​          It’s difficult to overstate the value of fire insurance plans authored by Charles Goad and his successors to modern 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 19th and 20th-century version of Google Maps, except with more detail. The fact that so many copies of these invaluable surveys 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exist today is remarkable considering the policy of their various publishers to collect and destroy them as they became outdated.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 understanding a medium as visual as maps. The Goad's Guide fills those gaps using extensive visuals, original Goad company records, and important new copyright research to help researchers make the most out of these priceless resources.

 

Guide Terminology

 

          Throughout the Guide the modifier “Goad’s” is  used 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. The term “maps” is also employed 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 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. ssociation of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives ACMLA Bulletin, 114 (Spring/Summer 2002). Available at Memorial University Digital Archives Initiative.

 

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

• Archives of Ontario, "Fire Insurance Plan circular letters", series C 234-2.

• Library and Archives Canada Charles E. Goad Company fonds on microfilm reel H-1815 and H-1816 available at Canadiana.ca.

Note: the LAC microfilm contains scans of the circulars held by the Archives of Ontario, along with "day books" (ledgers) and letter books which are not in the Archives of Ontario collection. The Library and Archives Canada database indicates the microfilm was received from Western University in 1989. The 2002 Canadian Catalogue of Fire Insurance Plans also references multiple ledgers being held by Western. However, the University no longer holds the materials as of 2026 and it is unknown what happened to those which did not make it to the Archives of Ontario. 

 

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 Archivaria.ca.

 

"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 and British Columbia Urban History: A Union List." 

F. M. Woodward, 2010. BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly, (42), 13–26. Available at UBC Library web site.

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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.

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Insurance Society

Charles E. Goad. Volumes 1-6, 1881-1886. Library and Archives Canada OCLC 668081628, call number H-773-1.

 

“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, January 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.”)

 

“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 June 2026.

 

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.

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