Prince Albert is the third-largest city (after Saskatoon and Regina) with a population of 41,640 as of 2001, in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada. It is situated more-or-less in the centre of the province on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River. The city is known as the "Gateway to the North" because it is the most northerly major centre as well to its being situated where the agricultural prairie of the south meets the forested and lakeland areas of the north. Prince Albert National Park, located just 50km north of the city, has a huge wealth of lakes, forest, and wildlife.The first white man to come through the area that is now Prince Albert was Henry Kelsey in 1692. The first establishment in the area was a trading post set up by Peter Pond, which the area is now named after (1776). James Isbister, an Anglo-Metis employee of the Hudson's Bay Company settled on the site of the current city in 1862. He farmed there until 1866, and had been joined by a number of families who called the site Isbister's Settlement. He later moved back to Prince Albert and lived out his remaining days there. The community was founded in 1866, by Rev. James Nisbet, a Canada Presbyterian Church minister who came to establish a mission for the Cree, who named the community after Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, in honour of the deceased 1861 husband of Queen Victoria. In 1884 Honore Jaxon and James Isbister were involved in the movement which brought Louis Riel back to Canada. In the Northwest Rebellion of the following year, Prince Albert Volunteers bore the heaviest casualties of the fighting at the Battle of Duck Lake, and surrounding settlers took refuge with the North West Mounted Police in a hastily improvised stockade at Prince Albert fearing an attack by Gabriel Dumont which never came. After the Battle of Batoche, Major General Frederick Middleton marched on to Prince Albert to relieve the town. 1885 also marks the year that Prince Albert was incorporated as a town under its first mayor, Thomas McKay. In 1904, the settlement was incorporated as the city of Prince Albert, then named after Prince Albert Victor, father of the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII). Its government is of a council-mayor type.