The morning light hits a freshly-stamped aluminum rectangle bearing the unmistakable turquoise waters of Moraine Lake, framed by the Valley of Ten Peaks. It’s a scene instantly recognizable to many Albertans and international visitors alike—a postcard-perfect slice of Banff National Park. And starting this July, this iconic landscape will adorn the province’s vehicles as Alberta’s newest licence plate option.
Standing at the Service Alberta announcement yesterday, I watched as Premier Danielle Smith unveiled the design to a small crowd of tourism officials and media. The new plates feature “Alberta: Strong and Free” prominently displayed at the bottom—a departure from the current “Wild Rose Country” slogan that has adorned Alberta plates for decades.
“This plate represents who we are as Albertans,” Smith said, holding up the sample plate while cameras clicked. “It shows our natural beauty and our proud identity as a free and independent province within Canada.”
The plates aren’t mandatory—they’ll be optional for Albertans when registering new vehicles or renewing their registration. At $84, with $55 covering manufacturing costs and $29 going to provincial coffers, the government expects the plates to be popular with residents and generate approximately $12 million in revenue over the next three years, according to Service Alberta Minister Dale Nally.
For John Thompkins, a Calgary-based tourism operator I spoke with after the announcement, the timing couldn’t be better. “The summer season is about to kick into high gear, and these plates will be like mobile advertisements for our mountains,” he said, examining one of the sample plates. “Everyone who travels with these plates is essentially promoting Alberta wherever they go.”
The design itself marks a significant aesthetic shift from the current Alberta plate. Gone is the flat, understated styling with small graphics. The new plate features edge-to-edge imagery of the famous lake, with a vibrant colour palette of blues and greens that pops against the white alphanumeric characters.
But not everyone is thrilled with the rebranding. Environmental groups have questioned promoting a location that has faced significant overcrowding in recent years. Parks Canada has implemented a reservation system for Moraine Lake due to its popularity, with the access road frequently closed when parking reaches capacity.
“It’s ironic that we’re putting an image of a place on our cars that many can’t even visit without careful planning due to overcrowding,” said Emma Williston of the Alberta Wilderness Association. “We support celebrating our natural heritage, but we need to balance promotion with protection.”
The “Strong and Free” slogan has also raised eyebrows among political observers. The phrase, drawn from Canada’s national anthem, has been increasingly associated with Alberta’s sovereignty movement. Dr. Lori Williams, a political scientist at Mount Royal University, notes the potential political undertones.
“License plates are ostensibly about identification, but they’ve always carried symbolic weight,” Williams told me during a phone interview. “The timing of this new design, alongside the province’s ongoing disputes with Ottawa, suggests this is partly about identity politics and signaling a particular vision of Alberta’s relationship with the federal government.”
Statistics Canada data shows Alberta’s population grew by nearly 4% last year—the fastest in the country—with over 200,000 new residents. Many of these newcomers come from other provinces, bringing with them their own perceptions of Alberta’s place in Confederation.
Service Alberta officials confirmed that the current “Wild Rose Country” plates will remain valid indefinitely, and Albertans who prefer the traditional design can keep their existing plates. The new plates will be manufactured at the Correctional Service of Canada’s facility in Ontario, which produces licence plates for multiple provinces.
The “Strong and Free” plates represent Alberta’s second specialty plate option after the Support Our Troops plates introduced in 2014. Unlike those charity plates, which direct $20 of each purchase to military families, the new Moraine Lake plates don’t have a designated charitable component.
What makes this shift particularly notable is how it reflects changing perceptions of provincial identity. According to recent polling from the Environics Institute, Albertans’ sense of attachment to their province has grown stronger over the past decade, while attachment to Canada has slightly declined.
As families filled up the parking lot of the Service Alberta office where the announcement took place, I spoke with Sarah Collins, who brought her two children to see the unveiling. “We go camping in Banff every summer, though we’ve never been able to get to Moraine Lake because it’s so busy,” she said as her daughter traced the outline of the mountain peaks on the sample plate. “Maybe now we’ll have a piece of it with us all year round.”
The new plates will be available through registry agents across the province starting July 1—Canada Day—a date Premier Smith called “perfectly fitting” for introducing a plate that celebrates “both our Canadian heritage and our unique Alberta spirit.”
As I left the announcement, I noticed the sun glinting off the turquoise lake on the sample plate displayed in the government office window. The image captures a moment of perfect stillness on Moraine Lake—a serenity rarely experienced by visitors to the actual location on busy summer days. Perhaps that’s the point: the licence plate offers an idealized version of Alberta, one that’s always picture-perfect, even when reality is more complicated.
