Can someone explain the rationale for the borders separating each canadian province.?

Question

What i mean is between manitoba and saskatchewan for example.
some are more obvious than others.

what i mean is the political boundaries as they are seen on the map, for example the boundary between the us and canada is the 49th parallel, but what about that between sask and alberta etc.., where did they come up with the number?

Answer 1

I can explain one of them and maybe that explanation applies to some of the others. If you look at the border between the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec, the island part of the province of NL is easy as it is a separate entity from the mainland, but there seems to be no logic to much of the Labrador/Quebec border. However, there is a sort of logic to it. The border is formed at what is called "the height of the land", that point where some rivers flow east to the Atlantic and others flow west to James Bay and Hudson Bay. When the border was determined all rivers that flowed to the Atlantic became part of NL, from their source, while the rivers that flowed west became part of Quebec from their source, which is why most of that particular border is so convoluted..

Answer 2

Canada didn't form all ten provinces at once, there was upper and lower Canada , the atlantic provinces excluding newfoundland who didn't join canada until the 1940s, manitoba , sasaktchewant , british columbia and then Alberta.

Canada developed her west as they built the Canadian National Railway, read Pierre Berton's books on the National Dream.

There's nothing really discernable about entering the various provinces, no checkpoints like with the US border so you don't really make yourself clear with your question.

Answer 3

This website explains the evolution of Canada's external and internal boundries:
http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/historical/territorialevolution

Answer 4

so we can keep out the Albertans, and Saskatchewan's from enjoying our freezing winter burr