United Church of CanadaThe United Church of Canada (Église unie du Canada) is a mainline Protestant denomination that is the largest Protestant Christian denomination in Canada and the second largest Canadian Christian denomination after the Catholic Church in Canada. The United Church was founded in 1925 as a merger of four Protestant denominations with a total combined membership of about 600,000 members: the Methodist Church, Canada, the Congregational Union of Ontario and Quebec, two-thirds of the congregations of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and the Association of Local Union Churches, a movement predominantly of the Canadian Prairie provinces.
AlbertaAlberta (ælˈbɜːrtə ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Territories (NWT) to the north, and the U.S. state of Montana to the south. It is one of the only two landlocked provinces in Canada (Saskatchewan being the other). The eastern part of the province is occupied by the Great Plains, while the western part borders the Rocky Mountains.
American bisonThe American bison (Bison bison; : bison), also called the American buffalo or simply buffalo (not to be confused with true buffalo), is a species of bison native to North America. It is one of two extant species of bison, alongside the European bison. Its historical range, by 9000 BCE, is described as the great bison belt, a tract of rich grassland that ran from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico, east to the Atlantic Seaboard (nearly to the Atlantic tidewater in some areas), as far north as New York, south to Georgia, and according to some sources, further south to Florida, with sightings in North Carolina near Buffalo Ford on the Catawba River as late as 1750.
Great PlainsThe Great Plains (Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located just to the east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland. It is the western part of the Interior Plains, which also include the mixed grass prairie, the tallgrass prairie between the Great Lakes and Appalachian Plateau, and the Taiga Plains and Boreal Plains ecozones in Northern Canada.
Temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublandsTemperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands is a terrestrial biome defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. The predominant vegetation in this biome consists of grass and/or shrubs. The climate is temperate and ranges from semi-arid to semi-humid. The habitat type differs from tropical grasslands in the annual temperature regime as well as the types of species found here. The habitat type is known as prairie in North America, pampas in South America, veld in Southern Africa and steppe in Asia.
New Democratic PartyThe New Democratic Party (NDP; Nouveau Parti démocratique, NPD) is a federal political party in Canada. Widely described as social democratic, the party occupies the left to centre-left on the political spectrum, sitting to the left of the Liberal Party. The party was founded in 1961 by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). The federal and provincial (or territorial) level NDPs are more integrated than other political parties in Canada, and have shared membership (except for the New Democratic Party of Quebec).
Shortgrass prairieThe shortgrass prairie is an ecosystem located in the Great Plains of North America. The two most dominant grasses in the shortgrass prairie are blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) and buffalograss (Bouteloua dactyloides), the two less dominant grasses in the prairie are greasegrass (Tridens flavus) and sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula). The prairie was formerly maintained by grazing pressure of American bison, which is the keystone species.
Chinook windChinook winds, or simply Chinooks, are two types of prevailing warm, generally westerly winds in western North America: Coastal Chinooks and interior Chinooks. The coastal Chinooks are persistent seasonal, wet, southwesterly winds blowing in from the ocean. The interior Chinooks are occasional warm, dry föhn winds blowing down the eastern sides of interior mountain ranges. The coastal Chinooks were the original term, used along the northwest coast, and the term in the interior of North America is later and derives from the coastal term.
SaskatchewanSaskatchewan (səˈskætʃ(ə)wən ; saskatʃəwan) is a province in Western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on the south by the United States (Montana and North Dakota). Saskatchewan and Alberta are the only landlocked provinces of Canada. In 2023, Saskatchewan's population was estimated at 1,221,439. Nearly 10% of Saskatchewan's total area of is fresh water, mostly rivers, reservoirs and lakes.
ManitobaManitoba (ˌmænɪˈtoʊbə ) is a province of Canada at the longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's fifth-most populous province, with a population of 1,342,153 as of 2021, of widely varied landscape, from arctic tundra and the Hudson Bay coastline in the north to dense boreal forest, large freshwater lakes, and prairie grassland in the central and southern regions. Indigenous peoples have inhabited what is now Manitoba for thousands of years. In the early 17th century, British and French fur traders began arriving in the area and establishing settlements.
