.As to the Western Provinces: Essentially the majority of the Western Provinces were originally part of the North-West Territories/British North America, and largely unsettled (well, except by the Natives, but nobody really cared about them. The whole Metis Rebellion thing was about it). Other than a few trading posts (many of which were set up and run by Americans to sell whiskey to the natives, which led to the formation of the RCMP to kick them out), there were very few signs of settlement from Ontario to BC, which was its own colony. Not being able to support itself, and not wanting to join with the US for the most part, BC decided that it would join with Canada, after MacDonald (our first PM) offered to build a railroad from Ontario to British Columbia. As a result of building the railroad, a lot more of the Prairies got settled, and eventually developed into the provinces you know today.
Manitoba was the first "Western Province" (a year before BC, most of Manitoba and Western Ontario was privately owned land (Ruperts Land) which was sold to the Canadian Government), and was known as the "Postage-stamp" province due to its small size and square shape. It eventually grew, and gained more representation in Parliament, which allowed the rest of the west to demand there own representation, leading to Alberta and Saskatchewan.
So its "interesting" from a political and legal perspective, but lets just say no blockbuster films are going to be made about it any time soon.
EDIT: That was all from memory, and full of inaccuracies. One that I just checked on though was that Rupert's Land actually included All of Manitoba, most of Saskatchewan and Alberta, and parts of Nunavut and Quebec as well. A small part of also became part of the US. All this was sold to the government in 1869 for £300 000 pounds. That then became the Northwest Territories, along with all the other land we claimed because nobody else wanted it.
