Alcohol Abuse and Dependence in Edmonton, Canada

• Main Authors: Bland, Roger c., Newman,, stephen c., orn, helene
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University PressNew York, NY 1992
• Subjects: Northwest Territories; Canada; British Columbia
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195050905.003.0007; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52153277/isbn-9780195050905-book-part-7.pdf

Abstract Alberta, the westernmost of Canada’s three prairie provinces, became a province in 1905. It is bounded on the north by the Northwest Territories, and on the south, at the 49th parallel, by the state of Montana. The province is landlocked, the eastern boundary is with Saskatchewan, and the western with British Columbia, at the Rocky Mountains. The area is 661,185 sq.km., with a north-south dimension of 1221 km. and an east-west dimension of 650 km. In the 1981 national census the population was 2.2 million. Edmonton, the capital city of the province, is situated centrally and has a population of over half a million. Following the Second World War and with the discovery of oil and gas deposits, the provincial economy expanded rapidly, but agriculture is still significant to Alberta. From the early 1970s to 1982, oil and gas developments increased rapidly and there was a 37.5 percent growth in the provincial population from 1971 to 1981. Since 1982, there has been a marked downturn in the economy, particularly the natural resource sector, but also in agriculture, and the unemployment rate has gone from less than 3 percent in the late 1970s to about 12 percent currently.