Albion

The Dominion of Albion, informally Albion, is a democratic country centred in the Pacific Northwest and extending into the North American Arctic and Subarctic, terminating on the western shores of Hudson Bay and at the North Pole. It is bordered by the United States of America to the south, New France to the east, and shares maritime and Arctic borders with the Soviet Union in the west and north. Albion is one of the world's largest countries in terms of land area but relatively sparsely populated, with much of its land mass consisting of vast prairies, trackless permafrost and rugged mountains. It is a multicultural nation with no clear ethnic majority, though a plurality of Albans are the descendants of British subjects, including countless United Empire Loyalists who arrived in the area after the War of 1812 in the Great Flight West which followed the American annexation of British North America. While Albion recognizes Elizabeth II as Queen of Albion, with royal powers delegated to a Governor General, in practice the monarch is a figurehead, with executive power lying with the Prime Minister.

Albion is an economically diversified country with a fully modern free market economy, known for its robust universal health care system, its free post-secondary education, its legalization of recreational herbs such as marijuana and its aggressive integration of First Nations into everyday life. The country tends to rate high on world indexes of Best Places to Live. Albion is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and tends to act as a strategic buffer against Russia.

Etymology
The name "Albion" derives from a classical name for the island of Great Britain. Its appellation to Albion as a country derives from New Albion, the name given to the the continental area north of Mexico claimed by Sir Francis Drake for England when he landed on the North American west coast in 1579. While the actual New Albion is likely in the United States, the appellation "New Albion" became attached to the British colonies in the Columbia River region following the War of 1812 and the Great Flight West.

History
At the close of the Seven Years War, New France remained in the hands of the French. The name "Canada," associated with French-Canadians primarily in 1763, vanished into Quebecois history, and the British holdings in the Great Lakes continued on as British North America, with the boundary at the Ottawa River.

During the American Revolutionary War, British North America experienced a sudden influx of Loyalists from the Thirteen Colonies, most of them settling in the fertile region between the Great Lakes. None of these Loyalists went to Quebec; many brought their slaves with them. The region largely avoided the worst of the war and remained in British hands, albeit with a significantly inflated population. With the mouth of the St. Lawrence River largely controlled by France and America, forcing ships bound for British North America to pay exorbitant duties at French and American stopovers or run the risk of snap inspections, the British quest for a route around the river led them to mount a serious effort to explore Northern Ontario. A number of outposts sprung up along the Hudson Bay coast as explorers began the arduous search for an inland route, but found no luck. Gradually, British North America began to atrophy from sheer lack of ability of the British to resupply the area.

Meanwhile, in 1792, the British naval officer George Vancouver explored Puget Sound, claiming it for Great Britain. Explorers soon began to converge on the Oregon Country, including the Americans Lewis and Clark, the Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie, and David Thompson and Simon Fraser of the North West Company. The region was variously claimed by Britain, France, Russia and Spain. A few Ontario loyalists began to trickle westward during this conflict, seeing better opportunities out "thataway."

During the War of 1812, America bum-rushed a depleted British North America and rolled over it quickly, easily gaining supremacy over the area. Loyalists fled the territory en masse and began a long westward trek, the Great Flight West, taking wagon trains across the prairies for more than a year to reach the territory the British defined as Columbia. Busy with Napoleon and eager to get the Americans out of their hair, the British popped in, burned down the White House, ceded their nigh-inaccessible colonies in British North America to American rule in exchange for cessions in the west. In exchange for the Great Lakes colonies, the British received a concrete boundary for the so-called Columbia Territory, with the US withdrawing its claims on the area.

While Americans continued to trickle into the area, the British focused their territorial ambitions in the area on Columbia, moving colonists in by ship. The influx of Loyalists via the Great Flight West resulted in several thousand new British subjects settling the area, among them setting up shop on the site of modern Seattle, founding a city initially named York but later rechristened Windsor. Another settlement was eventually settled near the site of Multnomah.

