Alberta Culture Days (formerly Alberta Arts Days) is a three-day, province wide celebration of the arts and culture. [1] The first three years of Alberta Arts Days occurred during the third Friday, Saturday and Sunday of September before shifting to align with the pan-Canadian Culture Days. [2] The purpose of Alberta Culture Days is to showcase the province's artists, art organizations and cultural industries, encourage Albertans and its visitors to engage in the arts, and promote the importance of arts and culture as part of a prosperous and vibrant province. [3] [4]
The first Alberta Arts Days occurred in 1974 during a three-day arts celebration in Red Deer, Alberta and coincided with the creation of Alberta's first Ministry of Culture, but was not implemented into an annual event. [5]
In 2008, Alberta Arts Days was reinitiated by the province's Ministry of Culture and Community Spirit. Governed by The Spirit of Alberta, Alberta's cultural policy, Alberta Arts Days helps the Ministry achieve one of its stated goals to "Ensure Albertans, throughout the province, have access to a wide range of cultural experiences and opportunities." [6] Albertans are encouraged to plan arts related events during the weekend, while others incorporate an artistic element to a project or event that is already planned.
The event's name was changed to Alberta Culture Days in 2012. [7]
Alberta is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta borders British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Territories to the north, and the U.S. state of Montana to the south. It is one of the only two landlocked provinces in Canada, with Saskatchewan being the other. The eastern part of the province is occupied by the Great Plains, while the western part borders the Rocky Mountains. The province has a predominantly continental climate but experiences quick temperature changes due to air aridity. Seasonal temperature swings are less pronounced in western Alberta due to occasional Chinook winds.
Edgar Peter Lougheed was a Canadian lawyer and Progressive Conservative politician who served as the tenth premier of Alberta from 1971 to 1985, presiding over a period of reform and economic growth.
The culture of Alberta refers to the art, customs, and traditions of the people of Alberta. Alberta entered into Confederation in 1905, placing her in a tie with Saskatchewan as the country's second youngest province. Despite her short history, the province possesses a rich culture. The vastness of the land and variation of geography – which includes mountains, foothills, grassland, parkland, forest, and rockland – have served as important sources of creative inspiration across all art forms. Alberta's primary industries of farming, ranching, and petroleum also play a major part in the province's culture and identity.
The Alberta Alliance was a right-wing provincial political party in Alberta, Canada. Many of its members were supporters of the defunct Canadian Alliance federal political party and its predecessor, the Reform Party of Canada. Members also joined from similar provincial fringe parties like the Alberta First Party, the Alberta Party and Social Credit. Alliance supporters tended to view themselves as "true conservatives," and believed the Progressive Conservative governments of Premiers Ralph Klein and Ed Stelmach were out of touch with the needs of Albertans.
Stephen Mandel is a Canadian politician and leader of the Alberta Party from 2018 to 2019. He previously served as an Alberta cabinet minister from 2014 to 2015 and as mayor of Edmonton, Alberta for three terms from 2004 to 2013. Prior to being mayor, he was a councillor for three years.
Franco-Albertans are francophone residents of the Canadian province of Alberta. Franco-Albertans is a term primarily used to denote the province's francophone residents. In the 2016 Canadian Census, there were 86,705 Albertans that stated their mother tongue was French.
The Battle of Alberta is a term applied to the intense rivalry between the Canadian cities of Calgary, the province's most populous city, and Edmonton, the capital of the province of Alberta. Most often it is used to describe sporting events between the two cities, although this is not exclusive as the rivalry predates organized sports in Alberta.
Education in Alberta is provided mainly through funding from the provincial government. The earliest form of formal education in Alberta is usually preschool which is not mandatory and is then followed by the partially-mandatory kindergarten to Grade 12. This is managed by Alberta Education which has divided the province into 379 school authorities. Higher education in the province is managed by Alberta Advanced Education.
By the arrangements of the Canadian federation, Canada's monarchy operates in Alberta as the core of the province's Westminster-style parliamentary democracy. As such, the Crown within Alberta's jurisdiction is referred to as the Crown in Right of Alberta, His Majesty in Right of Alberta, or The King in Right of Alberta. The Constitution Act, 1867, however, leaves many royal duties in Alberta specifically assigned to the sovereign's viceroy, the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta, whose direct participation in governance is limited by the conventional stipulations of constitutional monarchy.
