Giving New Life to Old Data. Property and Buildings in Montreal, 1648-1704

Leon Robichaud, Universite de Sherbrooke

Creating historical GIS data requires time and ressources which are becoming scarcer. Years of research were required to create a dynamic cartography of properties and buildings in Montreal from 1648 to 1704 at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in the early 1990's. While the textual data was put online in 1996, the cartographic data has not been available to the public until recently. Advanced visualisation technologies were required to display the full breadth of this data. Each polygon (lot or building) was anchored in space, but also in time, with start and end dates making it possible to view the city at any point in time and to also generate an animation of its evolution. The original cartography was created in PolyTRIM, a 3D modelling and visualisation application developped by the Centre for Landscape Research at the University of Toronto. The lots and buildings were used to anchor a three dimensional model of the city. This geometry was exported in dxf format and transfered from the Silicon Graphics workstation to a present day Asus laptop on which we had installed QGIS software. The dxf file had to be georeferenced and links to the database recreated. Once the data became usable in modern GIS software, we were able to use the data for analysis. The data is currently used as part of an M.A. thesis on metal workers in Montreal from 1650 to 1704 : residential patterns, concentration of gunsmiths associated with the fur trade, dispersion of blacksmiths serving the Canadian population. Available online, the data can now be used for a variety of research and analysis by scholars and by genealogists. Recuparating old research data is not financed, but it does make it possible to avoid spending new resources for research already conducted.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 13. Emerging Methods: Spatial Analysis and Modeling