As the CBC’s evening news program The National reports, flood maps can be incredibly hard to find, with even municipal maps requiring an NDA to view in some cases. Now this story focuses on Halifax, Nova Scotia in the wake of flash flooding this summer; the situation elsewhere in Canada may be quite different (Quebec’s flood maps, for example, are available online, though only in French).
Tag: Halifax
Mapping the Halifax Explosion
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion, which took place when a French cargo ship laden with explosives collided with another ship in Halifax Harbour. The resulting blast killed around 2,000 people and devastated the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia; it was the largest artificial explosion of the pre-nuclear age.
Maps Mania points to a couple of interactive maps of the explosion produced by Canadian news media. CBC News’s A City Destroyed: Experience the Halifax Explosion 100 Years Later is a bit over-produced, with 360-degree video and a non-clickable map that immediately segues into a 3D environment with limited interactivity. (It also pegs one of my CPU cores.) Global News’s interactive map is more modest in scope: developed by Patrick Cain, it’s a Google Maps mashup that points to the known addresses of those killed by the explosion. (Casualties in Dartmouth, across the harbour from Halifax, aren’t mapped because the data weren’t available.)
Cartography: ‘A Gently Interactive Show’ at the Halifax Fringe Festival
If you’re in Halifax, you might still have a chance to catch a showing of Colleen MacIsaac’s Cartography at the Halifax Fringe Festival. As The Coast describes it:
For Fringe she has meticulously constructed a small show at The Living Room—maximum 30 seats and 20 minutes—in which she paints a map live, trying to get back to a single tiny, perfect moment in time. […] “I liked the idea of the need to make a map,” says MacIsaac on the patio at The Haligonian, “as opposed to the need to follow a map.”
It’s a gently interactive show: The house size dictates which geographical feature MacIsaac uses as the map’s start point. Patrons are handed a tiny program (“for wayfarers”) that contains a questionnaire asking for places they feel safe, alive, that they can’t remember. “I wanted it to be something where the audience would have a chance to reflect,” she says, “or have some moments in the show where the audience could contemplate their own histories, or their own memories.”
Three showings left: one tonight, one tomorrow afternoon and one Sunday evening. [WMS]