The 1896 textbook The New Eclectic Series: Elementary Geography includes a map of British America – Canada – as defined by the British North America Act, 1867 which created the Canadian Confederation.
Canada assumed control of the Northwest Territories (also know as North-Western Territory) in 1870, a large territory that encompassed the majority of what became Canada. The map from the textbook breaks out three administrative districts:
- Athabasca and Assiniboai existed from 1892 through 1905 before being incorporated into Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta;
- Keewatin was a territory before becoming an administrative district and existed in different forms until the creation of Nunavut in 1999.
The map shows the Labrador Peninsula as its own district, also apparently known as The Northern Peninsula, but today’s Labrador is very small with the remainder of the peninsula part of Quebec.
I am not Canadian nor have I studied its history in-depth but I wonder now known these districts are among Canadians: Athabasca and Assiniboai only existed for 13 years and I have yet to find a reference to the entire Labrador Peninsula being its own governing region. It’s also something I would never have known if I hadn’t looked at a map almost 140 years old.
