Jeff’s Topo Maps

Thought I would share this very useful resource for anyone up here in Canada.

Jeffrey McMurtry of Jeff’s Maps is one of those people I hope is nominated for an Order of Canada really soon for all of his fine work. 

He’s singlehandedly created the best map of Algonquin Park. He taught himself Adobe Illustrator, and 140 layers, 17 million points and 250MB later, he had something both beautiful and useful. Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, he then went on to do a map of Temagami and a map of Killarney. Oh, and you can download them for free. You can also buy a waterproof printed version.

His Facebook page is worth following as it’s always a goldmine of information.

And as if all this wasn’t enough, he’s gone and done something equally useful.

Sadly, the Canadian government has washed their hands of the business of maintaining the topographic maps they once published. They did however put them up on line, as one final hurrah. Searching for the ones you needed wasn’t so easy though. If you had a key that told you what code to look for, you could find it.

What Jeff has done is made a map that allows you to scroll across the whole country and find exactly the area you need. Much easier. You can view areas in either 1:50,000 or 1:250,000 scale. Once you find what you need, you can zoom in, and choose the map you want. You can then choose to download a PDF or TIFF version or purchase a paper or tyvek map. 

While nothing would make me happier than seeing the sort of attention to detail that countries like the Netherlands devotes to its maps applied here in Canada, I’m happy this resource exists.

Maybe Mr. McMurtry can be convinced to get working on updated topos of the whole country. 

Jeff’s Topos