ABSTRACT
When Canada acquired Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory in 1870, she also inherited the problem of the creation of administrative units within this vast area of some three million square miles. In the early 1900s, in anticipation of the creation of one or more Provinces out of parts of the then Northwest Territories, it had been suggested that the new Province or Provinces would have no northern boundary other than the North Pole. All the arable land in the Northwest Territories is in the Mackenzie area, and good ranching land is available in its south-western portion. This chapter arrives at a new division of the Northwest Territories which embraces the principles of geographical regionalism and the realities of demarcating a boundary in a tundra environment are an advance on the preliminary considerations which were given to the establishment of Provincial and Territorial boundaries in the past.
