DCHP-1 Online

Northwest Territories

• 1a Hist. the vast region north and west of Lake Superior, as known by the fur traders and explorers.

  See also: Northwest (def. 1a)  Northwest territory  

• 1b the early administrative districts which later became Saskatchewan and Alberta.

  See also: Northwest (def. 1b)  N.W.T. (def. 1)  

  • 1880  The district around Edmonton is one of exceptional fertility and promise, the most promising indeed of all the North-West Territories.
  • 1963  The government was therefore able to . . . carry out reforms in the administration of the North-West Territories. These now consisted of three, Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, organized in 1882, as well as the unorganized territory which was to become the districts of Athabaska, Franklin, Mackenzie, Ungava, and Yukon in 1895.

• 2a Hist. the unorganized extra-provincial districts of the North and Northwest prior to 1920.

  • 1913  Northwest Territories comprise all British Territories in North America and all Islands adjacent thereto not included within any province or the Yukon Territory and the colony of Newfoundland.
  • 1933  In 1895, by order-in-council, the dominion government defined the boundaries of the four districts into which the North-west Territories were divided

• 2b from January 1, 1920, the division of northern Canada between the Yukon Territory and Hudson Bay, including Baffin Island and the islands in James Bay, Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, and the Canadian Archipelago; the districts of Franklin, Keewatin, and Mackenzie.

  See also: Northwest (def. 2)  N.W.T. (def. 2)  

  • 1923  Her daughter was for five years the only white girl in the Northwest Territories.
  • 1962  The Slavey Indian tribe at Fort Providence in the North West Territories asked Anne to handle the sale of the porcupine quill work.
  • 1965  [Caption] Pale, prim and profuse: the Northwest Territories' Mountain Avens.