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Guide to the Place Location Search
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Through
the Place Location Search, you can currently access 47
000 geographical names derived from the Concise Gazetteer
of Canada. The
Concise Gazetteer is a publication of the Geographical
Names Board of Canada (GNBC),
the agency which compiles official names as created by
provincial and territorial names boards. Permission to
disseminate place names in Find a Place has been made with
the permission of the GNBC
(refer to Acknowledgement).
Fields
From the Place Location Search,
users can view the following fields of information:
There are also two notes giving additional information:
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Name of Feature |
The 47 000 feature names stored in the database
are current to the year 1997. However, with the creation
of Nunavut in 1999, names of features found in this new territory
use Nunavut rather than Northwest Territories as their location.
The boundaries that demarcate place features (shown in red
on the map) delimit the 1996 geostatistical boundaries (from
Statistics Canada). Feature names are of three types:
- Current names: For most geographical names there is only
one official form. However, certain geographical names require
presentation in both official languages of Canada. The following
lists provide you with a quick reference for some categories
of such names:
- Pan-Canadian names: 81 large and well-known Canadian
features and areas designated in Treasury Board Circular
1983-58 (for example, Lake Winnipeg / Lac Winnipeg);
- Dual names: (a) for Canadian federal lands (for example names
of National Parks, Indian Reserves and Military Areas);
(b) for some places approved in both languages within one
province (for example, Grand Falls / Grand-Sault, New Brunswick);
(c) names of features shared by more than one province.
Pan-Canadian names differ from dual names in that either
the French or English version is used on the appropriate
language version of a map, whereas with dual names, both
versions are normally used on a map, whether the version
selected is English or French.
- Historical names: Some names have in the past
been given official status, but are no longer the approved
forms. These may have been replaced by other ("Current")
names or may simply have been withdrawn from use.
- Undersea names: Some official names of undersea
features relevant to Canada are found . The type of feature,
latitude and longitude and chart or map are provided here
for each entry.
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Province
and Territory |
Table 1: Province and Territory Symbols
Province and Territory Symbols
AB |
Alberta |
BC |
British Columbia |
MB |
Manitoba |
NB |
New Brunswick |
NL |
Newfoundland
and Labrador |
NT |
Northwest Territories |
NS |
Nova Scotia |
NU |
Nunavut |
ON |
Ontario |
PE |
Prince Edward
Island |
QC |
Quebec |
SK |
Saskatchewan |
YT |
Yukon Territory |
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Feature
Type |
There are 37 feature entity types, which
are listed below:
Geographical
Names Board of Canada (GNBC) Entity
Terms
- Province, Territory
- City
- Town, Village, Hamlet
- Indian Reserve
- Other municipal district area - major agglomeration,
Other municipal district area - miscellaneous, Geographical
Area, Military Area
- Unincorporated Place
- Conservation Area (Entity code name is "Parks")
- River
- Lake
- Sea, Channel, Bay
- Cape, Peninsula
- Island
- Mountain
- Beach, Cliff, Valley, Plain, Cave, Crater, Forest, Low
Vegetation
- Glaciers
- River Feature, Falls, Spring, Rapids, Sea Feature, Shoal,
Undersea Feature, Miscellaneous
- Census Metropolitan Area, Census Agglomeration
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Geostatistical
Type |
The feature type determines the geostatistical type. Thematic
data in the Atlas of Canada is geo-referenced to a geostatistical
area.
Below is a list of the geostatistical types used:
- Census Division (CD) - is the general term applied to
areas established by provincial law which are intermediate
geographic areas between the municipality (census subdivisions)
and the province level. In certain cases, Statistics Canada
has worked in co-operation with the provinces to create
census divisions where none exist.
- Census Subdivision (CSD) - is a general term applying
to municipalities (as determined by provincial legislation)
or their equivalent (as created by Statistics Canada).
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Latitude/Longitude |
Coordinates are provided in degrees, minutes and seconds
at the centre of a feature, except for flowing-water features
where coordinates are at the mouth.
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National
Topographic System (NTS)
Map |
In most cases, this is a National Topographic System
(NTS) map at the 1:50 000 scale. Where this is not
applicable, a 1:250 000 NTS map or a Canadian Hydrographic
Service Chart (for example C.4803) is shown.
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Accented
Characters |
Geographical names data provided here uses the 8-bit
ASCII character set ISO 8859, which includes all accents
used in French-language geographical names.
Some Canadian Aboriginal language geographical names
include diacritics which have not yet been incorporated
into international data standards. Until that time,
we are representing these "hard-to-construct" characters
by numbers surrounded by brace brackets. Examples:
- {1}utselk'e where {1} represents a
barred L (that is an L with a forward slash (/) superimposed).
To search for this name, enter an 'L' in place of
the {1}.
- Dél{10}ne where {10} represents an
i with a reversed cedilla immediately below the letter.
To search for this name, enter an 'i' in place of
the {10}.
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Acknowledgement
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The information contained in this document is in
part derived from The Geographical Names Board of Canada
(GNBC) Web site. Through the Internet at http://geonames.nrcan.gc.ca/english/Home.html you may access nearly 320 000 currently approved geographical
names stored in the Canadian Geographical Names Data
Base.
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