Teaching Cartography in Academia: A Historical Reflection and Discussion of a 2007 Survey of Canadian Universities

Abstract

Courses in cartography that thrived in university departments of geography in the 1970s and 1980s declined in number in the early 1990s, mostly to accommodate GIS but also partly in response to the cultural turn in geography away from quantitative methods. Today, we are witnessing a revival of mapping and cartography as a result of enhanced software tools for the creation of maps, the Internet and public mapping sites for the creation and dissemination of maps, community cartography projects, and a shift from traditional cartography to representation and geovisualization. As described in this article, a 2007 survey of cartography course offerings at Canadian universities sought to explore whether, and how, this revival has been reflected in the academic teaching of cartography necessary to support aesthetics of map design and tools for geovisualization. The results demonstrate that cartography courses are offered at almost all Canadian universities. At the introductory level, course content does not vary significantly from fundamental principles of cartography. At the advanced level, however, course content is highly varied, embracing the wide range of topics relevant to the new cartography and visualization epistemology of today.