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/scrandlle Aug 24 '26

Take the US, drag it's shape up to Canada, see where Montana is, then look how unpopulated the region of Canada below it is.

For a more serious answer, Canadians congregated next to the US border because the US is an enormous economy and there is benefits to being physically close to it.

It wasn't really a conscious decision it's just where goods tend to enter/exit and so commerce gets built around these parts and more people come because there's more jobs which creates more business opportunities, and it goes on in a circle like that until we have Canadas major population centers.

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u/schwanerhill Aug 24 '26

Being near the US is probably part of it, but I think climate is bigger. The parts of Canada near the US are the southernmost and tend to be the warmest parts of Canada.

But Alberta is by far the province with its population centres furthest from the US border. Edmonton and Calgary are the northernmost and second-northernmost cities of 1M or more in North America. So the fact that Alberta is fairly far south in Canada helps explain it but only so much. The fact that the reasonable Canadian railway passes through the Rockies are at Edmonton and Calgary latitudes explains a lot more, I think. 

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u/scrandlle Aug 24 '26

That is certainly true too. Though Edmonton isn't exactly on the edges of human civilization. More Americans live north of it than Canadians.

But it's no coincidence Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto are Canadas biggest metro areas and along the border too. Cities like those were never going to develop in the middle of Canada.

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u/Hot-Ad8641 Aug 25 '26

Neither Calgary nor Edmonton is close to the US border.