In the 1830s, faced with increasing American ambition in the west, the British ceded a couple of dangling bits of Carolina and Rupert's Land to America, including pawning off the Red River Colony for a pittance, in exchange for a rationalization of the border along the Hayes River and the lines of the Columbia and Louisiana territories. America also agreed to permanently cede Columbia to the British.

The cession of the so-called Oregon Country to the British sat poorly with American settlers who had followed the Oregon Trail west. Many of these Americans had settled in the mountainous areas of the country, particularly along the Snake River. As the British moved to assert their authority, tempers flared in primarily American areas, leading to the Snake River Rebellion in April of 1837, sparked when a British tax collector was shot dead in Twin Falls.

The Rebellion numbered some few hundred Americans, most of them relatively well-armed and hardened by their journey, making use of the mountainous territory to hold off forays by the British garrison. The rebels declared themselves the State of Idaho and touted their nominal independence. However, the rebellion was tamped down by the end of the year, when British troops moved to besiege the rebel camp outside Twin Falls. Most of the rebels were killed, the surviving leaders captured and put on trial.

The rebellion left many Americans living in the area upset that the United States had not stood up for their rights. While resentment continued to simmer in some eastern areas of the territory, many more gradually gave in and acceded to British rule.

Dominion
The region continued to gradually accumulate settlers, many of them British mariners seeking to make their fortune, others Loyalists trickling out of America. Gradually, the region's population increased, and the British set a more ambitious goal of settling not only the coast, but the prairies - already home to a string of strung-out villages along the major caravan routes. Notably, with slavery illegal throughout the Empire by now, the region was beginning to accumulate Black American refugees, arriving variously in Columbia by way of wagon trains through the wilderness - the so-called Underground Trail.

This accumulation of British subjects in the Pacific led to tensions with the tiny handful of Russian settlers crouching in Alyeska. Ultimately, when the British Empire entered the Crimean War, the small British fleet at the Pacific Station in Esquimalt moved on Petropavlovsk - but in the process dropped off a couple of dinghies off the coast of Novo-Arkhangelsk. The couple of dozen men went ashore, looked around, punched a couple of Russians, and announced that they were in charge. Ultimately, with so few actual Russians in Russian America, even a handful of soldiers were enough to hold the land mass, and Alyeska was ceded to the British in the Crimean War peace settlement. It was integrated into the North-Western Territory.

With the US blowing up into civil war in the 1860s, the British set to work on their own, launching an ambitious project to build a railroad from Columbia on east. While the so-called York Factory Express had long provided an overland network connecting the Hudson Bay Company's headquarters to the Pacific coast, a route along which many settlements had sprung up over the years, faster transportation was desired.

The Hudson-Pacific Railway, when completed, would connect Windsor in the west to York Factory in the east and stretch across the prairies. New arrivals were promised vast homesteads on the trackless prairies in exchange for eastward migration. Many of those who took it up were freed Black slaves, settling along the Bow and Saskatchewan Rivers. The British even offered land grants to First Nations willing to settle down. Aside from colonists arriving in pursuit of gold rushes, the region experienced sizeable immigration not just from British subjects, but from Germans and Scandinavians as well as Chinese labourers imported to build the railroad. The region's population swelled steadily.

In 1878, Columbia was combined with Rupert's Land and the Northwest Territories into a Dominion of New Albion and granted nominal autonomy within the British Empire. By now the region had developed a number of solid settlements and its own defensive contingent, backed by British muscle when necessary. Matters with the British and the French fell into a quiet peace, though the northwest remained a matter of tension as the British dispatched explorers, miners and Inuit negotiators to the north to assert sovereignty along the border with Alyeska.

World War I proved to be Albion's coming-out party. Albion's small populaton somehow managed to muster a force 500,000 strong, mostly land soldiers, who shipped out of York Factory and landed in Europe to do battle with the Germans. The Albion Corps proved their mettle as fantastic fighters on rough terrain and in harsh conditions, even managing to seize a few key points thought impossible by anyone else. The war left Albion to recover, but the region experienced a great upswelling of national pride, feeding into the independent frontier spirit which had come to define them.

