Free Canadian Topographic Maps

Every now and then, a very good bargain comes along and the word free makes my ears stand up. The Canadian Government 1:50000 scale topographic maps can now be downloaded free from the internet. These maps show many features of the terrain, they show contours for elevation, rivers, lakes, mountains, roads and much more. To buy each individual paper map would set you back $15.00 plus tax and shipping and there are thousands of maps across the country. Now you can print off the portion of map you need, and get out and explore the countryside, without waiting for a paper map to arrive in the mail.

Some of the maps are quite dated, some show the elevations in feet where the newer versions use the metric system, also some newer features such as new roads or buildings may be absent but the mountains, lakes and rivers never change. The maps have very few back roads for the off roaders.

The maps can be found on the Natural Resources Canada Website and this is the homepage for the mapping division

http://geogratis.ca/geogratis/en/index.html

However if you wish to go direct to the map download page, click the link below or cut and paste into your browser

http://geogratis.ca/geogratis/en/product/search.do?id=CB864DC7-25A1-5136-57F4-C095CE1C6A6D

This page displays the “Canmatrix, Print Ready” digital topographic maps of Canada. The Canmatrix maps are the scanned image of the paper map showing everything on that paper map including the UTM gridlines and the map border showing more information about the map. The downloaded file is a ZIP file but automatically unzip on my computer. I always put each map into its own folder on my computer named for each map, the file name of the map just has the map number and by naming each folder, you can more easily find the map of choice on your computer.

To find the maps on the webpage, scroll down to the map of Canada divided into numbered blocks, the block for the Okanagan area is 82, clicking on that block zooms in to show the individual map number, so the map number for the Oliver/Keremeos area is 82e04. Type this into the dataset search area above the map and download the map.

Dave Whalley
Oliver BC