<P> The Province of Upper Canada (French: province du Haut - Canada) was a part of British Canada established in 1791 by the Kingdom of Great Britain, 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 . </P> <P> Upper Canada existed from its establishment on 26 December 1791 to 10 February 1841 when it was united with adjacent Lower Canada to form the Province of Canada . The "upper" prefix in the name reflects its geographic position along the Great Lakes, mostly above the headwaters of the Saint Lawrence River, contrasted with Lower Canada (present - day Quebec) to the northeast . </P> <P> 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 . </P> <P> The control that 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 . </P>

Upper canada refers to what part of the country