To the question "What was Alberta called before 1905?"
One source gives this answer:
"After further negotiations, it was decided that the proposed province would be too big to administer, and so it was split into Alberta and Saskatchewan. Canada adopted the Alberta Act and the Saskatchewan Act on 1 September 1905, and the new provinces — Canada's 7th and 8th — entered Confederation."
Come on -- this does not even answer the question.
And by the way, Alberta and Saskatchewan are Canada's 8th and 9th provinces. Only Newfoundland and Labrador came into Canada later, to fill out our present list of ten provinces.
And actually Alberta was already in Confederation starting in 1870 as part of the NWT. It did not enter Confederation in 1905 but only changed from being part of a Canadian territory to being a province by itself.
What was Alberta called before 1905?
Before Alberta became a province in 1905, the area was part of the North-West Territories in western Canada. In the old days Canada was called British North America, distinguishing the wide ranging territory from Spanish America (Old Mexico and more), Russian America (Alaska and more), from the U.S. (after its secession from the British Empire ca. 1776), and from other parts of the Americas.
The southern, populated, part of the NWT, of Western Canada, was divided into districts in 1882. What is now the province of Alberta was located in the districts of Alberta, Athabaska, Assiniboia and Saskatchewan. Three of the four largest population centres - Edmonton, Calgary and Lethbridge - were in the district of Alberta; Medicine Hat was located in Assiniboia.
If you go back to before 1870, Alberta was part of Rupert's Land, in the economic jurisdiction of the Hudson's Bay Company, mandated to that power in 1670.
What is now Alberta became part of Canada, as part of the North-West Territories, on July 15, 1870.
The district was named after Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter, Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, the wife of the Governor General of the time, The Marquess of Lorne (Sir John Douglas Sutherland Campbell). Being modest, the Princess accepted the naming on the grounds that it honoured her father, Prince Albert (1819-1861), Alberta being the feminine version of the name Albert. (Albert was a committed reformer. He campaigned against black slavery, which had been made illegal in the British Empire but was still being continued in the U.S. and other countries. He also served as president of the Society for the Improvement of the Condition of the Labouring Classes.)
Alberta was originally established as a provisional district of the North-West Territories in 1882. The name was maintained when Alberta became a province in 1905.
From before 1870 Indigenous people had names for geographic locations within what is now Alberta. A specific landmark was often the base for the name of a local area, valley or height of land. Some of these names are still used today (sometimes with Anglicized spelling).
The Cree name for the Edmonton area was Amiskwaciy (Beaver Hills) after the hills and lakes country that is now preserved in the Elk Island Park.
Okotoks is named after Blackfoot name for a prominent boulder left by receding glacier thousands of years ago. okatoksituktai was Blackfoot name for boulder and surrounding area, according to Hugh Dempsey's book Indian Names for Alberta Communities.
Athabasca and Saskatchewan (kisiskāciwani-sīpiy, meaning "swift flowing river") were old Cree names for prominent rivers and the areas around them.
There are many other places that still bear the traditional Indigenous place names, and others that bear English translations of their Indigenous name.
Smoky Lake and Red Deer are examples of this. (See upcoming Montopedia blog on Indigenous place names.)
In 1905, when it was time for the southern portion of the NWT to get province-hood, the question was whether the area was to be one province (perhaps under the name Buffalo) or two. Due to transportation problems, it was decided to form two provinces - this actually gave the Prairies more power by giving it three seats at inter-provincial conferences instead of two.
Albertans had been sending MPs and Senators to Ottawa for many years by that time. (see my other blog "Alberta will be 150 years in Canada in 2020!")
https://montopedia.wixsite.com/montopedia/post/alberta-will-be-150-years-in-canada-in-2020
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