Why the People of Alberta, Canada, Name Everything After Winston Churchill

Churchill Square in Edmonton, Canada. (Photo: Traveler100/WikiCommons CC BY 3.0)

Smack dab in the middle of Edmonton, Alberta, is a large, concrete public plaza named Sir Winston Churchill Square. Kitty corner from that is the Churchill Wire Centre, a heritage building and former home of Edmonton’s telephone exchange. Take the light-rail train from Churchill station for one stop and you can see the remains of Churchills, a beloved British-style underground pub that has yet to be replaced. A bit further away, in the nearby suburb of St. Albert, chances are you’ll make use of Sir Winston Churchill Avenue, one of the city’s main thoroughfares.

 Sir Winston Churchill is an iconic British politician and military commander, to be sure. And there is no shortage of things that have been named after him, all around the world—from nuclear-powered fleet submarines to entire mountains in Antarctica and Alaska. But nowhere on earth has Churchill’s name wormed its way into public nomenclature quite the way it has in Alberta. And nobody seems to know why.

Churchill loved Canada, but he visited Alberta only once, in August 1929, as part of a month-long, cross-country railway trip. While on Mountain Standard Time Churchill gave a few speeches, toured some oil fields, and remarked, upon arriving in Calgary, “I’ve heard so much about this wonderful province of Alberta that I don’t want to miss anything.” That’s about it. Yet nearly a century later, his influence subtly but doggedly lives on through maps and signage.

Read more at Atlas Obscura >>

Alberta, the Freest Place in North America

From Sun News Editorial

 

FLAG OF ALBERTA

Credits: FILE PHOTO/Codie McLachlan/Edmonton Sun/QMI Agency

Alberta is the freest place in North America. So says the latest edition of Economic Freedom of North America, a report the Fraser Institute has produced for the past decade based on data going back 30 years.

The authors looked at jurisdictions through Canada, the United States and Mexico and graded them on a scale from 1 to 10.

Alberta received the highest score, with 8.2. Saskatchewan came in second with 8.0. And Newfoundland and Labrador, British Columbia and Texas all tied for third with 7.7.

Someone's going to have to break it to our friends south of the border that they're no longer the land of the free! We'll take that prize, thank you very much!

But what does all of this mean?

The report explains: "The freest economies operate with minimal government interference, relying upon personal choice and markets to answer basic economic questions such as what is to be produced, how it is to be produced, how much is produced, and for whom production is intended."

Critics might chortle a little here. "Hey, you're just talking about zero regulation for big industry, aren't you? What about the little guy?"

Actually, the report finds that's not the case. The more free an economy, the more everyone can share in the spoils.

"This research has found that economic freedom is positively correlated with per-capita income, economic growth, greater life expectancy, lower child mortality, the development of democratic institutions, civil and political freedoms, and other desirable social and economic outcomes," the report says.

Here's an example: the least-free 25% of North American jurisdictions included in the study have an average GDP per capita of $9,979. The top 25%? They're raking in $56,697.

When innovative people are left to their own devices, they create systems where we can all win.

So what do we do now? The sad news from this report is that economic freedom is actually on the decline in North America.

Since 2000, the average score of all the Canadian provinces has fallen from 7.8 to 7.6. It's worse down south - where American states fell from 8.2 to 7.5.

In other words, freedom still needs defending. Without it, our quality of life suffers.

Alberta's Education System Offers Lesson in Competition

We posted an important address that David Cameron delivered to the Canadian Parliament last September.  One comment was particularly intriguing.  He stated that the Province of Alberta has the highest student achievement in the English-speaking world.  We weren't surprised because this blog has a disproportionate number of readers in the beautiful western Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia.  The following explains their remarkable success.

Alberta public schools have created all sorts of special programs.

From The Globe and Mail

By Tom Flanagan

When British Prime Minister David Cameron spoke to the Canadian Parliament, he mentioned that Alberta schools routinely rank higher than those of any other English-speaking jurisdiction in international tests of educational competence. The fact is interesting in itself, but the reason behind it is even more interesting – that there is such a high degree of competition in Alberta’s educational sector. Of course, a degree of educational competition exists in other provinces, but Alberta has gone further by combining all forms of competition present in Canada with other innovations.