I am not so certain your answer is complete. It is easy to draw a line on a map. It is quite something else to have other folks accept the lines as authorative. People living on a land seem to accept natural boundries much easier than arbritary lines drawn through by someone remote, drawn in some other time.
Often boundaries are drawn on whims. Example: the India and Pakistan boundary, once drawn, it divided families and cohesive communities, and the boundary has had to be "enforced" by remote governments, because the locals have largely never accepted it.
I just want my answer to be clarified.
So the original idea of boundaries was to separate the land among the territories and provinces...???
And make locations on maps seem easier?
--I still feel like I'm missing out on some things, but I don't know what other information to add. Could you please help me? I looked through sites as well.
Problems that have occured because of this?
-Conflicts occured between individuals, since they did not think the boundaries, placed were correct, and some early explorers had difficulties recognizing the lines of boundary they each kept getting lost. The 49th parallel of latitude that set the boundary between British and American territory in the West--cut through plains and mountains. The people who had been used to crossing a natural area were now hemmed in by lines on a map. The natives had no right to draw in these lines on the maps themselved. Also, the Aboriginals had no authority in claiming the control of their traditional territories.
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The provincial and territorial boundaries of Western Canada are so familiar that it is easy to forget how abstract they are. These political boundaries are what geographers call "artifical" boundaries. Before European settlement, the Native peoples, Metis, early explorers, and fur trappers divided Western Canada according to its natural boundaries--the recognzied physical features of Shield, plains, mountains, rivers, and forests. Such boundaries are ill-suited for the purposes of the modern state: political leaders like to have clear lines indicating the extent of their authority.
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