FREE Topographic Maps for All of Canada

One of the Atlas of Canada’s special 100th Anniversary projects is offering topographical maps for all of Canada. These new maps are the next generation of the Centre for Topographic Information’s very successful Toporama product. The National Topographic System (NTS) provides general-purpose topographic map coverage of Canada. These maps depict, in detail, ground relief (landforms and terrain), drainage (lakes and rivers), forest cover, administrative areas, populated areas, transportation routes and facilities (including roads and railways), and other constructed features. The maps show data from the 1:250 000 and 1:50 000 National Topographic Databases.

1. Map Window
   The map window shows the map that you are currently viewing.
2. Toolbar
   The toolbar offers many interactive tools that allow you to manipulate the map and get various information from it.
   
   • Zoom In
   • Zoom Out
   • View Full Map
   • Map Size – small, medium and large
   • Get Info from Map – latitude and longitude, UTM coordinates, elevation and topographic map sheet number
   • Measure Distance – displayed in kilometres
   • Print Preview
   • Save map – a copy of the map window to your computer
   • Help – complete instructions for using the interactive mapping features
3. Locator Map
   The locator map shows the full extent of the map you have selected and highlights, with a red box or dot, the location shown in the map window.
4. Legend Tab
   The legend lists the map's features and explains the colours, symbols, line patterns, shadings and annotation used for them. The legend also shows you the different layers of information the map contains.
5. Search Tab
   The search tab allows you to perform three types of searches to locate a specific area of interest and view the topographic map for that area. You can search using:
   
   • Place and Feature Names
   • Topographic Map Sheet Number
   • Latitude and Longitude
6. Scale Bar
   The scale bar shows the distance in kilometres.
7. Pan Arrows
   The pan arrows, eight small triangles around the edges of the map, let you move left, right, up, down and diagonally to see parts of the map that aren't currently visible.
8. Map Scale
   This tool allows you to change the viewing scale of the map you are currently viewing.
9. Distance box
   The distance box shows the distance that is being measured when using the “Measure Distance” tool.
10. Map Sources
    This link goes to a page detailing the sources of information used to make the map.
11. More About this Map Links
    These links go to other Atlas of Canada and Centre for Topographic Information pages with more information about topographic maps.

Toporama uses five main data sets to offer maps that start at a national level and then move to regional and local views. Each offers increasing levels of detail. For the most part, only one main data set is used for each zoom level. However, to improve map clarity, there are situations when features from different data sets appear together as shown in the table that follows.

The five main data sets that appear in Toporama are:

• The Atlas of Canada’s 1:30 000 000 National Scale Framework
• The Atlas of Canada’s 1:7 500 000 National Scale Framework
• The Atlas of Canada’s 1:1 000 000 National Scale Framework
• Centre for Topographic Information's 1:250 000 National Topographic Data Base
• Centre for Topographic Information's 1:50 000 National Topographic Data Base

In addition, the following data is used with the five main data sets above:

• Centre for Topographic Information's GeoBase National Road Network
• Centre for Topographic Information's Canadian Digital Elevation Data
• Centre for Topographic Information's CanImage satellite imagery
• Canadian Geonames Data Base for place and feature names searches

To visit the maps, click on this link: http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/topo/index.html