souvenir pamphlet marking the birth of Alberta on September 1, 1905, expressed a vision for the province's future that would resonate for a century: "This new province of Alberta, by virtue of its extent and varied character, is destined to become the brightest gem in the crown of the great empire that encircles the world. It is a delightsome land that lies on the sunny slopes of the eastern side of the Great Rockies where Alberta's sparkling mountains roll down their golden sands. With its prairies and its mountains, its forests and fertile fields and a healthy invigorating climate with potential youth in the very air, there is avenue and opportunity for every kind of effort and enterprise."
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"Is it not wonderful? Here I am in the legislature and McGillicuddy is in hell."
----Calgary Eye Opener publisher Bob Edwards revels in the fate of his rival Daniel McGillicuddy, proprietor of the Calgary News.
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Besides discussing the political machinations that led to provincehood and delivered the capital and the University of Alberta to Edmonton (to Calgary's eternal chagrin), Volume 2 tells the story of the province's first major economic and technological boom. It was fuelled by thousands of new homesteaders from Europe, the United States and elsewhere in Canada, rapid development of resources like coal, and an explosion of urban commerce. Suddenly there were automobiles, busses, streetcars, airplanes and movie theatres.
Neither the great east-central Alberta prairie fire of '09 nor the killer winter of '06-'07—nor even the devastating Frank Slide in 1903—could extinguish the province's optimism. Calgary attracted 90,000 visitors to a Dominion Exhibition that was the forerunner of the city's famous Stampede, the mountain parks became a magnet for tourists, and meat-packing tycoon Pat Burns built one of Alberta's first great fortunes.
