In some places, usually if the township is in a county rather than in a regional municipality, the head of a political township may be called a ' reeve', not a mayor. Often rural counties are subdivided into townships. Ī township municipality may consist of a portion of one or more geographic townships united as a single entity with a single municipal administration.

in Southern Ontario) or single-tier municipality (if located in a district, i.e. Township municipalities, also called 'political townships', are areas that have been incorporated with municipal governments, and are a lower-tier municipality (if located in a county or regional municipality, i.e. They are used primarily for geographic purposes, such as land surveying, natural resource exploration and tracking of phenomena such as forest fires or tornados, but are not political entities.

Geographic townships are the original historical administrative subdivisions surveyed and established primarily in the 1800s. In Ontario, there are both geographic townships and township municipalities. In New Brunswick, parishes have taken over as the present-day subdivision of counties, and present-day Nova Scotia uses districts as appropriate.

In Prince Edward Island, the colonial survey of 1764 established 67 townships, known as lots, and 3 royalties, which were grouped into parishes and hence into counties the townships were geographically and politically the same. The historic colony of Nova Scotia (present-day Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island) used the term township as a subdivision of counties and as a means of attracting settlers to the colony.

Township and range system canada