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The grainfields, some of them tilled in fertile grey-black loam, grow some of the world's finest cereals. Alberta wheat has won 16 international championships. In the rich and sparsely-settled Peace River district, wheat grows 73 bushels to an acre (1950 national average 17.1), and the region is fertile enough to support another million farmers, more than the province's present population. Canneries have moved to southern Alberta, where Canada's sugar-beet industry is centered and the country's tastiest melons and vegetables are grown on irrigated fields.
Coal & Scenery. The Rocky Mountains, along the southwest border, are another of the province's great assets. Three-quarters of Canada's coal, one-seventh of the world's known coal reserve, lie in the Rockies' foothills. The wooded slopes bear 15,000 square miles of tall Douglas firs, one of the finest timbers. The mountains yield yet another resource: scenic beauty that brings a million visitors a year to such playgrounds as Banff, Jasper and
Waterton Lakes for the bracing air, spectacular glacial lakes and year-round skiing in the perpetual snows.
Even ten years ago, Alberta's people had the highest farm incomes in Canada, based on record-price crops. The whole rich province seemed already on the crest of prosperity when the oil boom struck. To Alberta's farm folk, a God-fearing collection of Baptists, Mormons and other practitioners of strict oldtime religion, the surfeit of bounties was a well-deserved miracle.
Alberta's Premier Ernest Charles Manning, 43, heartily approves the strong spiritual note in his province's reaction to its added wealth. Said a wheat farmer's wife in Medicine Hat: "God knew that Mr. Manning would use the oil wisely, so He let it be discovered."
Manning's government is the nearest approach to a theocracy in the Western Hemisphere. The slight (5 ft. 9 in., 135 Ibs.) premier, who practices his own brand of Baptist-fundamentalist evangelism, has been blending religion and politics throughout his public career. Says Manning: "Religion isn't to be kept on a shelf and only taken down on Sundays." A well-thumbed Bible is always open on his desk in Edmonton's Parliament Building. In every public speech, religion, not politics, is the dominant theme. "I abhor the word politician," Manning has repeatedly told Albertans. "I am not here by choice. I would much rather concentrate on my Bible work."
Money & Religion. His interest in the Bible, however, actually got Manning into politics. As a farm boy of 17, he heard a broadcast sermon by William ("Bible Bill") Aberhart, a Calgary evangelist with a persuasive social message. Bible Bill later became premier of Alberta as head of a Social Credit party that promised to pay a $25 monthly dividend to every citizen. Manning had joined Aberhart's Prophetic Bible Institute as a student and helped his chief sell Alberta on the fuzzy Social Credit theory by stumping the province, singing hymns and reciting prayers at political rallies. When Aberhart was elected, Manning, at 26, became a cabinet minister; he took over as premier when Aberhart died in 1943.