Ceremonial county (Canada)

A ceremonial county, in the Canadian Republic, is a geographic area which is not a county proper (officially an administrative county), but which is recognised by the President of Canada or the Deputy President of the respective province as possessing some sort of historic or cultural value which makes it symbolically similar to a county. All ceremonial counties are located within a county area, meaning that a ceremonial county may consist of several counties, one or two counties and parts of others, or other configurations; however, ceremonial counties do not exist outside county areas.

All twelve provinces of Canada divide the vast majority of their more populous geographical areas into counties, which form the upper tier of local government, within each of which multiple municipalities (the lower tier of local government) exist. A county area is an area which consists of at least one county, which is separated from other county areas by rural areas which fall under the district area system. County governments concern themselves with more general administrative and infrastructural/transportation issues, whereas municipal governments handle all administrative and public needs within the jurisdiction of the municipality. Municipalities are incorporated communities; many counties have communities which are unincorporated, and thus rely exclusively on the county for the provision of public services. However, all counties have at least a handful of incorporated municipalities with local governments of their own.

A ceremonial county is an area which historically formed a single county, but today forms more than one county and/or parts of neighbouring counties. Counties proper, that is, counties which are not ceremonial and thus have their own upper-tier local government, are officially known as administrative counties or just counties.

For example, the Lower Mainland, the most populous region of the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC), is a ceremonial county, as it was from 1871 to 1960 a single county. Today, however, it consists of seven separate administrative counties, all of which consist of several lower-tier municipalities. Similarly, Toronto, the capital of Ontario, used to be an independent city (that is, separate from any county), surrounded on all sides (except for the Lake Ontario coast) by the four counties of Halton, Peel, York and Durham, each containing several municipalities. In 1988, however, the above four counties were merged with the City of Toronto—which already consisted of six boroughs, five of which were municipalities surrounding old Toronto (the sixth) which themselves were amalgamated with Old Toronto into a single municipality in 1954—to form the Toronto Metropolis, the four former counties each becoming the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th boroughs of the new Toronto Metropolis. Following the amalgamation, Toronto Metropolis was given the status of ceremonial county; while it is surrounded on all sides by administrative counties, Toronto is itself not classified as an administrative county as it entails a single municipal jurisdiction, its ten boroughs possessing autonomy only at the discretion of the Toronto Metropolitan Council or the Mayor of Toronto.