POWER is the engine driving Alberta's economy. Energy-related royalties account for a third of the revenue collected by the 100-year-old province, which amounted to a whopping $9.74bn between 2004 and 2005.

Fuel finances public health and education programmes and accounts for 70 per cent of Alberta's exports.

And there's lots of them; Alberta plays its part in contributing to Canada's oil reserves, which total 180 billion barrels. The country is the third largest producer of natural gas in the world, with more oil reserves than Iran and Iraq, and almost as much as Saudi Arabia.

Small wonder then that Alberta is looking to recruit 1,000 steel workers from the North-East's tried and tested, skilled labour pool, for the construction of a multi-billion dollar production plant.

All that oil and gas are bulwarks of Alberta's economy, but the hundreds of thousands of visitors to the province's vast, pristine national parks pick up no hint.

There is no sign of a hard hat in the local newspaper, The Jasper Booster, serving a readership in and around the folksy, intimate, one-horse town of Jasper.

When I visited there last month, its main inside page story was about plans to pedestrianise Patricia Street, which is behind Jasper's high street, Connaught Drive.

And there was a plea to help police track down a burglar who stole a PlayStation and DVDs from a house, while it also found space to tell readers about the 11 new books on offer at the library.

The North-East workforce will have no trouble hearing British accents. About 247,000 UK holidaymakers visited Alberta last year -a 15 per cent increase on 2003.

They are drawn by the province's jaw-dropping, dramatic scenery.

The national parks of Jasper and Banff are a vast wilderness of spectacular glacier crowned snowy peaks -even in summer -crystal clear rivers, waterfalls and forests of lodgepole pine.

Alberta's necklace of lakes lie like glittering gems at the foot of the high shoulders of mountains. Fed by minerals washing off innumerable glaciers, they shift colour from lapis lazuli to turquoise, depending on the angle and intensity of the sun.

And for those really wanting to get away from it all, there are 4,000km of mountain trails.

One quality northerners will warm to is the in-built, natural friendliness of Canadians -and the generous meal portions served in cafes and restaurants.

They will have to get used to driving on the other side of the road, of course, and will notice no real difference in food prices in the UK and Canada. It can cost $11 to buy a decent steak in a shop, but only a few cents more to buy a steak meal in a diner.

Several people I met during my last visit there have two jobs to enjoy a reasonable quality of life.

One was a waitress at the wonderful Bright Spot Diner, in Jasper.

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer who regularly ate his breakfast there was to become one of four officers shot at the hands of a marijuana-growing farmer during a raid. But that happened near Edmonton -still in Alberta -but many miles north of idyllic Jasper and the more cosmopolitan Banff.

A world away...