NEW YORK - A native of a small town in Alberta has been cast as the new Lois Lane.

Erica Durance, 26, will play the part of Superman’s love interest on the WB show Smallville this coming season.

The show is a prequel series that traces the young adulthood of Clark Kent, who eventually grows up to be Superman. It will enter its fourth season in the fall.

Durance has been tapped to appear in at least 13 episodes. Because the series takes place chronologically before Clark decides to move to Metropolis and become a journalist, Lois Lane will not yet be a reporter on the show - just a college freshman who is the cousin of one of Clark’s friends.

Durance is a native of Three Hills, a community of 3500 people north of Calgary.

By hiring a performer from this country, the producers of Smallville have unknowingly carried on a Canadian tradition. Margot Kidder, the actress who played Lois Lane in the four Superman movies opposite Christopher Reeves, is also Canadian.

In a recent interview with the New York Post, Durance said she fell in love with Reeves when she saw the Superman movies as a youngster.

She also says Lois Lane, who is Superman’s love interest and Clark Kent’s competitor at the Daily Planet, made an impression on her when she read comic books.

"Of all the different female leads in comics, Lois Lane was always my favourite because she was so involved," she said. "She was always so involved in everything going on. She’s a go-getter, she was really in there, quite tough and kind of a hero in her own right."

Durance, who has also appeared in in episodes of Andromeda and Tru Calling, told the Post that growing up in Three Hills was similar to growing up in a real-life Smallville.

In Canada, Smallville airs on the CHUM family of stations. Superman was created by Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, who spent their early years in Toronto.