Western Provinces - Canada - North America Even larger than the Eastern Provinces, the land encompassing Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia covers over a million square miles, though these lands differ from the forests of the east. Here in the prairie provinces are the great wheat-growing fields as well as oil-rich plains extending to the western boundary of Alberta, a province rich in coal and natural gas as well as oil. Beyond that is a complex of high mountains and plateaus known as the Western Cordillera that span British Columbia and continue into the Yukon. This area is more temperate than the bitter cold of the north and east, but still gets plenty of snow in the wintertime.