This year marks the 40th annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival. It is also the first year of the second century for the province of Alberta, which celebrated its centennial in 2005. Named after Queen Victoria's fourth daughter, Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, but familiarly called "Wild Rose Country" by its 3.26 million residents, Alberta is a land of contrasts. Its landscape is among the most diverse in North America, with badlands, prairies, boreal forests, rolling foothills, enormous freshwater lakes such as the Athabasca, and mighty rivers including the Peace and the North Saskatchewan. Its western border is defined by the spectacular ...