching culture brought into the region by American cowboys. By contrast, Edmonton's hinterland is marked by a French Canadian and Métis presence, and was predominantly occupied by people of non-British European origins. In particular, the region just to the east of Edmonton, Kalyna Country, is Canada's oldest and largest area of Ukrainian settlement.

Following the debate over the CPR, the next important contest between the two cities was to determine which would become Alberta's capital city when the province was created in 1905. By this time, two new transcontinental railways had been built, both via Edmonton, under the guidance of a federal Liberal government that had replaced the Conservative government which had overseen construction of the CPR. Equally important, the Liberals overhauled Canada's immigration system. Whereas the Conservatives had endeavoured to restrict Western settlement to British immigrants, the Liberals had encouraged immigration from other parts of Europe, such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The result was that Edmonton and northern Alberta became much more ethnically diverse than Calgary and southern Alberta, occurring at a time when prejudice against non-British ethnic groups (in particular, Slavic peoples) was commonplace among those of British extraction, adding yet another layer of ill will between north and south.

Thus by the turn of the century, the differing political leanings of Calgary and Edmonton that persist to this day (that is, Calgary being quite conservative by Canadian standards and Edmonton tending to be more progressive) were already well established. Not surprisingly then, when the federal Liberal government admitted Alberta to Confederation in 1905, they named Edmonton the capital. However, the Calgary elite were even more infuriated when Edmonton's neighbour, the then-separate city of Strathcona, won the right to host the University of Alberta (see below).

The final important rivalry between the cities during Alberta's early years was over economic leadership, especially in the Oil patch. Calgary's nearby Turner Valley deposits were discovered in 1914, decades before Edmonton's Leduc #1 field in 1947. In part this accounts for the much larger concentration of head offices of large corporations in Calgary. Edmonton's business community contains more private corporations working in oil and gas, consulting and smaller operations. Edmonton is also the research and manufacturing centre of the Canadian petroleum industry, and roughly 80% of Canada's oil production is refined and sent to market through Refinery Row, located just east of the city in Strathcona County.

Today, although the rivalry is generally expressed only during sporting events, there remains an 'unspoken' friendly rivalry between residents that remains on a subtle level.

The rivalry also extends outside of team sports to international events. Both cities have hosted numerous national and international championships and other tournaments, often in a spirit of one-upmanship: there is constant need for local politicians to prove that their city is "world class" or at least better than the other.

The constant one-upmanship of the two cities in this field has receded in recent years, and they cooperated in a successful joint bid to host the 2012 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships (WJIHC).