[Qgis-user] Building Historical Maps

[Nicolas Cadieux]

Hi,
Looks like you are moving forward nicely.  I wonder if you did enough searching around the net before starting.  A quick search did show multiple sites with data but, of course, you may be involved with those projects.  I would look at the data sources from those sites and follow those leads.  

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=8cc6be34f6b54992b27da17467492d2f

https://mdl.library.utoronto.ca/collections/mdl-projects/ontario-county-map

https://www.library.yorku.ca/web/map/guides/online-resources/

I would also take a look at the old canvec and canmatrix map from nrcan.  They probably contain historical boundary.  I would also call (yes call) nrcan directly in Sherbrooke as they are very good at assisting researchers. They may have a stockpile of old vector files in some obscure server. 

http://www.geogratis.gc.ca/

You should also take a look at open Canada site.

https://search.open.canada.ca/en/od/?sort=last_modified_tdt%20desc&page=1&od-search-col=Open%20Maps&search_text=&_ga=2.120669646.718045198.1627043574-1748685200.1627043574

But you should mostly concentrate on the Ontario geohub.

https://geohub.lio.gov.on.ca/

I would email them as they are they seem to be the true authoritative agency in the province.  I would look at what Ontario Hydro has also.

I don’t do much work in my home province but I do remember those Mike Harris years!
Cheers!

Nicolas Cadieux
https://gitlab.com/njacadieux

> Le 22 juill. 2021 à 21:16, James Cobban <webmaster at jamescobban.net> a écrit :
> 
> I am running a project to present historical information about Ontario, Canada.  To support this I have imported GIS information on administrative boundaries from the Ontario Government.  The only problem is this information only describes the current administrative organization of the province, not the organization it had for most of its history up until the early 1990s when the system was "rationalized".  I am looking for suggestions of how to extract as much information from the current GIS data as possible.
> 
> For example:  From 1850 to the early 1990s most of Ontario was administered as counties with lower level townships.  In the 1990s the more urbanized portions of the province were reorganized as "Regional Municipalities" which largely ignored the old county boundaries either by including only the urban portion of a former county, or by incorporating urban portions of multiple counties. So, for example, if I wish to reconstruct the boundaries of the former county of Welland I have to concatenate the boundaries of the individual townships that made up the former county, and then remove all of the internal, and redundant, boundaries.  I have manually done that for one county but it was a pain in part because the polygons of the individual townships did not begin at a "corner" shared with an adjacent township within the county. Just finding exactly where the polygon began and which direction it went took time.
> 
> The second issue is that boundaries changed multiple times over the period between 1763 when Britain assumed control of the area of Ontario, and the present.  In particular city boundaries change as areas are transferred from the surrounding rural municipalities to the city as a result of urban growth.  Where do I get the old boundary information aside from tracing them from old maps?
> 
> -- 
> James Cobban
> 911-500 Springbank Dr
> London, ON, Canada
> N6J 4G6
> mailto: webmaster at jamescobban.net
> +1-226-504-7603
> 
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