This page contains information about digital, not paper, maps. This refers to digital images, or DRGs(Digital Raster Graphics), rather than maps created from vector data. The "maps" can be images of topographic maps, street maps, trail maps, satellite images, or images of aerial photos. I use these maps in conjunction with my GPS and OziExplorer. For a comparison of some digital maps available for Canada, see my Map Comparisons page.
The Canadian Centre for Topographic Information used to have a website called "Toporama", but it is no longer available. Through that website you could get 1:50,000 and 1:250,000 scale topographic map images in GIF format. They had been computer-generated, and had no map collar. Typical image size was 3200x1600 pixels. All the images corresponded to the Canadian National Topographic System (NTS) mapsheet numbering scheme. There were limitations for those map images, such as no labels on contour lines. You can also see some of these older Toporama map images in use on some of my earlier Degree Confluence visits: 50°N 123°W 50°N 122°W 49°N 124°W 49°N 117°W
Canada's national topographic mapping agency, the
Centre for Topographic Information
(CITS) of Natural Resources Canada(NRCAN) is responsible for the acquisition, management
and dissemination of topographic information for the Canadian landmass.
Topographic maps produced by Natural Resources Canada conform to the
National Topographic
System(NTS) of Canada. They are available in two standard scales, 1/50,000
and 1/250,000.
Printed copies of the NTS Index Maps are available for free from Map Dealers.
Digital copies of the current Edition 2 Index Maps are available
from this FTP site
in both GIF and PDF format. Despite being in a directory named "small_scale",
the files are fairly large, starting at about 4.5MB. Other sources of digital
copies of the Index Maps that I have seen in other locations on the CITS
and NRCAN web or FTP servers are not for the current edition of the Index Maps.
Some zip files containing a digital map image, and it's OziExplorer calibration file, suitable for use as an Index Map.
