Four corners (Canada)

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Map highlighting the corners of the four Canadian provinces and territories which meet.

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Map showing all survey monuments within 6 km of the four corners

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Map showing all survey monuments within 600 m of the four corners

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NASA photo showing Kasba Lake and the four corners

The four corners is a quadripoint near where four Canadian provinces or territories meet. These are the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan and the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. It came into being with the creation of Nunavut on April 1, 1999.

Geography

The four corners area is located between Kasba Lake to the north and Hasbala Lake to the south. It is located by an area of marginal taiga forest, which happens to be the only place in Nunavut which is not Arctic tundra or ice cap. It is hundreds of kilometres from any road or railway, but can be accessed from nearby Kasba Lake Airport or Kasba Lake Water Aerodrome as well as from Points North Landing near Wollaston Lake.

During the winter of 1961–1962 (37 years prior the formation of Nunavut), a survey crew led by Lionel E. Boutiler installed 85 survey monuments along the northernmost section of the Saskatchewan–Manitoba border. The crew worked from south to north along the Second Meridian (102° west of the Greenwich Meridian) as defined in the system of Dominion Land Surveys. The final monument, designated No. 157, officially marked the intersection of the boundaries of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories. Unlike the standard survey monuments along the provincial and territorial borders, Monument 157 is an aluminum obelisk that stands about tall. Photos can be seen in the original survey report. On the top of the monument is a cap that states "5 years imprisonment for removal".

The exact location of Monument 157 (measured with modern GPS technologies) is (NAD83). This places it roughly Template:Cvt west of 102° W and roughly Template:Cvt south of 60°N at an elevation of Template:Cvt.

The establishment of Nunavut in 1999 led to the creation of Canada's only quadripoint. In the legal definition of Nunavut, its border is specified as "Commencing at the intersection of 60°00′ N latitude with 102°00′ W longitude, being the intersection of the Manitoba, Northwest Territories and Saskatchewan borders". Since the intersection does not lie exactly at those coordinates, the laws left a legal ambiguity regarding the exact commencement point of the boundary.

In 2014, the Survey General Branch (SGB) of Natural Resources Canada acknowledged there was a problem with the legal boundary definition; it decided that the boundary should commence at Monument 157.

Specifically it decided that the first leg of the boundary should be a Template:Cvt geodesic line running from Monument 157 to the first turning point at . This decision confirmed that in the eyes of Natural Resources Canada, the two territories and two provinces do indeed meet at a quadripoint.

In September 2014, the federal government paid for an official survey of the Template:Cvt line. The survey crew, following instructions from the SGB, installed 48 new Canada Lands survey monuments along the geodesic line. As of 2021, the ambiguous legislation has not been repealed or updated to acknowledge the existence of the surveyed boundary, but based on legal precedent from the Dominion Land Survey, the surveyed boundary legally prevails over the description of the boundary in the original legislation.

See also

• Geography of Canada
• List of regions of Canada
• Four Corners Monument, a surveyed quadripoint in the United States which also has a monument.