Territorial Evolution, 1873

Canada

The colony of Prince Edward Island did not want to share the costs of railway construction on the Canadian mainland and so had stayed outside of Confederation. But when it started to build a railway of its own, it soon ran into financial difficulties. The debt of the island colony rose from $250 000 in 1863 to about $4 000 000 a decade later. Prince Edward Island agreed to join Confederation after an agreement in which Canada promised to buy out absentee landowners, to take over the railway debts, and to establish communications between the island and the mainland. Prince Edward Island became a province of the Dominion of Canada on July 1, 1873.

[D]
Click for larger version, 40 KB
Photograph of the Trunk Road from Arisaig to Antigonish, Nova Scotia

It was also in 1873 that the Northwest Mounted Police came into being. The government had decided that a police force of well-trained men, spread throughout the territory, would be more effective than military garrisons at keeping peace and order. The first group of 300 trained men were sent throughout the West in 1874. From the beginning, this police force played an important role in the Canadian West: they helped organize the territory, helped new settlers, patrolled all the territory even the most faraway areas, helped the Indians adapt to a new way of life, and helped with the Indian treaties. This police force changed its name twice: first, in 1904, to the Royal North-West Mounted Police, and then, in 1920, to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Prince Edward Island

The island we know as Prince Edward Island was originally known as Île Saint-Jean, but it had very few settlers while it was owned by the French. When the British took over the island in 1763, it became part of the colony of Nova Scotia. In 1767, the Government divided the land into sixty-seven equal townships of twenty thousand acres each. These absentee landlords did not take care of the land; they collected rent and waited.

The settlers, who did not own their farms, had no good reason to improve the land or their homes and were reluctant to build churches or schools. St. John Island, as it came to be called by the British, was separated from Nova Scotia in 1769, and renamed Prince Edward Island, after Edward, Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria, in 1798. When the island joined Canada, the federal government agreed, among other things, to buy out the island's absentee landlords and to take over the new province's debt.

The animation Territorial Evolution 1867 to 1999 shows sequentially the history of the political boundary changes in Canada from Confederation to the creation of Nunavut.

• Territorial Evolution, 1867 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1870 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1871 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1874 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1876 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1880 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1881 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1882 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1886 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1889 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1895 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1897 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1898 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1901 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1905 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1912 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1920 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1927 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1949 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1999 Map | Read about this map
• Territorial Evolution, 1867 to 1999 Map | Read about this map

• History
• Territorial Evolution
• References and Links