I have lived in Alberta for over ten years, and though culturally distinct from the rest of Canada (as is every other province I've spent time in) Alberta's brand of rugged individualist / conservatism is still very Canadian.

And though we may look very different to the urbanites of GVRD (Vancouver and surrounding) and the GTA (Toronto and surrounding), you'll find many more similarities between us and those living in rural Canada with resource-based economies, like the people living in B.C.'s forestry-dependent areas, the northern prairies or NorthWest Ontario. The difference for us is that we have very vocal, oil-industry-controlled politicians and a population that is immediately suspicious of any time an easterner tries to tell us what to do.

Sometimes the easiest way to see our distinctiveness is by contrast - immediately evident when crossing over to even the closest border states.

I love Montana and its people, but boy do you know you're not in Canada anymore - roadways lined with advertisements; cops everywhere you look; huge rich/poor divides; razor wire, visible drug problems and ghettos in even the smallest cities; and a love of all things military.

All that to say, there's far more to being Albertan than oil, guns and god, and those three things don't make us a 'murican.