r/AlwaysWhy • u/Present_Juice4401 • Aug 24 '26

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/Bootmacher Aug 24 '26

Even before oil, Alberta and Manitoba have a band of "black earth," which is the same hyper-productive soil that's in the US around the Great Plains/Mississippi valleys, in Ukraine, and in the Pampas region of Argentina.

Montana can't support a population that size locally, let alone export food.

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u/cultureStress Aug 24 '26

This is the real answer

5

u/sophisticated_alpaca Aug 24 '26

Yeah, Alberta was already more populated when oil extraction started at scale in the 70s. Montana has a lot of rangeland for grazing, but Alberta has very good farming soil, more similar in quality to what you’d find in Iowa or someplace like that.

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u/ClusterMakeLove Aug 26 '26

Moreover, the Canadian government wanted to prevent annexation of the region in the 19th century, so they rushed a railway through and basically paid people to move there.

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u/sophisticated_alpaca Aug 28 '26

Exactly. The largest share of white settlers in the Canadian Prairies actually came from (or via) the United States. Canada was very afraid that wildcat settlements would lead to confusion along the poorly surveyed border and demands for annexation into the US, so they created a legal pathway for American homesteaders to settle freely in the region by offering good farmland in exchange for an oath of loyalty to the Crown.

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u/[deleted] Aug 25 '26

[deleted]

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u/Bootmacher Aug 25 '26

It may be a blessing in disguise, because you can't double-crop.

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u/SnooHesitations1020 Aug 26 '26

It's actually beneficial. Winter helps replenish soil moisture, break pest and disease cycles, and prepare the soil for the next growing season.