05/26/2026
My latest cartographic work of art has been finally installed!
This map was designed to showcase and promote cycling in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, the Town of Wolfville and the Landscape of Grand Pré. In my past-life I was a fanatical cyclist for many decades, I gave up my driver's license in 1992 riding my bike for 15 years in Vancouver, I rode Mountain Bikes, Road Bikes, raced in the Cheakamus Challenge Mountain Bike race from Squamish to Whistler, The Alley Cats Scramble (an international bike courier race that took place in Vancouver and Toronto) I even owned a custom built 63 speed RANS V-Rex Recumbent bike and clocked in a whopping 104 kilometres an hour on a very steep and long hill on Galiano Island! So, this map is my gift to the cycling community.
The map is designed for a full range of cyclists, from the beginner to the Gearhead. For the serious cyclist there are 8 long-distance cycling routes ranging from 25 to 87 kilometres, all starting and ending at the Rec Hub in Wolfville. Each route has a custom profile which includes detailed route information like minimum/maximum elevation, elevation gain/loss, maximum uphill/downhill slope, and a percentage breakdown of paved and gravel roads. The routes were derived from Adam Barnett's book “Where to Cycle in Nova Scotia”, I designed 38 detailed maps for this book back in 2019. The routes were further tweaked and refined with the help of Colin Banks (Banks Bikes), Brian Adams and Jen Jones (We’re Outside Outdoor Outfitters) and Luke Moffatt (Town of Wolfville). So a big thank-you to all of those contributors.
Designing this map was a technical and logistical nightmare and took over 350 hours to complete. The main map spans 4 panels and is 13 feet wide and almost 6 feet tall, the map was designed and rendered as one massive 12 gigabyte image which is comprised of LiDAR and high resolution ortho imagery, even with 80 gigabytes of ram the renders crashed my computer numerous times. Once all the content was placed, the map was split into 4 tiles where even more detail was added.
The 6th panel is a detailed map of Wolfville showing local bike routes, parks and trails. The final map is the Landscape of Grand Pré, this map is a reduced version of a very large map that will be installed at the Grand-Pré National Historic Site sometime this summer.... stay tuned for that one!
