We are planning a trip in 2019 into Canada—-maybe heading to Quebec or maybe going to Banff. We are not sure. Anyway when I plan a trip, I like to start with a really good print map. Right now I use the National Geographic US/Canada atlas for all our US RV travel. However... the Canada portion of this atlas doesn’t seem to be as detailed and is difficult to use. Each province is split up across different pages and it doesn’t have good detail in terms of secondary highways.Does anyone have a recommendation for a good Canada paper atlas? I’d like to have access to the whole country, because I’ve not decided where we’re headed to next.

Me too. I have a Rand McNally and a National Geographic road Atlas, both claiming United States and Canada but the Canadian provinces barely get any respect outside of the major metropolitan areas.

I still use a 2011 Trailer Life RV Road Atlas which has excellent detail on Canada.If you're close to a Camping World, pop in and check their Road Atlas. It might be similar since they published Trailer Life, I believe.http://www.campingworld.com/shopping/item/2017-good-sam-auto-rv-road-atlas/90243

GordonThree wrote:Me too. I have a Rand McNally and a National Geographic road Atlas, both claiming United States and Canada but the Canadian provinces barely get any respect outside of the major metropolitan areas.That's because outside the major metropolitan areas, there's not much of anything up here, except forests and rocks and muskeg and assorted wildlife, some benign and some dangerous, and an occasional passable road. Since we aren't a major world power in terms of military strength (our armed forces total around 100,000, including reserves) we rely largely on stealth and secrecy as our main defensive strategy. That includes creating maps with very little detail on where we are at any given moment, and where we're hiding the maple syrup. Our most famous Canadians don't even want to live here, like Celine Dion, William Shatner, and Jim Carrey (sorry about that last one).Best bet when traveling in Canada - use a GPS unit with up to date maps and POIs. Although a good paper map from 1970 will still be pretty accurate, considering our limited new infrastructure spending since Trudeau's father was PM. Know roughly where you want to end up, and then run a test route through your GPS to see what it will actually take in terms of time and distance. Up here the shortest distance from A to B sometimes involves the other 24 letters of the alphabet.:R

AAA has some reasonably decent maps of Canada (and provinces and cities) free if you're a member. I think nonmembers can purchase individual maps, but I'm not absolutely positive about that. Their map of all Canada is handy for overall planning.You should be able to get maps also by writing/calling/emailing the various province's tourism department or whatever their equivalent is. As I recall, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta had pretty nice maps (and probably Ontario, too, though I don't know if I picked one up); Yukon had a perfectly usable one, though not quite so nice (and there really aren't that many roads to worry there anyhow); and the only free BC ones from the tourist info centers were for the territorial parks and were divvied up into about a half dozen regions, each with their own map, which was nice for finding the parks but not quite so nice for planning a substantial trip. The BC park ones were not quite so complete in terms of which roads they had, too.

I've been trying to explore Quebec and Labrador on Google. Google likes to hide the roads outside metropolitan areas too unless you zoom so far in.I will contact the respective provincial tourism bodies and request whatever maps they can provide.Many thanks!

Good map of Canada | Good Sam Community

13 Replies

MDKMDK
Explorer
Jan 21, 2018
GordonThree wrote:
Me too. I have a Rand McNally and a National Geographic road Atlas, both claiming United States and Canada but the Canadian provinces barely get any respect outside of the major metropolitan areas.

That's because outside the major metropolitan areas, there's not much of anything up here, except forests and rocks and muskeg and assorted wildlife, some benign and some dangerous, and an occasional passable road. Since we aren't a major world power in terms of military strength (our armed forces total around 100,000, including reserves) we rely largely on stealth and secrecy as our main defensive strategy. That includes creating maps with very little detail on where we are at any given moment, and where we're hiding the maple syrup. Our most famous Canadians don't even want to live here, like Celine Dion, William Shatner, and Jim Carrey (sorry about that last one).
Best bet when traveling in Canada - use a GPS unit with up to date maps and POIs. Although a good paper map from 1970 will still be pretty accurate, considering our limited new infrastructure spending since Trudeau's father was PM.
Know roughly where you want to end up, and then run a test route through your GPS to see what it will actually take in terms of time and distance. Up here the shortest distance from A to B sometimes involves the other 24 letters of the alphabet.
:R
2gypsies1
Explorer III
Jan 21, 2018
I still use a 2011 Trailer Life RV Road Atlas which has excellent detail on Canada.

If you're close to a Camping World, pop in and check their Road Atlas. It might be similar since they published Trailer Life, I believe.

http://www.campingworld.com/shopping/item/2017-good-sam-auto-rv-road-atlas/90243
GordonThree
Explorer
Jan 21, 2018
Me too. I have a Rand McNally and a National Geographic road Atlas, both claiming United States and Canada but the Canadian provinces barely get any respect outside of the major metropolitan areas.

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Good map of Canada

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