The four corners area is located between
Kasba Lake to the north and Hasbala Lake to the south. It is located by an area of marginal
taiga forest, which happens to be the only place in Nunavut which is not
Arctic tundra or
ice cap. The crew worked from south to north along the Second Meridian (102° west of the
Greenwich Meridian) as defined in the system of
Dominion Land Surveys. The final monument, designated 157, officially marked the intersection of the boundaries of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories. Unlike the standard survey monuments along the provincial and territorial borders, Monument 157 is an aluminum
obelisk that stands about tall. Photos can be seen in the original survey report. The exact location of Monument 157 (measured with modern
GPS technologies) is (
NAD83). This places it roughly west of
102° W and roughly south of
60°N at an elevation of . The establishment of Nunavut in 1999 led to the creation of Canada's only
quadripoint. In the legal definition of Nunavut, its border is specified as "Commencing at the intersection of 60°00′ N latitude with 102°00′ W longitude, being the intersection of the Manitoba, Northwest Territories and Saskatchewan borders". Since the intersection does not lie exactly at those coordinates, the laws left a legal ambiguity regarding the exact commencement point of the boundary. In 2014, the Survey General Branch (SGB) of
Natural Resources Canada acknowledged there was a problem with the legal boundary definition; it decided that the boundary should commence at Monument 157. Specifically it decided that the first leg of the boundary should be a
geodesic line running from Monument 157 to the first turning point at . This decision confirmed that in the eyes of Natural Resources Canada, the two territories and two provinces do indeed meet at a quadripoint. In September 2014, the federal government paid for an official survey of the line. The survey crew, following instructions from the SGB, installed 48 new Canada Lands survey monuments along the geodesic line. As of 2021, the ambiguous legislation has not been repealed or updated to acknowledge the existence of the surveyed boundary, but based on legal precedent from the
Dominion Land Survey, the surveyed boundary
legally prevails over the description of the boundary in the original legislation. ==Gallery==