Happy Birthday, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

Day 646

Saskatchewan and Alberta joined Confederation this date in 1905. And have been contributing to Canada's prosperity ever since. And I'm not just talking Pam Wallin and k.d. lang. Calgary now ranks third among the world's oil and gas financing and production centres. The Alberta oilpatch is a major purchaser of industrial equipment manufactured from coast to coast, particularly in Central Canada. Saskatchewan, birthplace of Canadian Medicare, traditional breadbasket of Canada, supplier of wheat to a bread-starved Soviet Union, today is the world's biggest producer of potash - the fertilizer feedstock on which the world is increasingly reliant as demand for food grows among developing and industrializing nations.

IMAGE: JORDON COOPER

A September 1, 1905 gathering to celebrate Saskatchewan's joining Confederation. Canada Post celebrates blue-sky country on Saskatchewan's centennary as a province. The formidable provincial legislature in Regina. A specialized drilling machine loosens the walls inside a Saskatchewan potash mine. 

Members of Alberta's first Legislative Assembly gather May 9, 1906 on the steps of Edmonton's MacKay Avenue School, now the archives of Edmonton Public Schools. The Alberta coat of arms: "Strong and free." The sprawling skyline of Calgary, third-largest concentration of Canadian corporate headquarters, with facilities of the world's oldest continuing rodeo in the foreground. A rare Calgary glam shot not to include the Saddledome, among the most architectually distinctive sports stadiums on the continent.

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.