Map of the Month Mar 10 - Algonquin Provincial Park Map

In August 2009 I went on a canoe trip in the Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada. The park, established in 1893, covers an area of 7,650 sq km and is said to include over 2,400 lakes and 1,200 km of streams and rivers. It is home to a large variety of wildlife including Moose, White-tailed Deer, Black Bears, Wolves, Beavers, over 270 bird species, Trout, Northern Pike and Smallmouth Bass. An ideal area for canoeing and exploring.

On previous trips in the area I had used the official park map which was adequate enough. However, my cartographic curiosity got the better of me and after searching the web for alternatives, I came across the Algonquin Provincial Park Map. It is produced by Jeffrey A. McMurtrie, an Environmental Geography student at the University of Toronto, who has enjoyed canoeing in the park since he was a boy. Infuriated by the number of errors on other park maps (he submitted corrections but received no responses) he decided to produce his own map. He gathered information from many different sources - satellite photos, trip logs, books and from the knowledge of other park visitors.


Sample and key from the full map, click to enlarge

For this trip I downloaded the required areas for our expedition and printed them at A4 size which allowed me to put them into a watertight map bag for protection.

Myself, my wife, my brother in law and his wife took two Canadian canoes to the start of our excursion at the south end of O-Pe-On-Go Lake. We began by taking a 30 minutes water-taxi ride northwest up the lake, saving a days canoeing and getting us quickly into the park’s interior. From the North Arm we tackled the longest portage of the trip (2180m) then canoed across Happy Isle Lake and Merchant Lake. A portage into Big Trout Lake and some paddling was followed by another land crossing through Otterslide Creek then across Otter Slide Lake, Burnt Island Lake and Joe Lake, finishing our trip on the south end of Canoe Lake. Over the four days we must have covered around 65 km. Though we never came face to face with a black bear, on the last night we were aware of something outside our tent, fortunately it moved on so no evasive action was needed.


Area showing our canoe expedition, click to enlarge

During the trip I was very impressed with the level of detail on the map including canoe routes with portage lengths (purple on the map), camp sites, cabins, contours and land use. I also liked the addition of local historical information such as ‘Here boy scouts can sign a logbook on the lake named after their founder’ at Baden-Powell Lake.



The Algonquin Provincial Park Map is free to download in a number of formats, resolutions, full size or by selected areas. The new revised version (3.0) will be available soon (early 2010), it features beaver dams, bird nests, and GPS data for many campsites and portages among other things. See the website www.algonquinmap.com for all map details and background information.

Ewan Ross, Cartographic Editor, Collins Geo