Corridor was 2.15 million (72% of Alberta's population). It is also one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. A 2003 study by TD Bank Financial Group found the corridor was the only Canadian urban centre to amass a U.S. level of wealth while maintaining a Canadian-style quality of life, offering universal health care benefits. The study found GDP per capita in the corridor was 10% above average U.S. metropolitan areas and 40% above other Canadian cities at that time. Calgary–Edmonton rivalry Seeing Calgary and Edmonton as part of a single economic region as the TD study did in 2003 was novel. The more traditional view had been to see the two cities as economic rivals. For example, in the 1980 both cities claimed to be the "Oil Capital of Canada". Background Alberta has always been an export-oriented economy. In line with Harold Innis' "Staples Thesis", the economy has changed substantially as different export commodities have risen or fallen in importance. In sequence, the most important products have been: fur, wheat and beef, and oil and gas. The development of transportation in Alberta has been crucial to its historical economic development. The North American fur trade relied on birch-bark canoes, York boats, and Red River carts on buffalo trails to move furs out of, and European trade goods into, the region. Immigration into the province was eased tremendously by the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway's transcontinental line in 1880s. Commercial farming became viable in the area once the grain trade had developed technologies to handle the bulk export of grain, especially hopper cars and grain elevators. Oil and gas exports have been possible because of increasing pipeline technology. Prior to the 1950s, Alberta was a primarily agricultural economy, based on the export of wheat, beef, and a few other commodities. The health of economy was closely bound up with the price of wheat. In 1947 a major oil field was discovered near Edmonton. It was not the first petroleum find in Alberta, but it was large enough to significantly alter the economy of the province (and coincided with growing American demand for energy). Since that time, Alberta's economic fortunes have largely tracked the price of oil, and increasingly natural gas prices. When oil prices spiked during the 1967 Oil Embargo, 1973 oil crisis, and 1979 energy crisis, Alberta's economy boomed. However, during the 1980s oil glut Alberta's economy suffered.