The Canadian Cartographic Association (CCA) is pleased to announce the winners of our 2025 Student Map Competitions and the winner of the Best Student Presentation at Confluence 2025 (CCA/CAG joint conference, Carleton University, Ottawa, May 21-22). Thank you to everyone who submitted a map to the competition or presented their cartographic work!
Map competition displays at Confluence 2025 (CCA/CAG 2025 joint conference). Photos by Yegane Vahidi.
2025 President’s Prize (College level) Winner
Deanne Watts, Centre of Geographic Sciences (COGS) – “Walking With Ghosts: A Walking Tour & Guide to Halifax’s Greatest Haunts”
This thematic map of haunted locations in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is a six-panel, front-and-back Z-fold brochure designed for on-the-go use during a self-guided walking tour.
The objective was to create a well-designed and engaging map that invites both locals and tourists alike to explore Halifax’s downtown core through a unique new lens, showcasing the city’s history through beloved folklore. The primary map highlights a walkable route featuring some of Halifax’s most well-known haunted sites. A secondary map on the reverse side captures the broader Halifax Peninsula and harbour, allowing users to explore additional haunted locations at their leisure. The project blends narrative storytelling with spatial visualization to offer a creative and experiential perspective on local history.
To create the map, I researched well-documented ghost stories by reviewing archival newspapers, blog posts, local news articles, and community-based folklore and ghost story forums. Spatial data was sourced from GeoNova and the Halifax Data, Mapping & Analytics Hub, processed and visualized in ArcGIS Pro, then imported into Adobe Illustrator for thematic styling. Adobe Photoshop was also used to design the brochure’s cover art and enhance its overall visual appeal.
The design emphasized typographic and visual hierarchy to ensure clarity and readability, supported by a simple yet thematic colour scheme that reinforces the subject matter. By using high-contrast colours for focal points, along with blurred effects, drop shadows, and varied opacities, I aimed to evoke the mysterious and intangible atmosphere of both the haunted locations themselves and the walking route that connects them—reminding users of the generations who walked those same Halifax streets long before them. I am especially proud of how the design integrates narrative and visual elements to enhance user engagement and convey a strong sense of place through local folklore. This project allowed me to showcase Halifax, a city close to my heart, through a unique and creative lens.
2025 President’s Prize (University level) Winner
Caroline Kuhn, University of British Columbia – “Elementary Schools: Demand And Capacity”
The objective of this thematic map is to visually communicate patterns and disparities in elementary school enrollment, school-aged population change, and school capacity across Vancouver neighborhoods from 2016 to 2021. Its primary audience includes urban planners, school district officials, and community stakeholders to support informed decisions about school infrastructure planning and resource allocation.
The analysis draws on data from the Canadian Census (2016 and 2021) to measure school-aged population change, and from the Vancouver School Board (VSB) to assess enrollment changes and school capacity. These data were integrated to identify areas experiencing an increasing demand for elementary education and those with potential excess capacity.
The map uses careful cartographic design principles to achieve a clear and informative presentation. It combines three related datasets — the change in population aged 0 to 14 years from the 2016 and 2021 population censuses, the school enrollment changes in the same period, and school capacity from the Vancouver School Board—using coordinated color schemes and classification methods (manual intervals and natural breaks) to differentiate trends while maintaining visual harmony. Labels and symbols are strategically placed to maintain legibility and emphasize neighborhood-level insights.
The map is supported by essential cartographic elements: a clear title, legend, source citations, and a reference scale. Projection and classification methods are explicitly noted.
A creative challenge in this project was harmonizing multiple datasets with different scales and classifications into one cohesive visual. I’m happy with how the final design enables both a broad overview and a close examination of specific neighborhoods. The juxtaposition of population shifts with school capacity and enrollment trends provides a nuanced narrative about potential mismatches in educational resource planning. This layered approach enables viewers to quickly identify areas of concern, such as overcapacity schools in growing neighborhoods – a goal for capacity expansion, or those schools with enrollment declining in more affluent neighborhoods, indicating a need for strategic reevaluation.
2025 Web Map Award Winner
Laurence Jang, University of Toronto Scarborough – “10 Years at the Toronto Public Library”
This map displays information about the use of the Toronto Public Library system from 2013 to 2023. It focuses on three statistics – library visits, circulated materials, and card registrations – displayed for each branch. Users can select a statistic and year using the dropdown menus, and the map updates dynamically to reflect the selected data. Clicking on any library opens a sidebar panel that provides a bar chart of the selected statistic over time, along with branch information and programming features. Two reference layers can also be toggled: one showing Toronto’s official neighbourhood boundaries, and another with Thiessen polygons indicating the areas geographically closest to each library branch. This design allows users to explore how library use changed across Toronto over a decade.
The library data, Toronto neighbourhoods, and Toronto boundary are from the Toronto Open Data Portal. The data was prepared and converted into GeoJSONs using Python. The boundary and Thiessen polygon layers were prepared using QGIS.
The map is built with plain HTML, CSS and JS, and uses the Javascript libraries Maplibre GL JS, Chart.js, D3, and Simple Statistics.
I’m happy with the visual design of my site. I attempted to emulate the look and feel of the Toronto Public Library’s branding with font and colour, and included some small interactive colour changes to add a bit of fun. My favourite detail is that the colon in the site title turns blue on hover, mimicking the look of the library logo.
2025 Best Student Presentation Winner
The Best Student Presentation award for the CCA sessions at Confluence 2025 was presented to Emily Mills, Brock University, for her presentation entitled “Mapping Ann-Marie MacDonald”.
No award was granted for the Carto-Québec Prize this year for maps produced in French.
