Can some Canadian poster please explain to me....

[Njall]

Additionally, it is probably useful to note that the provincial and federal parties are not affiliated, although may share similar names, with the exception of the NDP, which runs candidates from school board to federal riding.

Oh, were you referring to municipal parties?  Because the provincial/territorial NDP's are wings of the federal party (except for in Quebec, of course, as there is no Quebec NDP).  The Liberal parties of Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island are wings of their federal party as well.

[Njall]

To be fair, the Saskatchewan PCs technically still exist, but like the Saskatchewan Liberals they run a handful of candidates in order to keep their party registration and get maybe 0.5% of the vote each time around.  But yeah, the provincial PC parties continue to be electoral forces in each province, except for Quebec (never had an officially-sanctioned PC party), Saskatchewan (99% of their voters went to the Saskatchewan Party), and BC (voters there have tended to gather around a 'free-market coalition' party; it was Social Credit for a long time but the BC Liberals fill that role now).  As Hatman already mentioned, the Yukon Party is the territory's conservative party; they were known as the Yukon PCs until 1992 when they re-named to avoid name association with the federal PCs. 

In recent years in Alberta and BC, parties to the right of the local PC(-esque) party have been gaining some momentum.  The BC Conservatives (unaffiliated with the federal party) had been getting some pretty high polling numbers in the months before the last election, but that was mostly due to disapproval of Christy Clark and a lot of those voters seemed to return to the Liberals.  In the end, I believe the Conservatives walked away with ~5% of the vote (and no seats).  On the other hand, Alberta has given birth to the much more successful Wildrose Party.  The Wildrose clearly positions themselves to the economic right of the PCs, and although their leader (Danielle Smith) tends to come across as a libertarian, the party base seems to contain a fair amount of rural social conservatives.  In other words, the WRP is essentially the old 'blue tory' wing of the Alberta PCs.  Due to evaporating support from the right, the PCs have taken on a more moderate, 'red tory' approach as of late, and were (in the last election at least) able to attract enough support from those who would normally vote liberal to fend off the Wildrose.  This has been illustrated in polls since the election; the WRP has held steady in the mid-30s, while PCs have lost support to the liberals and NDP.  In fact, there was a poll released today that showed the WRP and PCs in a statistical tie (WRP 34-33 PC), with the liberals and NDP both at 15. 

[Njall]

One has to remember that Alberta is quite urban. 2/3 of the population live in either Calgary or Edmonton. I'm thinking the last provincial election would be a good indicator in how a Dem-GOP race would result in Alberta with PC areas voting Dem and WRP areas voting GOP.

That's how I've thought it would go too.  The rural south would be pretty decent GOP territory, but everywhere else would at least lean democratic.  Certain suburban parts of Calgary could conceivably go GOP as well, but overall I could see Calgary voting >60% democratic and Edmonton voting >75% democratic.