New Canadian Toporama WMS service - Examples

New Canadian Toporama WMS service - Examples

update:12/09/2009

Geospatial provides a little more information on ftp access {bulk downloads} to map data.
http://geospatial.blogs.com/geospatial/2009/09/nrcan-wms-service-for-canadian-vector-topo-maps.html

new link:
http://tinyurl.com/nuseox
(newer code)

WMS [Web Mapping Service] is not new - in GIS and Technology terms is old.
But there are plenty of services, organisations, governments out there that do serve their content via this format.

So why this post - Well there was a Google Maps API Thread that was becoming very interesting:
"mentionned last week that canadian topo maps (NRCAN) are of poor quality. This is true. But a new service have been implemented in may by NRCAN to replace it. It seems this introduction passed unnoticed so far. I myself searched for a long time and to find information about this new service. NRCAN has introduced in may the Toporama WMS service. This gives access to the new CANTOPO, the new generation of Topographic Maps (1 :50,000) produced by NRCAN. Theses maps are in vector format. The availability of this new vector format for canadian topo maps gives us more precision and clarity as compared to the old Raster Maps format who where a scan of the Paper Maps. Texts describing rivers and local points of interest do not anymore collapse when zooming to lower levels. The map is also of higher quality at higher zoom level. And
the information shown on the maps is adapted to the zoom levels. "
PierreB

Then the talented google map api programmer PapaBear picked up on this and quickly developed this:

the new generation of Topographic Maps from CANTOPO
The quality and content from this dataset is rich in detail, contours, very small lakes, buildings, rail road etc

Though the full credit goes to PapaBear for the example and PierreB for thier knowledge and skills to put this together in a very short space of time.

"This map is of a station (survey marker) very near the border in
Maine. It should open with USGS topo map type. These topos usually
overlap the border and show a short distance into Canada (usually to
the next 7.5 or 15 minutes of longitide, depending on the scale).

The map type is changed with the selector in the upper right. I have
kept the old raster version from NR canada (type "CanRas") as well as
the new vector maps (type "CanVec").

You can compare the USGS topos and the 2 Canadian types for the same
locale. The USGS map tiles are also raster data (and these have been
know to have missing areas and occasional mis-registration) but they
are higher resolution scans than the old NR Canada tiles..

The topography is not too interesting, since it's a swampy area, but
nevertheless the different map type are all visible. "

If you want to see a working example then go to:
http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze2h6gy/papabear/BM_Station_GMap.html#FILE=Maine_Peaks.js&index=QF1769&title=1&width=960&height=720&showrm=1

{note: this is a testing environment and change be moved or changed without notice}

But hopefully users will be impressed with the resources and hopefully make use of the wms services still out there.

Well done.