It's the difference between "ownership in fee simple" and a "freehold lease" or "freehold tenancy". I'm not aware of any ownership in fee simple in the US or Ca

It's the difference between "ownership in fee simple" and a "freehold lease" or "freehold tenancy". I'm not aware of any ownership in fee simple in the US or Canada; it's usually the sort of thing that a Marquess or Duke has in a feudal sort of arrangement (you own the land outright rather than merely at the pleasure of the sovereign, be that a monarch or The People writ large, but you're required to defend it in turn). Smaller fee simple properties exist in England as well, often as the result of the grant of peerage in ye olde dayes (the Norman and Angevin periods mostly). For the most part, though, in the english-descended world, the most you can have in a property is freehold tenancy.