I’m sure one of our Canadian legal types can tell me which provinces use the Torrens system of land title registration. I’m trying to make sense of some Canadian statistics relating to claims experience under title insurance policies.
Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba use a standard Torrens system. British Columbia uses a modified Torrens (I’m not sure what the modifications are, just that I recall seeing notes in our land texts alerting the reader to this fact.) Ontario uses both: the classic registry system in the older settled parts, and the Torrens system in newer areas. I think (but I’m not sure) the four Atlantic provinces use the registry, and Quebec uses the cadastral system derived from French civil law rather than the common law registry system. I think the three territories use standard Torrens.
The common thread to the choice of registry over Torrens is that the earlier a province was settled, the more likely it will be registry; the later settlement occured, the more likely it will be Torrens. The three Prairie provinces were settled after Mr. Torrens invented his system, so they (and I think the territories) got the standard Torrens. B.C. had already had some settlement, but not a lot, hence the modified Torrens. Ontario had been settled for quite a while, but the legislators there saw the advantage of Torrens and introduced it for new areas of settlement. (“New” here being post 1880s.)
Perhaps some one will come along who can cast more light on the Atlantic provinces.
Thanks for that information. It’s useful in explaining some of the differences in the data that I’ve been looking at.
That’s Sir Robert Torrens to you. 
I knew him back in the day when he was just Bob. 
Apparently I can go my whole life without hearing about the Torrens title system, but come across it while researching Western Canadian survey systems and I read about it again in the same day!