If you follow Highway 633 west out of Edmonton, it doesn’t take long before the fields give way to trees and the air feels just a little bit cooler. And then, almost without warning, the road spills you into Alberta Beach — a village that wears its name honestly. You see the water first, shimmering through the gaps in the trees, and then the little main street that seems to exhale slowly, as if it knows life doesn’t need to be rushed here.
Alberta Beach isn’t a farming town, or a railway hub, or even a mining stop that reinvented itself. It began with leisure. In 1912, the Canadian Northern Railway built a spur line out this way, and workers in Edmonton were offered excursion trains on weekends. Hundreds of people would pile into coaches and head to Lac Ste. Anne for fresh air, picnic lunches, and a chance to escape the city’s noise. By 1913, the Alberta Beach Hotel had opened its doors, providing visitors with a reason to stay longer than just the afternoon. Cottages sprang up along the shoreline, some simple and handmade, many still standing in one form or another. For decades, the Friday train whistle meant the village was about to get busy.
Walking around today, you can still feel that rhythm in the air. About 900 people call Alberta Beach home year-round, but on a summer long weekend, the place swells to nearly 3,000. It’s like watching a quiet living room suddenly turn into a crowded party — only here, the guests arrive with coolers, fishing rods, and floaties for the kids. The streets go from still to lively, and the restaurants fill with the kind of chatter you can hear from the sidewalk.
Every small town has its quirks, and Alberta Beach is no different. There’s SnoMo Days in the winter, when snowmobiles line the lake like they’re waiting for a parade. There are the cottages that look like they’ve been cobbled together from three generations of weekend projects, complete with porches that lean just enough to tell a story. And then there’s the simple joy of watching the sunset over Lac Ste. Anne, where people still gather on the beach like their great-grandparents once did, backs to the land and eyes on the water.
What I like most about Alberta Beach is that it’s a town created by choice. Nobody came here chasing gold or trying to clear land for crops. They came because it felt good to sit by the lake, and they stayed because it felt even better to come back again and again. Over time, those weekends became summers, those summers became lives, and here we are — a resort village that somehow turned into a home.
Driving away, the lake disappears behind the trees as quickly as it arrived. You can almost hear the echo of that old train whistle, calling people back to the water. Alberta Beach is still doing the same job it did a century ago — giving people a place to slow down, even if only for the weekend.