Albion joined in World War II in some capacity, possibly developing a modest navy and a strong air force. In the Cold War, however, Albion began to build up its Pacific navy and Air Force significantly as a bulwark against Russia. Meanwhile, Albion opened its borders to immigrants of all stripes, drawing in not just former British subjects, but foreigners from all over the world. Today, 25% of Albion's population is foreign-born.



Geography, climate and environment
Albion is a physically immense nation, the largest country in North America by land area and the second-largest in the world, behind only Russia. Much of this land area is thinly-peopled tundra; most Albans live in the southern part of the country, across the Alban Prairies and around Puget Sound and the Pacific Coast.

The geography of North America effectively creates two Albions, separated by the Continental Divide. To the west of the Divide is the region known as West Albion, also referred to as the Pacific Northwest, and sometimes referred to as Cascadia. The region is dominated by several mountain ranges, including the Rocky, Columbia, Coast and Olympic Mountains and the Cascade Range, the highest peak being Mount Rainier. Inland, the region sports an enormous plateau region called the Interior Plateau. The coast, meanwhile, is dominated by numerous fjords, islands, mountains and bays; the most prominent feature is Puget Sound, which boasts by far the highest density of populated areas in Albion. Approximately a third of Albans live in this area.

Many areas in this region experience plentiful rainfall, with mild summers. The result is that the Pacific Northwest has some of the most lush and expansive woodlands on Earth, liberally studded with Coast Douglas firs and coast redwoods. The mountains, meanwhile, are sliced through by countless river valleys, coulees, canyons and scablands, carved by massive floods during the Ice Age. The most prominent river in the region is the Columbia River and its well-populated gorge.

Western Albion extends east into the heights of the Rocky Mountains, containing ranges such as the Sawtooth, Bitterroot, White Cloud and Lost River ranges. Aside from an arbitrary line at the east edge of Calapuya, Albion's border in this area generally extends from the Continental Divide on west before following a series of rivers east across the Prairies, dancing along the 45th Parallel.

East of the Continental Divide, Albion is an entirely different world. The populated area east of the mountains is known as the Alban Prairie, extending almost to Hudson Bay, where it begins to give way to the western edge of the Canadian Shield. The prairies are a mix of tallgrass, mixed grass and fescue grasslands, though all but a sliver of a percentage of tallgrass prairie has been converted into a vast belt of farmland. Most of Albion's remaining native grassland consists of mixed grasses, with fescue grassland occurring in more mild regions. The eastern section of the prairie region is well-watered, with Lake Winnipeg being the largest lake - the sixth-largest in North America, behind only the Great Lakes of America and New France. In the north, the prairies give way to boreal forest, with only the Peace River region warm enough for decent agriculture.

East of Lake Winnipeg, Albion descends to the coast of Hudson Bay, where its eastern maritime border lies. This area is part of the Canadian Shield, one of the oldest shields on Earth; some areas of the shield are as much as 4.2 billion years old. The area, once home to tall mountains and volcanoes but now eroded into a low-relief area with dead volcanic belts, is rich in mineral wealth. Countless rivers and lakes wind through the Shield, which is covered by towering boreal forests, marshes, bogs, muskeg and - as you move northward - permafrost. The dominant type of forest is the Midwestern Canadian Shield Forest.

Beyond west and east, Albion stretches far into the north. There are effectively two bands to the north. The first is the Near North, dominated by the Alban boreal forest biome, effectively a vast evergreen forest with a subarctic climate. North of the treeline is the Far North, home to endless tundra and the Barren Grounds.

Albion insists that its border extends to the North Pole based on the Sector Principle. This tends to be a political issue because, while littoral waters are subject to the right of innocent passage, internal waters landward of a chain of islands are not. Effectively Albion claims control of the entire far north of North America.

