District of Ungava - Political History

Political History

When created in 1895, the District of Ungava covered all of modern-day northern Quebec, the interior of modern-day Labrador, and all the islands in James Bay, the Hudson Strait, Ungava Bay, and the eastern side of Hudson Bay.

Ungava's southern continental boundaries initially ranged as far south as Lake Timiskaming, well below James Bay on the modern Ontario/Quebec border. Note, however, that a dispute over the location of the boundary between Canada and Labrador (a dependency of the Dominion of Newfoundland) meant both Canada and Newfoundland claimed the far eastern portion of Ungava, an area shown in shaded red on the accompanying maps. This boundary dispute would not be settled during the time the district of Ungava was in existence.

At the time of its creation, Ungava covered over 1,000,000 square kilometres, although just under 15% of its area was also claimed by Newfoundland. However, just three years later with the adoption of the Quebec Boundary Extension Act, 1898, the southernmost portion of the District of Ungava (excluding offshore islands) was transferred by the Parliament of Canada to Quebec. All told, the act transferred approximately 250,000 square kilometres of Ungava to Quebec, the majority of which now lies in the modern-day Jamésie region of the province. After the transfer was complete, the mainland area of the District of Ungava reached no further south than the Eastmain River—about halfway down James Bay, as shown on the accompanying map.

With the Quebec Boundaries Extension Act, 1912, all of Ungava's remaining continental land was transferred to Quebec. The almost entirely uninhabited offshore islands of Ungava (over 1500 of them) were not officially transferred to the District of Franklin in the Northwest Territories until 1920, at which point the District of Ungava (which had not functioned in any administrative capacity for eight years) formally ceased to exist.