A Sedalia Convention & Visitor’s Bureau Blog
By L.C. Melton
This time I managed to find a Sedalia on foreign soil (just barely a place however). Basic information is that this Sedalia was founded in 1925 when a local railroad trunk line came through but it was torn out in 1979. Albertans call it a hamlet and it is situated in the southeastern part of the province known as Special Area No. 3 (a not so picturesque name for a municipality in an area run by a provincially appointed board due I suppose to their exceptionally small population). In fact there is a cluster of these Special Areas in the region.
The railroad connection and relatively recent date would lead us to believe that this Sedalia is named for Missouri’s. Such a regally classical name seems to be squandered on such a desolately obscure little place!
There are only 1,100 people in the whole 2,200 square miles of the District and their municipal office is in Hanna and district office in Oyen (population 1000 which doesn’t leave many folks for the rest of the district. It is all just a spit and slobber from the Saskatchewan line. They refer to it as a dryland farming area…very cold in the long winter and very hot in the short summer. It gets a whooping 13 inches of rain a year (probably grows rocks well.)
HOWEVER, and this is a first for my electronic travels, I discovered a video travelogue of Sedalia, Alberta which is all of 36 seconds long (actually more time than should have been needed. 1 Still it is quite interesting for on July 9, 2008, we pan past the local consumers’ cooperative establishment on a nice cool day, look down Railway Street as far as, oh, maybe say two blocks and see the two local vehicles parked awaiting their owners laden with vittles for the month.
According to their District website they are the most poised for growth of any place in Alberta (BYOB).
2 1Youtube; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIYi23uGGjY
2 Oyen, Alberta; http://www.townofoyen.com/
