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Create AccountArctic exploration began in the Elizabethan era when English seamen sought a shortcut to the Spice Islands of the Far East by the seas north of America — the so-called Northwest Passage.
The Northwest Territories lie northwest of central Canada, bordered to the east by Nunavut, to the west by the Yukon and to the south by the northeastern corner of British Columbia, as well as the entire northern borders of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The name was originally applied to the territory acquired in 1870 from the Hudson's Bay Company and Great Britain: Rupert’s Land and the North-Western Territory. In 1880 Great Britain also transferred to Canada the arctic islands, north of the mainland, thereby adding to the territories. The acquisition of the NWT was a major component of the Canadian government’s desire, led by Sir John A. MacDonald, to construct a British nation in North America and to guard against the potential incursion of American settlers.
The Northwest Territories (NWT) entered Confederation in 1870 after Canada acquired Rupert’s Land and the North-Western Territory from the Hudson’s Bay Company.
