Tucked into the southern Alberta landscape roughly 21 kilometres northeast of Brooks and about 20 kilometres north of Highway 1, Patricia sits within the County of Newell. The hamlet covers a modest land area of 0.59 square kilometres and recorded a population of 78 residents in the 2021 federal census, spread across 42 of its 48 private dwellings. That figure reflects a notable decline of roughly 22.8 per cent from the 101 residents counted in 2016, which itself was down from 108 in 2011. A 2020 municipal census conducted by the County of Newell placed the population slightly higher at 88. The hamlet’s population density works out to approximately 132 people per square kilometre.
Patricia takes its name from Princess Patricia of Connaught, a royal connection shared by a number of Alberta communities. It is situated close to Dinosaur Provincial Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site recognised for its extraordinary fossil beds. The hamlet also earned a brief moment of national attention in the 1970s, when rancher Albert Ketchmark gifted then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau a 50 by 130 foot lot in the community as a lighthearted gesture from his mother’s estate. The story quickly became national news after the County of Newell reported that Trudeau owed just $3 in property taxes, with possibly another $3 in arrears. Jim Nesbitt, publisher of the Brooks Bulletin and a Liberal Party member, stepped in to pay the outstanding taxes, while the Prime Minister’s Office maintained it had never received a deed or tax bill. The matter was ultimately resolved in the Supreme Court of Alberta, where Trudeau’s legal team successfully argued the transfer constituted an imperfect gift, and the court cancelled the property title.