The last of Albion's territories are the Line Islands and Pitcairn Islands, many of them south of the Equator. These islands consist mainly of thinly-populated sandy coral atolls and tiny volcanic islands strung out through the vast ocean. Albion had these islands transferred from Britain after World War II, during which the Royal Navy of Albion occupied and fortified several of them in order to hold the Pacific against the Axis. Today, the Pitcairn Islands are a nearly-forgotten Alban dependency with effective self-government, but the Line Islands are home to a number of resorts and a naval outpost, AFB Bridges Point, which is located on Christmas Island.

Flora and fauna
As a truly massive country, Albion boasts an exceptional level of biodiversity.

Albion particularly celebrates its marine life. The nation's national animal is the orca. The so-called killer whale was chosen due to its significance to the Pacific Coast First Nations: The Haida view orcas as the most powerful animals in the ocean, the Kwakwaka'wakw regard it as the ruler of the undersea world, the Tlingit consider it custodian of the sea, and so on and so forth. The status of the Southern Resident Killer Whale population dwelling off the coast of Columbia and Fraser is a hot-button political topic especially for the Green Party; public sentiment leans strongly towards protecting these at-risk whales. Owning or displaying an orca is illegal in Albion, and strict laws prohibit certain types of activity in critical areas for orcas, including banning the use of certain types of radars.

Albion also particularly celebrates the Chinook salmon, though Albion is home to several salmon species with historic importance to the First Nations.

The nation is home to other vast marine mammals - in the north, the narwhal is celebrated, while the Pacific coast in particular is home to countless dolphin and whale species. Among the most well-known are the humpback whale and the mostly-local grey whale. Hudson Bay, meanwhile, is home to the beluga whale - and of course more orcas.

Albion's national bird is the grey jay. The grey corvid is abundant throughout much of Albion and conforms to the nation's borders with remarkable accuracy. The bird is known to settlers by many names, among them "Albion jay," "lumberjack," "camp robber" and "venison-hawk," and it is notable for the many individuals who have become accustomed to humans; they will often perch on your head, or fly brazenly to your hand to eat out of it. But the grey jay is also spiritually important to the First Nations, particularly the Cree, who revere it as the trickster figure Wisakedjak - known to settlers as "Whiskeyjack." Accordingly, the grey jay is often colloquially called the whiskeyjack.

Another prominent symbol of Albion is the cedar waxwing, a visually striking passerine bird abundant throughout most of the nation. Albion is also closely associated with the common loon (known as the gigglebird in Minishic parlance), a coastal and northern bird known for its haunting song.

Albion is associated with a number of large land mammals. While the grizzly bear - and its subspecies, the kodiak bear - are particularly well-known here, the most prominent large carnivore is undoubtedly the polar bear, an occupant of Albion's high arctic. The polar bear - the world's largest bear, and a symbol of Albion - is a hot-button political issue as climate change threatens to whittle down its frigid northern habitat and rob it of its food supply, and the Green and Labour Parties both endorse protective measures designed to try and mitigate climate change and save the polar bear. It and other mammals in the north, such as the walrus, remain under threat as the planet warms. They share the north with creatures such as the snowy owl, the arctic fox, the snowshoe hare and several species of seal, including the harp seal - a species which Albion allows to be hunted for fur and meat, much to the consternation of environmentalists everywhere, though Albion now places quotas and strict laws around the annual hunt.

Government model
Albion is a Dominion with a standing monarchy represented by a Governor General, but in fact is a parliamentary democracy in which the monarch is a figurehead, filling a ceremonial national-unity role and rubber-stamping legislation while serving as a sort of cultural ambassador in his role as head of state. On paper, the Monarch of Albion enjoys the Royal Prerogative, including the right to declare war, sign treaties and issue passports; by law and tradition, however, these rights may only be exercised through Cabinet. The result is that the monarch in Albion has virtually no power.

Power in Albion lies in the hands of Parliament, a bicameral legislature closely modeled on Britain's Westminster System. Parliament consists of two houses: The House of Commons and the Senate. However, the Senate is purely an appointed body which exists mainly to rubber-stamp legislature and check it for constitutionality. The business of government occurs almost solely within the House of Commons, with most all executive power ensconced within the office of the Prime Minister.

