DCHP-1 Online

province

• 1 n. Hist. any one of the principal administrative subdivisions of British North America.

  • 1764  [He is] Captain General and Governor in Chief in and over His Majesty's Province of Quebec. . . .
  • 1786  The north side of the Province, beyond the bay of Funday, is best stocked with them. . . .
  • 1838  There is close at hand a numerous and determined band of Potawatomies, and other Indians, who left in disgust the American Territory, and sought an asylum in our Province.
  • 1863  This is with reference to the hundred and thirty representatives in the Lower house of the Provincial Legislature. The members of the indissoluble Upper House, or Legislative Council, are also returned at the rate of twelve every two years, by the forty-eight electoral divisions of the Province [Upper Canada].

• 2 n. since Confederation, any one of Canada's major political subdivisions.

  • 1867  (1967)  [It will be recollected that under the Quebec scheme, New Brunswick had a special advantage over the other Provinces.]
  • 1958  The Dominion can protect a citizen from arbitrary arrest in a criminal case. But that wouldn't stop a province declaring him insane and throwing him into a provincial mental home.
  • 1964  Much remains to be done, in "The Province of Newfoundland and Labrador," as it is now to be called, and in the other Atlantic Provinces too.
  • 1966  . . . Ontario is only one of 10 provinces subject to the limiting factor of federal trade and agriculture policies.