The Canadian prairies represent an area of 757,000 square miles or 19.6 percent of the Canadian land mass. By comparsion the area of the United Kingdom represents only 12.5 percent of the land mass of prairies but with 20 times its population. Approximately 8.9 percent (67,000 sq.mi.) of the prairie provinces are covered by lakes, ponds, marshes, muskeg and streams. Elevations in this region range from sea level on the Hudson Bay coast of Manitoba to 12,290 feet at Mount Columbia on the Alberta-British Columbia border. The major industries include agriculture, light manufacturing, mining, petroleum exploration and refining, forestry, biotechnology and tourism.

Recreational activities are varied: camping; rock climbing; hiking and walking tours; trail riding; birding; fly fishing; sailing; canoeing; whitewater rafting; gliding; and many more. Across this region there are an excellent collection of bed and breakfast stops from the smallest of towns to the large cities, on ranches or on farms. It is a pleasurable way to visit the area.

Alberta The largest of the three prairie provinces with the northern third of the province covered by boreal forest while much of the remaining portion has large tracts of grassland for grazing or cultivated for the growing of various grain crops. A major interest to many are the National Parks in the Rocky Mountain chain, but if fossils and dinosaurs peek your interest the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller and the Dinosour Provincal Park north of Brooks are must visits.

Saskatchewan The true agricultural area of the prairies with more than one-half of its landmass committed to the production of cereals, pulse, forage, small friut, honey and cattle. The face of agriculture has changed from more than 140,000 active farms in the 1940s to less than 55,000 in 2001. Yet the general landscape has changed little except for the loss of the prairie sentinel, the wooden prairie grain elevator. The northern half of the province is a sea of small lakes and boreal forest, a great area for camping and boating. In the southwest corner the are Cypress Hills and historic Fort Walsh, an early home of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. This is an exciting and beautiful destination.

Manitoba The cradle of prairie settlement which began with the unbelieveable courage of the Lord Selirk settlers who travelled from Scotland and Ireland in the early 1800s to Hudson Bay, up the Nelson River, crossing Lake Winnipeg finally to establish a settlement near the forks of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers. Here Lower and Upper Fort Garry, the Seven Oaks Massacre, the struggle between the North West and the Hudson Bay Companies for dominance of the west, and much more exciting history can discoverd in the museums in Winnipeg, and throughout the province.

A very noticable division in landform occurs within Manitoba running diagonally from the north west to the south east. East of this line are the massive outcrops of the Laurentain shield while to the west is the endless undulating plain of glacial moraine known as the prairies. A major feature of this province is the thousands of lakes and the dominance of three, Winnipeg, Manitoba and Winnipegosis. The surface area of these three lakes totals 13,275 square miles, approximately 5 percent of total area of the province.