Manmeet Singh Bhullar was a Canadian politician and Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta who represented the constituency of Calgary-Greenway as a Progressive Conservative. He served as a cabinet minister from 2011 until the defeat of the Progressive Conservative government in 2015. He was widely seen as a rising star in the Progressive Conservative caucus. Bhullar was killed when he was struck by a tractor trailer on a road when he went to help a stranded motorist on November 23, 2015.
Higher education in Alberta refers to the post secondary education system for the province of Alberta. The Ministry of Advanced Education in Alberta oversees educational delivery through universities, publicly funded colleges, technical institutions, and private colleges. These institutions offer a variety of academic and vocational pursuits. Students have access to post-secondary options through most regions of Alberta, and a developed articulation system allows for increased student mobility.
Alberta Health Services (AHS) is the single health authority for the Canadian province of Alberta and the "largest integrated provincial health care system" in Canada. Headquartered in Edmonton, AHS delivers medical care on behalf of the Government of Alberta's Ministry of Health. It operates 850 facilities throughout the province, including hospitals, clinics, continuing care facilities, mental health facilities and community health sites, that provide a variety of programs and services. AHS is the largest employer in the province of Alberta. In 2019, AHS served 4.3 million Albertans with a staff of 125,000 staff and 10,000 physicians, and an annual budget of $15.365 billion. Sean Chilton is the Acting President and CEO of AHS and reports to Dr. John Cowell, the AHS Official Administrator. The Official Administrator is accountable to the Minister of Health and the Premier.
Alberta Views is a Calgary, Alberta regional magazine, established in 1997, that covers political, social and cultural issues in the province of Alberta. It is published 10 times annually and its monthly print run was 15,000 copies by 2016. Its monthly readership in 2016 was 76,000. Alberta Views was named Canadian Magazine of the Year at the 2009 National Magazine Awards. John Ralston Saul has called Alberta Views "the new model for what a magazine can be in Canada."
The Western Canadian Music Awards (WCMAs) is an annual awards event for music in the western portion of Canada. The awards are provided by the Western Canada Music Alliance, which consists of six member music industry organizations from British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Yukon, and The Northwest Territories.
Edmonton Expo 2017 was a proposed bid to host an Expo in 2017 in the city of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, during the sesquicentennial of Canada.
The Edmonton Heritage Festival is a three-day festival honouring Alberta's cultural heritage and cultural diversity, which is held annually over the Civic Holiday weekend in William Hawrelak Park in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Rajan Sawhney is a Canadian politician from the United Conservative Party in Alberta. She was elected in the 2019 Alberta general election to represent the electoral district of Calgary-North West in the 30th Alberta Legislature. On April 30, 2019, she was appointed to be the Minister of Community & Social Services in the Executive Council of Alberta. On July 8, 2021, she was shuffled into the Minister of Transportation.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Alberta is part of an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The province of Alberta has the third-most cases of COVID-19 in Canada, behind only Ontario and Quebec.
Terrance James Houle is an Internationally recognized Canadian interdisciplinary artist and member of the Kainai Nation and ancestry from the Sandy Bay Reservation, Manitoba. His Mother is Maxine WeaselFat from the Kainai Nation and Father Donald Vernon Houle from Sandy Bay Reservation in Manitoba, they are both 3rd generation Residential School attendees & reside on the Blood reservation in Southern Alberta, Canada. His work ranges from subversive to humorous absurdity to solemn and poetic artistic expressions. His work often relates to the physical body as it investigates issues of history, colonization, Aboriginal identity and representation in popular culture, as well as conceptual ideas based on memory, home, and reserve communities. Currently, He has co-directed a Short Animation Otanimm/Onnimm with his daughter Neko which is currently touring Film festivals, In Los Angeles, NYC, Toronto, New Zealand, Vancouver, Oxford & many more. Recently their short film won the prestigious Golden Sheaf Indigenous Award at Yorkton Film Festival and is Neko's First Award in Film at 17 years old.
The following is a timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in Alberta.