BORDER LINES

AN EXPLORATION OF THE EVOLUTION OF CANADA’S PROVINCIAL AND TERRITORIAL BOUNDARIES

- STEPHEN HARPER

MANY DECADES AGO, I ASKED myself how, if I could do so from scratch, I might draw the boundaries of Canada’s provinces and territories. Though never really answer that question to my own satisfaction, I have delved into Canadian geography, demography, economics, and history. This article is about history, and let me start in the middle, with the map of Confederation before 1905 (see map above). That is when the federal government had subdivided the old North-West Territories into nine districts. We can reasonably regard the districts as Ottawa’s plan for the creation of separate territories and, eventually, provinces. However, that map only loosely resembles the one we know today. Here is how and why Canada’s boundaries evolved the way they did.

THE NATURAL REGIONS OF CANADA

Most present-day Canadian jurisdictions originate in the British period (and are similar to those established under earlier French rule). One might think the imperial authorities would have divided the country into its natural regions (see map above). Indigenous Peoples who lived in what is now Canada had societies strongly shaped by these landforms, climates and the ecosystems they produced.

Europeans, on the other hand, did not fully understand such geography during the early phases of exploration and settlement. As the colonial powers began to make their own boundaries, they only loosely considered these natural regions. The leaders of British North America (and of New France before them) were, however, influenced by watersheds, the transportation routes by which early European development took place.

BRITISH ADMINISTRATION BEFORE CONFEDERATION