Where in the World...

Edmonton is the capital city of the province of Alberta in Western Canada. For those of you with atlases, look at 53° 32' North, 113° 32' West. For telephone-based contact, use the "1" country code and "403" area code.

You may also notice that it's far north, implying either an insanity or hardiness on the part of anyone who stays here after a typical winter. For the owner of an Alpine, it means 4-5 months of storage (usually), followed by summers with days that have 20+ hours of sunlight (or at least not darkness).

Where in Canada...	Government of Canada

Canada is the second- largest country, by land/sea mass, in the world. It is also sparsely populated, holding about 28 million people. Edmonton is in one of the "Prairie Provinces," known mostly for vast spaces of agriculture and forest. For an Alpine owner, the space means long stretches of lightly-used roads. Alpines may be few and far between, but more common than in most places because of our British Commonwealth roots. They are also often recognized as a "haven't seen once of those since..." item for the same reason.

Where in Alberta...	Government of Alberta Alberta Regional Map Alberta.com Searchable Map

Alberta is a big province. With only 2+ million people, there's a lot of room. And a lot of varied terrain, with the Rockies to the west, foothills east of them easing onto flat prairie. In the south, it's flat and dry, while up north there are huge tracts of bush and forest.

Plenty of prehistoric animals and plants lived and died here, their decomposing bits turning into a black, gassy goo called Oil. In the southern 2/3 of the province the oil lies in cracks between layers of sediment and can be pumped right out, while in the north it's mixed with sand, and is first heated with pressurized steam before being extracted. Once out it's sent to any number of places in the east-central portion of the province to be turned into anything that needs a lot of (hydro-)carbon.

For an Alpine owner, the open and varied roads encourage a lot of driving. The availability of so much oil (and other petro products) so close should be well-appreciated by any BritCar owner...

Where in Edmonton...	The City of Edmonton

Edmonton is a smallish city of 650,000+ people located along the major east-west river in Alberta, the North Saskatchewan. The river is old, cut deep and now relatively dry, so there are hills and winding roads enough to challenge a gearbox.

I live in an older neighbourhood, 5 (or less) minutes from downtown, and just off a mostly-complete ring of freeways. Going nearly anywhere involves crossing or following the (largely undeveloped) river valley.