ABOUT US
In 2012, a seniors groups met with students studying digital map creation and asked those students to teach them. It wasn’t roads or watercourses the seniors wanted to map, but heritage buildings and structures, graveyards and churches: the warp and weft of rural Nova Scotia’s social history fabric.
Annapolis County, in southwestern Nova Scotia, is home to the Centre for Geographic Sciences (COGS), part of Nova Scotia’s Community College system. With support of the Centre’s administration and instructors, students became teachers and seniors became students. It was the beginning of Mapannapolis.ca.
Other County individuals and groups brought their ideas forward, resulting in maps of
the first 17th century Acadian settlements along the Annapolis River;
18th century Black Loyalist settlements;
the few existing and many long-gone wharves, 43 in all—a record of the County’s early economic development;
pre-European arrival canoe routes;
community pathways in Bear River, Bridgetown, and Margaretsville.
By 2016 an all-age, self-organized group chose to create the definitive map of the Garrison Graveyard, in use for almost 300 years in Annapolis Royal and part of Parks Canada’s Fort Anne National Historic Site. All two hundred and thirty four standing stones were Geo-located and numbered—a COGS surveying class project—and inscriptions alphabetized and catalogued.
Which leads our story to the 2018 discovery of nineteen unmarked graves in the Garrison Graveyard. Our standing stones map brought attention to an obvious empty area. Many early grave markers were made of wood and simply disappeared over time. We engaged Boreas Heritage Consulting with its expertise in ground penetrating radar. Boreas discovered the remains of the unmarked graves, and what appears to be the foundation of an Acadian church known to have been extant at the time.
In the Fall of 2017, Mapannapolis was recognized by the Governor General of Canada for Excellence in Community History Programming, in Ottawa at a Rideau Hall gala.
In the Fall of 2017, Mapannapolis was recognized by the Governor General of Canada for Excellence in Community History Programming, in Ottawa at a Rideau Hall gala.
Mapannapolis.ca continues its work, undertaken for the most part by passionate volunteers. Their stories about where they live in the Annapolis Region are explored, expanded, told, preserved—and through that journey, they discover themselves.
