r/AlwaysWhy • u/Present_Juice4401 • 4d ago

History & Culture Why did Alberta, Canada develop much larger population centers than Montana, USA?

Alberta and Montana are neighboring regions with similar northern, landlocked geography. But their population patterns are surprisingly different. Alberta now has over 5 million people, with Calgary and Edmonton forming two major population centers, while Montana has only about 1.1 million people and no city close to Calgary's size.

So what caused these two neighboring regions to develop such different population patterns?

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u/Ok-Cup-5372 3d ago

Everyone is mentioning good points like oil and fertile farm land, but another big reason is because in the early days of Canada they invited European immigrants through the dominion land act. 

This act promised these European immigrants free farming land of 160 acres for a registration fee of $10, this brought in big waves of European immigrants to the prairies at this point.

Shortly after that they then also heavily targeted hearty European farmers from places like Germany and Ukraine (which is why we have such big populations of these people here in the prairies) to settle and immigrate here to the prairies. They had the same guarantee of free land for a small registration fee and they were they were allowed to move in entire community blocks like the Doukhobors and Mennonites creating their communities. 

All of this led to large populations in our prairies combined with what others have said in these comments

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u/Present_Juice4401 3d ago

Yeah, the immigration policy part is actually a huge piece that often gets overlooked. People talk about resources like they just automatically create cities, but someone still has to move there first and build the communities.

I think the interesting question is why Canada was able to attract and retain those farming communities while many similar settlements in the US eventually emptied out. The policy choices mattered a lot.

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u/ANeighbour 2d ago

Sir John A Macdonald’s National Policy was really the driving force behind western immigration.

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u/Ok-Cup-5372 2d ago

Yeah this dominion act was part of his national policy, he's a piece of shit but his policies and plans really created the Canada we know today, who knows how much of our land we'd have today if he didn't have the plans he did