Content area
Full text
Old maps are found in the most interesting places. In the case of an 1870 map, showing the route taken by the Red River Expedition, it was folded up at the back of a 135 year old report in the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections. The map was uncovered as a result of research related to an Internet history project, serving as a spatial backdrop for a theme entitled Red River Rebellion. In order to liberate the folded treasure, it was carefully spread out and scanned, at which point its digital life began. A portion of the map appears on the cover of this issue of Manitoba History.
Visually, the 1870 map is a cartographic gem, meshing landscape greens with annotated reds to artistically represent the geographic knowledge of northwestern Ontario and southern Manitoba region in 1870. The map also serves as a historical snapshot of the movements, including date of arrival at each place, of over 1,400 men in the Red River Expeditionary Force, under the command of Colonel Garnet Wolseley. By combining the map's cartographic information with other primary sources, first hand accounts, official reports, paintings, sketches and other maps and adding other data formats including audio, video, websites and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data, all possible within the three-dimensional (3D) authoring environment of Google Earth (GE; http://earth.google.com), the 1870 map serves as a spatial portal to, as well as a representation of, certain elements of the Red River Expedition.
The first stage of re-visioning the 1870 map in GE has been the recreation of the original route of Dawson's Road, which ran from Prince Arthur's Landing (Thunder Bay) to Shebanclowan Lake. This portion was selected because...