East Kootenay

The Regional District of East Kootenay (RDEK) is a regional district in the Canadian province of British Columbia, Canada. At the 2011 census, the population was 56,685. Its area is 27,542.69 square kilometres (10,641.16 sq mi). The regional district offices are in Cranbrook, the largest community in the region. Other important population centers include the cities of Kimberley and Fernie, and the district municipality of Invermere and Sparwood. Despite its name, the regional district does not include all of the region known as the East Kootenay, which includes the Creston Valley and the east shore of Kootenay Lake.

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).

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