Tucked into central Alberta at the crossroads of the Yellowhead Highway and Highway 881, Mannville sits roughly 22 kilometres west of Vermilion and approximately 170 kilometres east of Edmonton. Agriculture forms the backbone of the local economy, and the village covers a compact land area of 1.64 square kilometres. According to the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Mannville had a population of 765 residents living in 339 of its 397 private dwellings, reflecting a decline of about 7.6 per cent from the 828 residents recorded in the 2016 census. That 2016 count itself represented a modest increase from the 803 residents tallied in 2011, giving the village a population density of roughly 466.5 people per square kilometre as of 2021.
The village takes its name from Sir Donald Mann, vice-president of the Canadian Northern Railway, whose rail operations helped open this part of Alberta to settlement. In 1945, geologist A.W. Nauss named the Mannville Group – an oil and gas bearing unit of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin – after the village, connecting the community to the broader resource history of the region. Mannville also drew considerable attention in 1928 following a serious criminal case in which Vernon Booher was convicted of multiple murders and subsequently hanged in 1929, a case that gained unusual notoriety partly due to the involvement of a psychiatrist named Adolph Langsner, who claimed to possess mind-reading abilities. Among the notable people born in Mannville are actress Frances Bay, sociologist Erving Goffman, Lord Mayor of London Peter Gadsden, and professional hockey players Kyle Calder, Mike Rathje, and Miles Zaharko.