I started replying to your comment Florian and then decided to make it an entry instead. Thanks first for your answer to my question, I had it in my mind that way too.

Whether the majority of "Edmontonerians" are Protestant? What are Edmontonians actually? Oh my goodness! Where shall I start? Well I better just look up the numbers of the census for a beginning:

According to Wikipedia the 2001 census in terms of religion can be cathegorised as such:

Christians

• Protestant............204,770......31.2%
• Catholic...............193,110......29.4%
• Other Christian........25,815.......3.9%
• Christian Orthodox....17,275...... 2.6%

Non-Christians

• No religion.........160,150.......24.4%
• Islam.................18,790........2.9%
• Buddhist.............13,640........2.1%
• Sikh....................9,235.......1.4%
• Hindu..................7,525........1.1%
• Other..................2,345........0.3%

Interesting. Personally I would have assumed that the Orthodox as well as the Muslim community were a bit larger than these only two-something percent.

Anyway, so we see Protestants and Catholics almost equal at about 30%. But this is of course only a very simplified picture as Protestant means Anglicans as well as Presbyterians, Lutherans, Baptists and I don't know how many other denominations. Likewise Catholic is less uniform than it may seem as it contains firstly various languages notably the Polish Roman Catholics (I listed them earlier) as well as the Ukrainian Catholics (Orthodox rite but in faith united with Rome) and I guess some other smaller communities.

But whatever, this is actually beside the point. Or at least I think so. Because my assumption is that the status of Good Friday has much more to do with national politics and history rather than the faith of the city's inhabitants. Given that Canada was a former British colony to me it would seem only logical that the Anglican church had been regarded as sort of the established church of Canada as well and thus the public holidays would have been introduced accordingly. I don't know how the legal/constitutional situation has been after independence (well and of course you still have the Queen as head of state), or whether holidays are partly provincial authority (for example whether Quebec has different holidays) but right now I can't be bothered to do further research on that..