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The parallel expansion westwards of the United States and British North America brought about considerable territorial competition. Canada's external boundaries mainly derive from this competition: the St. Lawrence watershed, partitioned through the Great Lakes basin; the arbitrary line of 49°N from the Great Lakes to the Rockies, extended later to the Pacific shore; and the Alaska Panhandle, another watershed-like boundary. Competition occurred, too, between individual colonies or provinces for valuable resource land; though analogous to those on the continental scale, such cases did not enter the international arena. At the end of the century only two external boundaries remained under dispute: the Alaska Panhandle, aggravated by the Klondike gold rush; and the Labrador coast, between Canada and Newfoundland, then still a separate self-governing colony.
With the transfer of the Arctic Islands to Canada in the 1880s Britain completed its withdrawal from the new country. The integration of the vast Northwest Territories (NWT) into a dominion that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific proceeded in piecemeal fashion. The Yukon segment of the NWT became a separate territory in 1898 in order to cope better with the Klondike gold rush, but it was the formation of the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905 that brought a significant level of administrative autonomy to the region. In 1912 Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba were also extended northward; thereafter the NWT became an area synonymous with Canada 'north of 60.'
On the Labrador coast the historical claims of Newfoundland conflicted with those of an expanded Quebec, especially as new timber and mineral resources became accessible. The interior of Labrador was first divided in 1825: south of the 52nd parallel and west of a line that lay 'due north and south of a line from ... Ance Sablon' was Quebec territory; north and east was Newfoundland territory. Newfoundland joined the Canadian Confederation in 1949 after an acrimonious internal debate. Canada/Quebec claimed areas north of that boundary in 1867 and 1898 but these claims were refuted by Newfoundland. When both Quebec and Newfoundland sought to control the licensing of mineral and lumber resources, the British Privy Council in 1927 ruled in favour of Newfoundland. Quebec did not recognize that Canada confirmed the boundary in 1949.
Across the country, throughout the 20th century, the territorial laws and management systems of Native peoples were largely ignored by the demands of resource capital and homesteaders. Amerindians had little success in resolving land claims or in determining their own way of life.
