Finding Ourselves on a Map

In 2012 a volunteer group of seniors who wanted to make maps met with students learning how to create digital maps. It wasn’t roads or watercourses the seniors wanted to map to begin with, 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, its students became teachers and the seniors became students. It was the beginning of Mapannapolis.ca.

Other County individuals and groups brought their ideas forward, resulting in digital 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.

Mapannapolis is a non-profit organization whose volunteers choose, research, and create the content of mapannapolis.ca