Western Upper Canada
| Province of Upper Canada | ||||||||||
| British colony | ||||||||||
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 Flag
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 Map of Upper Canada (in orange) with contemporary Canada (in pink) surrounding it
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| Capital |
Newark 1792–1797 (renamed Niagara 1798, Niagara-on-the-Lake 1970) York (later renamed Toronto in 1834) 1797–1841 |
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| Government |
Family Compact oligarchy under a Constitutional monarchy |
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| Sovereign | ||||||||||
| • | 1791–1820 | George III | ||||||||
| • | 1820–1830 | George IV | ||||||||
| • | 1830–1837 | William IV | ||||||||
| • | 1837–1841 | Victoria | ||||||||
| Lieutenant-Governor; Executive Council of Upper Canada | See list of Lieutenant-Governors | |||||||||
| Legislature | Parliament of Upper Canada | |||||||||
| • | Upper house | Legislative Council | ||||||||
| • | Lower house | Legislative Assembly | ||||||||
| Historical era | British Era | |||||||||
| • | Constitutional Act of 1791 | December 26, 1791 | ||||||||
| • | Act of Union 1840 | February 10, 1841 | ||||||||
| Area | ||||||||||
| • | 1836 | 258,999 km2 (100,000 sq mi) | ||||||||
| Population | ||||||||||
| • | 1823 est. | 150,196 | ||||||||
| • | 1836 est. | 358,187 | ||||||||
| Density | 1/km2 (4/sq mi) | |||||||||
| Currency | Halifax pound | |||||||||
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| Today part of |
 Canada (part of Ontario) |
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The Province of Upper Canada (French: province du Haut-Canada) was a part of British Canada established in 1791 by the United Kingdom, in order to govern the central third of the lands in British North America and to accommodate Loyalist refugees of the United States after the American Revolution. The new province remained, for the next fifty years of growth and settlement, the colonial government of the territory.
Upper Canada existed from 26 December 1791 to 10 February 1841 and generally comprised present-day Southern Ontario. The "upper" prefix in the name reflects its geographic position being closer to the headwaters of the Saint Lawrence River than that of Lower Canada (or present-day Quebec) to the northeast.
Upper Canada included all of modern-day Southern Ontario and all those areas of Northern Ontario in the Pays d'en Haut which had formed part of New France, essentially the watersheds of the Ottawa River or Lakes Huron and Superior, excluding any lands within the watershed of Hudson Bay.
The control the French had over Canada was handed over to Great Britain in 1763 when the Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years' War in America. The territories of modern southern Ontario and southern Quebec were initially maintained as the single Province of Quebec, as it had been under the French. From 1763 to 1791, the Province of Quebec maintained its French language, cultural behavioural expectations, practices and laws. This status was renewed and reinforced by the Quebec Act of 1774, which expanded Quebec's territory to include part of the Indian Reserve to the west (i.e., parts of southern Ontario), and other western territories south of the Great Lakes including much of what would become the United States' Northwest Territory, including the modern states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota.
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