Elections in Albion are conducted by riding. All elections are first-past-the-post. Whichever party has the most seats in the Commons gets first shot at forming a government; if they do not have an absolute majority of the 318 seats required to form government, they will have to win enough support from the other parties to cross that threshold, ruling as a minority government. The ruling party may be overthrown and an election called should a majority of Members of Parliament pass a motion of no confidence in the government.

Administrative divisions

 * Main article: Administrative divisions of Albion

Albion is broken up into 10 provinces, two territories and two Autonomous Nations Within Albion.

In modern Alban constitutional theory, the provinces of Albion are sovereign entities, a status stemming from the confederation model utilized in the formation of Albion as a dominion in the 19th century. Provinces are separated from territories and Autonomous Nations in that provinces are considered sovereign in certain areas, such as the administration of certain services and infrastructure, and their sovereignty is derived from the Constitution Act. Territories and ANs instead have powers delegated to them directly by the Parliament of Albion.

An Autonomous Nation Within Albion is similar to a territory, but received a greater cross-section of devolved powers from Parliament, including the right to set its own language laws and public holidays. The status is given very rarely, and only to indigenous communities in which they form an absolute majority outside of a province: Basically just Nunavut and Haida Gwaii. Alban constitutional theory treats them as semi-sovereign, with their devolved sovereignty coming not from the Constitution Act but from the Autonomous Nations Act of 1973, which empowers Parliament to sign a devolution treaty with First Nations leaders under certain circumstances.

Economy
Albion is one of the world's largest economies and consistently ranks as one of the least corrupt countries in the world. It is one of the world's top ten trading nations, with a highly globalized economy. Albion has a mixed economy, ranking similarly to Scandinavian and similar northern European countries on metrics of unionization and economic freedom, and experiences a low level of income disparity and a high level of household disposable income. The Windsor Stock Exchange is one of the world's largest stock exchanges.

Since the early 20th century, Albion's manufacturing, mining and service sectors led a significant transformation from an agrarian economy based on the Three Fs - farming, fisheries and forestry - to an urbanized industrial economy. The service sector is the core of the Alban economy and accounts for nearly 70% of employment. However, Albion also maintains a strong manufacturing sector dominated by aerospace and shipbuilding, while also investing heavily in the primary sector, particularly oil, nickel and chromium.

Albion is one of the few developed nations to be a net energy exporter. The country has an approximately 15% share of global oil reserves, the third-largest share following Colombia and the Arab Republic, with much of this reserve found in the Athabasca oil sands and the North Slope oil fields. Albion is a major world supplier of wheat, canola, barley and other grains; zinc, uranium, gold, nickel, chromium, iron, coal, cobalt and cadmium; and softwood and hardwood lumber.

Albion has one of the highest levels of Internet access in the world and is typically ranked in the top five for quality of scientific research.

Demographics
The 2020 census recorded an Alban population of 30,552,042. Nearly 70% of Albans are concentrated along the Pacific coast in the provinces of Columbia, Fraser, Calapuya, Vancouver, Stikine and Yukon. The country experienced a growth of nearly 7% over the 2015 census, adding more than 2 million people, largely due to significant immigration from East and South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Albion has one of the world's highest per-capita rates of immigration, which is broadly supported by the Alban public and major political parties. India, China and Japan are the leading countries of origin for immigrants moving to Albion, though significant immigration also comes from key countries in Africa, including the West African Republic, East African Federation and Azania. Albion accepts large numbers of refugees, accounting for approximately 15% of global refugee resettlements.

Surveys consistently find that approximately one-quarter of Albans are foreign-born, a testament to Albion's traditional openness to immigration. The country's open policies, stemming from the late-1800s need to populate the vast North American Prairies, resulted in a flood of immigrants arriving in Albion and settling, while new waves of immigration since World War II have resulted in Albion's most urban areas attracting more non-European immigrants to the country. Overall, about 13% of Albans are visible minorities, as high as 29% in the province of Fraser.

