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Land Information Ontario - Internet Map Browser
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Well, I've finally found a site better than Toporama! The Land Information Ontario site has Ontario Base Map (OBM) data available online!! This data is at a scale of 1:10,000 for Southern Ontario and 1:20,000 for Northern Ontario. Of course, since it's a government site, it's needlessly confusing, so if you don't want to read through all the info and banter at the above link, or you just can't find the maps no matter how hard you try, go directly to the maps! Here you'll find links to different views. The currently available views are "Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas," "Bear Management Areas," "ERMES mining and exploration data," "Fish Species in Waterbodies," "Furbearer Mangement," "Moose Management," and of course the best one of all - "Topographic Features." It's the "topographic features" view you'll want if you're looking for OBM data. The other views are all quite specific. This site is fantastic and even has a fairly decent customizable printing feature if you want to print off some OBM data. At least some of our tax money gets spent on something useful :) Of course if you're a fisherman, the "Fish Species in Waterbodies" view will be of interest to you. This view will show you which fish species is present in a given waterbody. Simply zoom in on the area in question, and you'll have the info you need!
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Toporama
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Toporama is the official Natural Resources Canada website.
Here, you'll find online topographic maps at scales of 1:1 000 000, 1:250 000, and now also at a scale of
1:50 000! (yay!) You can now also view the entire map in one piece instead of looking at tiny little bits
at a time. This is great, except that it takes a while to load the entire image. Once you get used to the
setup of the site, it's not that complicated, but it's rather odd at first. Another great feature of this
site is the search feature. You can search for any feature name, and it will return a list of matches, and
their lat/long. You can then view the map of that area. Pretty nifty! Coverage appears to be all of
Canada, but I haven't yet figured it out for sure. So far, every map I've wanted has been there, that's
all I know! This is possibly the best mapping site that exists for Canada. (Note that the LIO site
above is better for Ontario). The site
is currently being re-designed, but you can still access the old site from their main page. |
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Crown Land Use Atlas
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The Crown Land Use Atlas is another excellent page! It allows you to view the crown-owned land in Ontario. This is fantastic if you plan a camping trip and wish to camp on crown land. You can distinguish between patent land and crown land on this map, to ensure that you're not trespassing on private property. It also shows the Ontario Living Legacy sites, and has links to supporting documents for the sites. It's really a wealth of information for many areas of Ontario. Take a look!
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Regional Municipality of Waterloo GIS Locator
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The Regional Municipality of Waterloo's GIS Locator is an internet based GIS system running ArcIMS. It contains data pertaining to roads, waterways, landmarks, and many other interesting things. It's got 30cm resolution black and white orthophotography for the entire Region of Waterloo, and 10cm resolution black and white orthophotography of the TriCities of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge. Unfortunately, the GIS Locator only works with Internet Explorer. However, it's good enough that I installed Internet Explorer simply for this purpose (I use Mozilla as my primary browser, and it only works a little bit.. whereas Netscape or Opera don't work at all.) Also, note the following quote from the RMOW's website: "The first time you try to access the ROW Locator, you must set your Internet Security settings to "LOW". This will allow your system to download and install the necessary ActiveX controls required for the proper use of this application." The GIS Locator even lets you buffer features, query street addresses and be shown the exact lot, and lots of other fun stuff. If you live in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo (or even if you don't), take a look!
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Directory of Federal Real Property
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You might ask the same question I did when I discovered this site... "what the heck is DFRP?" Well...DFRP is actually a pretty cool website. It's the Treasury Board of Canada's Directory of Federal Real Property. Sure....whatever eh? Leave it to the government... Anyway, this strange site is actually pretty decent, because it provides vector maps of Canada, not just crappy scanned topos or something. You start off faced with a view of all of Canada, and can then draw a box to zoom in to. The actual purpose of this site (as best I can tell) is to provide an inventory of all the properties that the government owns. However, it's also useful to us people who couldn't care less what the government owns or not. You can search for place based on place names as well, so you aren't limited to just zooming and scrolling around the map. It's pretty neat!
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Canoe Routes of Algonquin Provincial Park
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You can download a full copy of the "Canoe Routes of Algonquin Park" map from the Official Ontario Parks site. It's a .pdf file, so you'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader (free) to view it. There's only one problem with this map, and that is that it's the 1994 version. The paper map is updated yearly, and campsites and portages do change. However, for basic trip planning this outdated map is still ok, and you can buy an up to date paper copy after you roughly plan your trip.
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Official Road Map of Ontario Online
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This site has the entire Official Road Map of Ontario online. It's the standard map that all Ontario residents are likely familiar with. However, to view it you click on the area you want to see, and you get only that section in a .pdf file. Again, you'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader (free) to view it. This is useful for planning road trips, and great for figuring out just how to get to your canoe route. However, it shows only main roads, so topo. maps or something will have to supplement this map to get enough detail.
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Bluewaters Wilderness Canoeing Homepage
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Bluewaters Wilderness Canoeing Homepage is a great page. Blair Caron, the site owner has a wealth of info available. You can spend hours looking at this page! However, since this is my Maps page, of course Bluewaters has maps! Blair has many maps on his site to supplement his trip journals. Also, he has the entire Massasauga Provincial Park map online. I've also found that Blair has many other maps which aren't posted on his website. If you email him, he may be able to help you out with some of his other maps. He's quite happy to discuss trips and such as well - he's a very friendly guy :)
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County of Oxford Land Related Information System
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Well folks, if you're interested in the area I live, or if you happen to live here yourself, the County of Oxford has a very interesting Land Related Information System. Here you'll find a GIS that has digital maps of the entire county, and you can play around with different themes, including ground water and county owned property. If you've never used a GIS (Geographic Information System) before, check this out to see what it's all about. It's a great way to waste some time, and (maybe) learn something in the process :) This site has recently been updated, and now has orthophotos for the entire county available for viewing. SWEET :)
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Nastawgan Temagami Map
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| This map shows the Temagami area as it was in 1900. Compiled by 'ethno-geographer' Craig Macdonald after 27 of research, it's a historical map which shows campsites, portages, winter trails, and native place names as they were in 1900. It's a fascinating look at this popular canoeing area! Of course, since the information contained in this map is designed to be historical, you should "use this map in conjunction with modern topographic editions and up-to-date canoe-route publications."
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Mapblast! and MapQuest
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Mapblast! and MapQuest are two very similar (but completely different) websites. Both provide fairly decent road maps that you can use to navigate just about anywhere in North America. They also have maps of other areas (other than North America that is) but I'm not sure of the detail or accuracy of these maps. For North America, you can type in an address, and they will locate the exact street location for you. Both sites also offer "Driving Directions" so that you can put in a start and finish location, and you will get maps and directions to drive from one area to the other. It's a useful feature if you've never been to an area before... I'm sure if it's an area you are familiar with you can find a faster/shorter way, but hey, nothing's perfect. Both sites are almost identical, although I don't think they're affiliated in any way... Personally, I find that Mapblast! has the most detail (at least in the areas I've looked), but MapQuest is almost as good.
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Microsoft TerraServer
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Microsoft TerraServer
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