Contents:
Historical data & maps

From the childhood days I spent on my bedroom floor, paging through the leaves of a giant atlas til the spine was worn through, maps have been my obsession. My father is also a big map-and-data dork; likewise, my maternal grandfather the RCAF navigator had a penchant for them. In his retirement, Grandpa even dealt rare books and maps.

Not everyone is so geographically-oriented, but maps remain a uniquely visual, accessible way to connect people to places. With the advent of modern digital mapping software, bridging the conceptual divide between archival maps and the places they represent is easier than ever before. Mostly, still, these maps are kept behind gates of various kinds.

ATLAS 🌐 aims to provide a searchable index of historical maps, presented in geographical context via reprojection and data highlighting. In addition, place-relevant non-map data will occasionally warrant being mapped for clarity. Explore the maps herein, and see the results of archival cartographic research on Indigenous traditional place NAMES.

About this research

Maps and place-based historical data are subject to a range of copyright restrictions, but more than anything else, they are physically subject to access restrictions. Larger than most documents, and depending on their era fragile and faded, cartographic records provide unusual glimpses of pasts gone by. They are often hard to locate, and need careful handling. Even digital maps are challenging to find; they’re usually embedded deep in poorly indexed PDFs. Our efforts have been to surface existing maps, project them using the online mapping application Felt, and occasionally building a layer of data atop them.

Factso disclaims authority over these maps and their metadata; these maps are the property of the rights holders provided.