Clearinghouses and Portals
ArcGIS – Esri Data & Maps
“Get the latest updates to Data & Maps right now by downloading a collection of layer packages through the Data and Maps for ArcGIS Group on ArcGIS Online.” Includes North American and a few Canadian maps.
Atlas of Canada (NRCan)
Free data, including boundaries, transportation networks, hydrography and populated Places.
GeoBase
Free base layers, including:
- Administrative boundaries
- Digital Elevation Data
- Geodetic Network
- Geographic Names
- Land Cover
- National Hydro Network
- National Road Network
- Satellite Imagery
Geoconnections
Discovery portal for Canada data (links to other sources)
Geography Network Canada (ESRI Canada, DMTI Spatial, WWF Canada)
Thematic data and imagery
GeoGratis
Free thematic data distributed by NRCan
North American Atlas (Canada/USA/Mexico)
Bathymetry, glaciers, hydrography, political boundaries, populated places, railroads, roads, sea ice
Open Data Pilot Project
Search for Government of Canada data, including GIS Data, through their new search tool.
By Province/Territory
Alberta
AltaLIS
GIS and CAD data for Alberta through a non-profit organization’s clearinghouse. Includes cadastral, base mapping and terrain information. Some GIS base map datasets are free.
Calgary.ca
The City of Calgary’s open data portal
Edmonton Open Data Catalogue
The City of Edmonton’s open data portal
Manitoba
Manitoba Land Initiative
Provincial data in GIS and CAD formats – requires registration
Ontario
Land Information Ontario
Spatial data warehouse with a wide variety of datasets. An account and data licence are required to order data.
Ottawa Open Data
The City of Ottawa’s open data portal
Toronto Open Data
The City of Toronto’s open data portal
Quebec
Montréal Portail Données Ouvertes
Open data portal for the city of Montreal.
Ville de Québec Données Ouvertes
The open data catalogue for Quebec City.
Saskatchewan
GeoSask
Link to the pre-packaged data gallery part of the website that includes boundaries, townships, sections, roads and more
Open Government – City of Regina
City data sets are available through this data portal.
Yukon
Yukon Spatial Data
Yukon’s Department of Highways and Public Works provides spatial data through their website.
By Subject
indicates that access to the resource is limited to UBC students, faculty and staff
Census Data
Census Data and GIS
See this UBC Library web page for information on how to download and format Canadian census data to be joined to census boundary shapefiles.
Climate
Climate – Government of Canada
Historical hourly, daily or monthly climate data for all of Canada.
Elevation/DEM/Topography
CanMatrix (NRCan)
Download topographic maps (geoPDF or geoTIFF) from GeoGratis. Enter the NTS grid coordinates as the location, use “CanMatrix” as the keyword, and select “Map” as the product type.
CanVec (NRCan)
National dataset that includes 20-meter contour geodatabase (<province>_FO.gdb) within the data package. Search for CanVec products in GeoGratis.
GeoBase Digital Elevation Data
Canadian digital elevation data at a variety of resolutions (in ASCII format)
National Topographic System (NTS) Grid Index
Download the NTS grid index in vector or raster format from GeoGratis.
Environmental
Commission for Environmental Cooperation
Base maps, terrestrial ecosystems, marine ecosystems, pollution and waste, human influence, and climate data in shapefile or GRID format. Covers Canada, USA and Mexico.
NatureServe
Publicly available animal, ecology and plant data available for free download
Fisheries/Oceans
Fisheries and Oceans Canada
Oceans, Habitat and Enhancement GIS Data
Property/Parcel (Cadastral)
Canada Lands Survey System (NRCan)
Canada Lands Digital Cadastral Data
Remote Sensing/Satellite Imagery
CCRS Earth Observation Catalogue (Canada Centre for Remote Sensing)
CEOCat 3 – find and download imagery
GeoBase Satellite Imagery
SPOT, Landsat and RADARSAT images for Canada
Global Visualization Viewer (USGS)
View and download worldwide satellite imagery (requires free account setup)
Landsat.org
Download landsat data (only some images are free)
National Earth Observation Data Framework Catalogue
View thumbnails, footprints and metadata for millions of air photos. Orders can be placed online (there is a fee for images).
Reverb/ECHO (NASA)
New “metadata and service discovery tool” to find remote sensing and earth science data
Soils
National Soil DataBase (CanSIS)
Soils data for Canada
Transportation
Census of Canada Road Network File, 2011 [in Abacus] (requires UBC login)
Comprehensive road network for all of Canada. Includes freeways, highways, major and minor roads with road names and address ranges.