The

Canadian province Canada has ten provinces and three territories that are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Constitution of Canada, Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British North Amer ...

Prince Edward Island Prince Edward Island is an island Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. While it is the smallest province by land area and population, it is the most densely populated. The island has several nicknames: "Garden of the Gulf", ...

has three counties that have historically been used as administrative divisions for the provincial government, and prior to

Confederation A confederation (also known as a confederacy or league) is a political union of sovereign states united for purposes of common action. Usually created by a treaty, confederations of states tend to be established for dealing with critical issu ...

(in 1873), the colonial government. The current system of land division in Prince Edward Island, including its three counties, dates to a series of surveys undertaken in 1764-65 by Captain Samuel Holland of the

British Army The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...

Corps of Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is the engineering arm of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces ...

. Holland's survey saw the island divided into the three counties, each of which had a "royalty" (or

shire town A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is in use in five countries: Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, and the United States. An equivalent term, shire town, is used in ...

) as a county seat. The rest of the county outside the royalty was sub-divided into parishes for the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...

, measuring approximately ; the parishes were further sub-divided into townships measuring approximately . The counties are no longer used as administrative boundaries for the provincial government; however, they continue to be used as

census division Census divisions, in Canada and the United States, are areas delineated for the purposes of statistical analysis and presentation; they have no government in and of themselves. The census divisions of Canada are second-level census geographic uni ...

s by

Statistics Canada Statistics Canada (StatCan; ), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture. It is headquartered in ...

for statistical purposes in administering the

Canadian census Statistics Canada conducts a national census of population and census of agriculture every five years and releases the data with a two-year lag. The Census of Population provides demographic and statistical data that is used to plan public servi ...

References

{{Reflist

Counties A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...

See also

References