St. Albert is a suburban city in Alberta, Canada, next to the Sturgeon River, northwest of the City of Edmonton, the provincial capital. It was originally settled as a Métis community, and is now the second-largest city in the Edmonton Metropolitan Region. St. Albert first received its town status in 1904 and was reached by the Canadian Northern Railway in 1906. Originally separated from Edmonton by several miles of farmland, the 1980s expansion of Edmonton's city limits placed St. Albert immediately adjacent to the larger city on St. Albert's southern and eastern sides.

St. Albert was founded in 1861 as a Métis settlement by Father Albert Lacombe, OMI, who built a small chapel, the Father Lacombe Chapel, in the Sturgeon River valley. The chapel still stands to this day on Mission Hill in St. Albert. The original settlement was named Saint Albert by Bishop Alexandre-Antonin Taché, OMI, after Lacombe's name saint, Saint Albert of Louvain. Originally, although Lacombe had intended to found the mission at Lac Ste. Anne, the soil proved infertile, thus he moved the settlement to what would become St. Albert. This location offered several advantages, notably its easy access to supplies of wood and water, in addition to its excellent soil, it being a regular stopping-point for First Nations peoples on their travels, and its proximity to Fort Edmonton, where the priests could purchase necessary supplies and minister to Catholic workers. A few years later, a group of Grey Nuns would follow Lacombe from Lac Ste. Anne. More Métis from Lac Ste. Anne arrived in 1863 and, by December 1864, the population was roughly 300. In 1870, localised outbreaks of smallpox had spread northward into St. Albert, killing 320 of the area's then-900 residents.

St. Albert was previously the site of two Indian residential schools as part of the Canadian Residential School System. The St. Albert Indian Residential School ("Youville") was located on Mission Hill within the St. Albert city limits and was operated by the Roman Catholic Church from October 22, 1873, to June 30, 1948, after being relocated from the Lac Ste. Anne Mission, the site of its original founding. The Edmonton Indian Residential School ("Poundmaker") was located approximately 6 km east of St. Albert's current downtown area, and was operated by the Methodist Church from March 1, 1924, to June 30, 1968, later becoming the home of the Poundmaker Lodge rehabilitation centre. Between the two schools, 53 students are known to have died under unknown or dubious circumstances while in attendance. A healing garden, named Kâkesimokamik, was opened on September 15, 2017, as part of the truth-and-reconciliation process between the city of St. Albert and survivors (and their descendants) of the residential school system.

During the late 20th and early 21st centuries, it was mistakenly assumed that the community had been named after St. Albert the Great, due to incorrectly-printed information in the 1985 history of St. Albert, The Black Robe's Vision, published by amateur historians of the St. Albert Historical Society. This led to the City of St. Albert erroneously promoting St. Albert the Great as the community's "patron saint", even erecting a statue of the incorrect saint in the downtown area. However, the misconception was not corrected until 2008. The original chapel has since become an historic site, staffed with historical interpreters, and is open to the public during the summer season.

Also located in St. Albert is the St. Albert Grain Elevator Park, featuring two historic grain elevators; the original grain elevator was constructed in 1906 by the Brackman-Ker Milling Company, with the other being built later, in 1929, by The Alberta Wheat Pool company. The original 1906 elevator was originally red in colour, but has faded with time to a metallic silver. There is also a reproduction of the original 1909 railway station housed at Grain Elevator Park, erected in 2005. On Madonna Drive stands the Little White School House, which is open to the public. Arts and Heritage – St. Albert maintains the site, as well as the Grain Elevators and other heritage buildings, in addition to other sites under-restoration in the city. In June 2009, the City Council approved a multi-staged plan for the heritage sites, featuring the restoration of the grain elevators and the opening of both a Métis and French Canadian farm on adjacent lots by the River.

St. Albert has an active and skilled labour force with a low unemployment rate of 4.3%. In 2011, 67.5% of the 40,560 adults aged 25 years and over in St. Albert had completed some form of postsecondary education, compared with 59.6% at the national level.

Of the population aged 25 years and over in St. Albert, 31.7% had a university certificate or degree. An additional 24.3% had a college diploma and 11.6% had a trades certificate.

The share of the adult population that had completed a high school diploma as their highest level of educational attainment was 23.7%, and 8.8% had completed neither high school nor any postsecondary certificates, diplomas or degrees.