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Township plan
1881
Central to the federal government's plan to settle
the West was the township and its quarter-section homesteads.
As shown here, the typical township had 36 sections,
each of which measured one square mile (640 acres) and
was divided into quarter sections. The even-numbered
sections (shown here in green) were reserved by the
federal government for free homestead grants, and the
odd-numbered sections (shown in pink) were reserved
as grants to the railways and as school lands (that
is, lands to be sold by the Crown to defray provincial
and territorial school expenses). Sections 8 and 26
were part of the lands awarded to the Hudson's Bay Company
under the terms of the transfer of Rupert's Land.
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