Mapping Property History in Canada

THE HOGTOWN GUIDE TO GOAD'S MAPS

ABOUT  | HISTORY  | FIRE INSURANCE PLANS  | CITY ATLASES  | COLLECTIONS | TORONTO MAPS

It’s difficult to overstate the value of Charles Goad’s seminal fire insurance plans to Canadian urban historians. What began in 1876 as a tool for insurance companies to determine the fire risk of properties in various towns and cities now provides invaluable insight into the construction details of buildings from thousands of communities across a 100-year time span.  These block maps are essentially the 19^th and 20^th-century version of Google Maps, except with more detail. The fact that so many copies of these invaluable maps still exist today is remarkable considering the policy of their various publishers to collect and destroy them as they became outdated.  

While many libraries and archives provide a basic introduction to the plans and their oft-confused cousins the Goad’s atlases, none of these guides are comprehensive. Furthermore, they typically have few, if any, supporting illustrations, which are a crucial aid for a medium as visual as maps. This Guide is therefore designed to fill the gaps left by others and ensure researchers can make the most out of these priceless resources.

There’s a lot of ground to cover so I’ve broken the Guide into easily digestible sections:

•  The HISTORY section employs Goad’s original business records to chronicle the growth of his venture until his death in 1910 then charts the 55-year evolution of his successors and the transition of the resulting works from the private sector to the public domain

  
  

• The PLAN and ATLAS sections clarify the difference between the two types of maps and help researchers extract the full range of valuable content contained within them. With this insight they will be able to determine original construction details of historical buildings and the original makeups of neighbourhoods as well as the evolution of this built heritage over time.

  
  

• The COLLECTIONS portion assists researchers in locating editions of the maps beyond those posted online which are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the extensive repositories held by libraries, archives and museums across the country.

  
  

• A section specific to TORONTO MAPS provides a separate history of the plethora of plans and atlases produced for that city and a guide to the numerous hardcopy collections available locally. This information is particularly valuable considering that less than 20 percent of Toronto plans have been digitized to date and the remainder are often mislabelled and misdated by collection holders.

• A supplemental HOGTOWN FIRE INSURANCE PLAN COLLECTION page containing rare Ontario plans that I've digitized over the years.

Guide Terminology

Throughout the Guide I use the modifier “Goad’s” colloquially; the publications covered here include not just those created by Charles Goad and his sons but also their successors the Underwriters’ Survey Bureau and the Canadian Underwriters’ Association. I also use the term “maps” as a convenient shorthand to encompass both plans and atlases.

Map scales are indicated in ratios of feet per inch as that’s how they’re defined on the actual plans and atlases. However, some authorities use absolute scales when when cataloguing map collections in which case the following conversions should prove helpful:   

• 40 feet to 1 inch = 1:480 scale 

• 50 feet to 1 inch = 1:600 scale

• 100 feet to 1 inch = 1:1200 scale

• 200 feet to 1 inch = 1:2400 scale

• 500 feet to 1 inch = 1:6000 scale

Sources

Canadian Fire Insurance Plans in Ontario Collections, 1876-1973 

Fortin, Marcel, Lorraine Dubreuil and Cheryl A. Woods. Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives: Ottawa, 1995.

“Canadian Fire Insurance Plans: Two Conference Sessions”

Carolyn Gray, Lorraine Dubreuil, Cheryl Woods. ACMLA Bulletin, 114 (Spring/Summer 2002). Available at dai.mun.ca.

Catalogue of Canadian Fire Insurance Plans, 1875-1975

Lorraine Dubreuil and Cheryl A. Woods. Published for the Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives, 2002.

Catalogue of Fire Insurance Plans of the Dominion of Canada, 1885-1973

London, Ont. Distributed by Phelps Publishing, 1976 revised 1977.

Charles E. Goad Company Records

Fire Insurance Plan circular letters, Archives of Ontario, Series C 234-2. Also available on Library and Archives Canada microfilm reel H-1815 at Canadiana.ca.

Fire Insurance Plan reference books, Archives of Ontario, Series C 234-3. Also available on Library and Archives Canada microfilm reel H-1815 at Canadiana.ca.

Checklist of Canadian copyright deposits in the British Museum, 1895-1923, A. Volume 2. 

Edited by Patrick B. O’Neill. Halifax, N.S., Canada : Dalhousie University, School of Library Service, 1985. Available at Internet Archive.

“Copyright in Fire Insurance Plans” 

Jean Dryden. Archivaria, The Journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists Number 91, Spring-Summer 2021. Available at erudite.org.

"Could Your Company be Heir to an Environmental Liability?"

Tom Fowle. Canadian Insurance, November 1992.

“Fire Insurance Plans” 

Archives of Ontario introduction to series C 234-1. Accessed December 2025.

“Fire Insurance Plan Collection” 

Archives of Ontario introduction to fonds C 234. Accessed December 2025.

Fire Insurance Plans in the National Map Collection

Robert J. Hayward. Ottawa, National Map Collection, Public Archives of Canada, 1977. Available at Internet Archive.

“Goad, Charles Edward”

Elizabeth Buchanan and Gunter Gad, in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003. Accessed March 2026.

“Hopkins’ City Atlas of Halifax”

Nova Scotia Archives web site. Accessed February 2026.

“Insurance Plans and Land Use Atlases: Sources for Urban Historical Research”

Robert J Hayward. Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, Vol. 2, No. 1 (May 1973).

Looking at Toronto Fire Insurance Maps and Atlases 

Back Lane Studios webinar presented by Wayne Reeves. July 2025.

Mapping Toronto’s First Century, 1787-1884

Royal Ontario Museum, Canadiana Department, 1984. ROM exhibit texts by Isobel Ganton and Joan Winearls.

Massie & Renwick, Limited v. Underwriters' Survey Bureau Ltd. et al., 1940 CanLII 1 (SCC), [1940] SCR 218. Available at CanLII.

“Memoir of Charles Edward Goad”

Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineers Vol XXXVI No 1 Jan 1911. Available at Internet Archive.

"My Publisher, Ed Phelps"

 Herman Goodden blog. Accessed June 2026.

Primer on Goad’s Atlases and Insurance Plans for Toronto

University of Toronto map library, 2010. Expanded from Hayward, Robert J. “Fire Insurance Plans in the National Map Collection.”

Researching Toronto History Online

Back Lane Studios webinar presented by Jessica Algie. August 2021.

“Sanborn Maps: About this Collection” 

Library of Congress web site. Accessed March 2026.

“Toronto Fire Insurance Atlases and Plans: About These maps”

Toronto Public Library web site. Accessed December 2025.

Underwriters’ Survey Bureau et al vs Massie & Renwick Ltd. Canada Law Reports 1936, Exchequer Court of Canada. Available at Government of Canada Publications.

Underwriters, the History of the Insurers’ Advisory Organization and its Predecessors, the Canadian Fire Underwriters' Association and the Canadian Underwriters' Association, The (1883-1983)

Christopher L. Hives. London, Phelps Publishing Company, 1985. Available at Internet Archive.