WETASKIWIN

city, central Alberta, Canada. It lies 44 miles (71 km) south of Edmonton. The missionary Father Albert Lacombe named the first settlement from a Cree Indian term meaning place of peace, because it was there in 1867 that the warring Blackfoot and Cree Indians ended their fighting. The community developed as a grain-shipping centre after the arrival of the railroad (1891). Nearby is the Leduc oil field, discovered in 1947; the use of natural gas was an early enterprise, and there are local coal deposits. The Reynolds Museum of early farm machinery and transportation is in the city. Inc. village, 1900; town, 1902; city, 1906. Pop. (1991) 10,634.