Hang on, Acme! Calgary's population boom expected to spill over to small-town Alberta next
CBC
Acme, Alta. Population 640 — plus three.
As Calgary's real estate prices edge upward, life in small town Alberta is looking increasingly tempting for the thousands of Ontario residents heading west. Linda Stephens is one of them.
She moved to Acme from Barrie, Ont., with her husband and son last year and is loving it.
Calgary was too expensive. So she found a house here with three times the space she could get in Barrie. Now she's rebuilding her real estate business and runs the rink concession stand in nearby Beiseker.
She's amused by the twists and turns of life that landed her here.
"It was never even on my radar," said Stephens.
"Now we're in our third [hockey] season and providing local jobs and giving back to the community and interacting with all of the families and the kids. It's wonderful."
Alberta's population took off post-pandemic, when the Bank of Canada started raising interest rates and housing became even more expensive in other major Canadian cities.
The first wave of migration into Alberta was concentrated in Calgary, likely because many people were international migrants, sometimes coming here via Toronto, and immigrants tend to go to large cities with names they recognize, says ATB economist Mark Parsons.
But he and other economists have been predicting this growth will spill across the province as prices in Calgary creep up.
Planners won't get the nuanced data from Statistics Canada until May, but Parsons said he's watching real estate data for any hints.
At one point last May, Calgary's average house price was $190,000 more than Edmonton's.
"We just thought it was a matter of time before people would start looking elsewhere," said Parsons.
"And over the last year you've seen Edmonton's housing market pick up. That's one of the first clues. But we're not only seeing it in Edmonton, we're seeing it in other markets as well.
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