The regional district's dominant landform is the Rocky Mountain Trench, which is flanked by the Purcell Mountains and Rocky Mountains on the east and west, and includes the Columbia Valley region, the southern half of which is in the regional district (its northern half is in the Columbia-Shuswap Regional District). Another distinct area within the regional district is the Elk Valley in the southern Rockies, which is the entrance to the Crowsnest Pass and an important coal-mining region. Other than the Columbia and Kootenay Rivers, whose valleys form the bottomlands of the Rocky Mountain Trench, also included in the regional district are the northernmost parts of the basins of the Flathead, Moyie and Yahk Rivers (the Moyie and Yahk are tributaries of the Kootenay, entering it in the United States, and the Flathead is a tributary of the Clark Fork in Montana).
Demographics
As a census division in the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, the Regional District of East Kootenay had a population of 65,896 living in 28,264 of its 35,931 total private dwellings, a change of 9% from its 2016 population of 60,439. With a land area of 27,514.1 km2 (10,623.3 sq mi), it had a population density of 2.4/km2 (6.2/sq mi) in 2021.[3]
Panethnic groups in the East Kootenay Regional District (1996−2021)
The largest hospital in the region is the East Kootenay Regional Hospital in Cranbrook.[10] There are also hospitals in Creston (Creston Valley Hospital),[11] Fernie (Elk Valley Hospital),[12] Invermere (Invermere & District Hospital),[13] and Golden (Golden & District Hospital).[14] Primary health centers are present in Sparwood and Elkford.[15][16]
