Greetings from the U.S. Consulate General Calgary.

Welcome to our website, which is one of the highlights of the Virtual Consulate of the United States of America for Canada's Northwest Territories!

While our office is located in Calgary, we represent the United States in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Territories, giving us responsibility for one of the largest U.S. consular districts in the world. Through the sheer geographical diversity of the territory, it becomes challenging at times to reach out to our many constituents on both sides of the border. We are hoping to change that.

One way we have attempted to broaden our perspective is to launch a "Virtual Consulate" , a new tool of U.S. diplomacy. Virtual Consulates have been created to promote contacts and interaction between the citizens of a city or region outside the United States-- in locales where we do not have a regular physical presence--and Americans. In the first year of our NWT Virtual Consulate, our website received close to 13,000 visits, with a total of more than 37,000 page views.

Our mandate at the United States Consulate General is to follow economic, political and social trends in our area of responsibility; to assist Americans with services pertaining to their citizenship (including passports, reports of birth abroad, Social Security information and emergency assistance); to work with Canadians and others on issues of traveling to the United States; to encourage and further develop trade linkages between the United States and Canada; and to further educational and cultural connections between our two great nations. Through the use of the Virtual Consulate, we hope to strengthen the bonds between Canadians and Americans North of 60 and Americans south of the 49th Parallel.

If you are reading this message, then you have made it to the website for our Virtual Consulate. And we would like to hear from you. Please let us know what you think-about our site, about our policies, about events and activities which bring northern Canadians and Americans together. We plan to use this website to celebrate our connections, and to keep citizens of the Northwest Territories up-to-date on the projects and programs we bring to your region, as well as on issues of interest to you. Our email address is nwtvpp@state.gov

We hope to hear from you, and I look forward to the opportunity to meet many of you during my tenure as United States Consul General.

Respectfully,