Ethnicity
According to the most recent census, 33.17% of respondents reported an Alban ethnic origin, followed by English (19.84%), Scottish (11.49%), Indigenous or Metis (11.35%), German (10.04%), Japanese (7.97%), Irish (7.68%), Ukrainian (5.74%), Finnish (4.46%) and South Indian (4%).

Notable ethnic communities in Albion include a large community of Japanese Albans; the world's largest Ukrainian diaspora; and other communities from the eastern Soviet bloc, including numerous Sakha and Tuvans settled along the Pacific Coast.

Languages
English and Chinook Jargon are the official languages of Albion. Some provinces recognize other languages; Haida is the official language of Haida Gwaii, while Nunavut recognizes English, Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun.

Albion has a broad community of speakers of chinuk wawa, or Chinook Jargon, an intra-indigenous Creole which has incorporated English, Spanish and Chinese words. A great deal of the wawa has slipped into colloquial English. Notably, you'll often hear English speakers in Albion use "mans" instead of "men." English-speakers in Albion can speak the Queen's English just fine in formal settings, but will often slip wawaisms in when they get colloquial or informal. The wawa is widely spoken west of the Continental Divide, and many Anglophones speak it as a second language.

Albion is known for producing English-speakers with eclectic accents; the country's strain of English retained heavy British influences but has been influenced over time through integration with First Nations and - particularly in the Prairies - exposure to American media. There are two primary dialectic continuums in Albion's English-language community: Columbian English (think New Zealand English with a heavy dose of Lancashire and a saucing of Chinook Jargon), and Athabascan English (think Sarah Palin if she tried to sound British). There are also subdialects associated with northern Muskegon and northeast Kisatchewan (Factory Speak) and with the city of Minishic (Prairie Afro-Alban Vernacular English).

Religion
About 63% of Albans practice Christianity, though various Protestant sects predominate (approx. 41%), with Anglicans making up about half of that and various other Protestant denominations encompassing the other half. Mainline Anglicans tend to predominate west of the Continental Divide. The Prairies also have substantial Anglican populations, especially in urban areas, but tend to be more broken up into smaller denominations, including ethnic churches like the Dutch Reform church. A substantial population of Lutherans exists in the Little Finland area, while Minishic in particular and the surrounding community of Prairie Blacks tends to follow various Black Protestant traditions.

Another 16% of Albans or thereabouts are Roman Catholics or represent churches aligned with Roman Catholicism. It tends to be the faith of choice for Albion's Irish, Polish, French and some African communities, as well as most of the Ukrainian community, their numbers largely being members of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church who descend from Galician immigrants living in the formerly Austrian part of Ukraine.

The remaining 4% of Albion's Christians are from other denominations, including a substantial population of Mormons dwelling in the mountainous areas of eastern Calapuya. There are also smaller Orthodox and Coptic Christian communities, most of whom are concentrated in Columbia and Fraser.

Approximately 7% to 10% of Albans follow the First Faiths, the native faiths of the indigenous people of Albion. While policies in the immediate post-colonial period initially supported education aimed at converting Indigenous Albans to Christianity, the liquidation of the residential schools by an anti-Catholic government in 1910 led to many First Nations continuing to practice their languages and faiths. Today, many of these beliefs have influenced Alban culture.

Approximately 3% to 4% of Albans are Muslim, the vast majority of them being mainline Sunnis. This community is dominated by Southeast Asian Muslims of the Shafi'i madhhab. The Muslim community also includes Arabs (primarily Hanafi), along with South Indian and African Muslims. Many of them are concentrated in the Golden Fishhook. Another 2% of Albans practice Judaism, many descended from Jewish refugees arriving around or after World War II

Approximately a quarter of Albans profess no religion or no religious affiliation. This number is on a steady increase as atheism and agnosticism gain increasing currency among young Albans.

Other faiths include traditional Asian religions such as Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism. This group includes Albion's approximately 250,000 Sikhs, who are spread throughout the region but with their highest concentration in Granville and its metropolitan area.