Digital projects

Kitchener Historical Vernon City Directories Mapped

Vernon City Directories from 1900-2000 have been digitized, transcribed, geocoded and mapped, resulting in an openly available searchable database, webmap, as well as multiple historical data product maps. Delve into the past and learn about the individuals who lived and worked in Berlin/Kitchener, as well as the numerous impactful manufacturers that have made what Kitchener is today.

Digital Historical Air Photos of the City of Guelph

Air photos for the City of Guelph for the years 1930, 1955, and 1966 have been scanned, digitized and georeferenced and are available for public viewing and downloading. Image formats include jpg, tiff, pdf, and KMZ files (for Google Earth). All image formats can be viewed in a GIS program.

For access to the original scanned images or paper air photos, please visit the Geospatial Centre.

Kitchener Historical Street Project (1853 - 1992)

This web map, created by the Geospatial Centre, shows the City of Kitchener's road network for various decades ranging from 1853 to 1992. This data was derived from digitized copies of old street maps of the city. It is intended to showcase the change in Kitchener's road network over the course of this time frame.

Region of Waterloo Historical Streets

Derived from Fire Insurance Plans, this project shows the historical street networks of different years and different cities within the Region of Waterloo. Story Map is used to graphically illustrate the street network with street name metadata.

Downtown Kitchener Fire Insurance Plan of 1908 (revised and reprinted 1947)

As part of a much larger project to digitize building footprints from the Region of Waterloo Fire Insurance Plans, Geospatial Centre staff digitized the building parcels from the 1908 Kitchener Fire Insurance Plans (based on the zonal subdivision (1-54). Story Map is used to graphically illustrate the building shapefiles with detailed metadata. This second map is a comparison of Downtown Kitchener Building Footprints of 1917 & 1947.

A Historical Hike through the Forests of Waterloo Region: 1843 Vegetation Survey of Waterloo Region

This Story Map is the result of unpublished Masters (MES) research by Karrow, Thomas (2013), a published article by Thomas Karrow and Roger Suffling (2015) along with expertise from the staff at the University of Waterloo, Geospatial Centre.

Historical Census Project

The historical census project used tabular census data from 1901-1951 (intervals of 10 years), transforming it into spatial data. Some of the census data used was ethnicity, employment, and population. A story map was created to display ethnicity over the 50-year period.

Waterloo: Population change from 1867 - present

In celebration of Canada's 150th anniversary, the Geospatial Centre has created a graphic visualizing of population growth for Waterloo from mid 1800's to present day.

Digital maps: past and present

Story Map "Swipe" and "Spyglass" is an ArcGIS online application that enables users to interact with two web maps or two layers. The Geospatial Centre uses this application to give a visual comparison between historical airphotos and maps with the present.

Air photos digitization project

In October 2007, the University map library launched the Air photos digitization project, where approximately 2000 historical air photos for the years 1930, 1945-47, 1955, 1963 and 1966 of Kitchener-Waterloo and surrounding areas were scanned and saved electronically.

Air photo interactive map index

This interactive map index provides the library's complete paper aerial photography and photomap coverages. To access photos, please visit the Geospatial Centre.

Waterloo County historical street project

In 2017, the staff in the Geospatial Centre re-constructed the 1955 street network for Waterloo County. The street maps from the Waterloo County historical street project are made freely available in digital map format, Geographic Information System (GIS) Shapefiles and Keyhole Markup Language (KML) files, allowing scholars, historians and community residents to study and analyze past and present street patterns.