Tracé de 1927 du Conseil privé (non définitif)

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

We had a provincial election here in Quebec earlier this week, coverage of which served as a reminder that the Quebec government officially does not recognize the province’s border with Labrador—a border determined by a 1927 decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London.

It’s a long grievance, nearly a century old now, with periodic flare-ups of passive aggressiveness but few real implications. There’s no real chance of redress, and no one actually lives in the disputed area. Still, the Quebec government mandates, among other things, that all its maps show the Quebec claim (which follows the watershed line) alongside the official border, which is always de-emphasized and labelled “Tracé de 1927 du Conseil privé (non définitif).”

This includes official election maps. Which people notice each time there’s a provincial election: the boundaries of the electoral district of Duplessis encompass the disputed region (see this PDF map). It’s academic since no one lives there: we’re spared the problem of people who are eligible to vote in—or are taxed by—two different provinces.

Some Quebec separatists—sorry, sovereignists—show maps of Quebec that include all of Labrador, so that’s the maximalist position.

Alabama Now Requires ‘Gulf of America’

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

“Gulf of America” is now state policy in Alabama. Thanks to a law that took effect on October 1, state entities and employees in Alabama are now required to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, updating maps, documents and educational materials as required. As Inside Higher Ed reports, this includes public schools and universities—with a carve-out “when reasonable for historical purposes.” It also appears to include reporters at a university-sponsored NPR affiliate. Because free speech, I guess.

A Pop-up Staircase, Surrounded by Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The entrance to the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford is via a staircase whose walls are illustrated with maps from the Center’s collections. To mark the Center’s 10th anniversary, RJ Andrews and Ray Marshall engineered a pop-up papercraft model of the stairwell. The keepsake opens up to show every wall on every level. Produced in limited quantities and unfortunately not available for sale. See RJ Andrews’s post and Ray Marshall’s web page for how they did it, and images of the keepsake.

MapQuest’s Moment

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Product image of a MapQuest-branded tote bag with map of Lake Ontario, labelled: It's Lake Ontario on MapQuest.

MapQuest continues to ride a wave of positive publicity after their refusal to rename Lake Ontario. They’ve posted billboards in Chicago and Toronto with directions to the Lake, their CEO made a well-publicized visit to the lake itself, they have we’re-not-changing-the-name merch at their store. Call it principled or opportunistic—it can be both, honestly—but either way they’re making the most of it.

They’ve also posted their roadmap of upcoming features.

Simon Ayrinhac’s Studies of Tolkien’s Maps and Geography, Plus a Middle-earth Globe

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
A globe of Tolkien’s Middle-earth.
Columbus Globes

Simon Ayrinhac is a French physicist who studies the maps and geography of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. I stumbled across his page of his talks and articles via the Tolkien Conference I posted about earlier this month. (The page also includes a couple of bibliographies that I will have to steal from in order to update my own reading list.) In French. Lots for me to go through.

Amongst Simon’s articles is one exploring how Tolkien’s Middle-earth can be displayed as a globe, occasioned by the release, by Columbus Globes, of Middle-earth globes in various sizes and levels of detail (12, 26, 30, and 40 cm, all but the smallest illuminated; €25-€399). The problem, which Simon also notices, is that the known parts of Middle-earth take up too much of the globe: it’s actually only a small part of the whole, with the rest of the world only roughly sketched out. (Also, the legendarium of Middle-earth is such that it was only round after a specific catastrophic event, and a lot of the geography did not survive it.)

The United Nations, Mercator and Equal Earth: Another Follow-Up

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Commentary on map projections continues in the wake of the UN resolution about replacing the Mercator projection with Equal Earth. There were two pieces in the Guardian last week. This one is less about projections but about why they matter, not just in terms of diminishing Africa, but also in terms of exaggerating Greenland: would Trump have been so obsessed with it if it if it wasn’t 14 times too big on the Mercator? This piece interviews the three creators of the Equal Earth projection—it’s understandably been a busy time for them!—and provides a bit more background to those just tuning in.

My impression is that the last main redoubt of Mercator is in web maps, where the projection is not a problem unless you zoom out too much. I’ve spotted a couple of new tools to address that: see Ben Joffe’s interactive map, and MapTiler’s demo. Both deal with distortion at the map’s edges by allowing you to drag the map so that any degree of longitude can be at the centre, and transitioning to Mercator as you zoom in.

Previously: The UN Is Voting on Whether to Phase Out the Mercator Projection; The United Nations, Mercator and Equal Earth: A Follow-Up.

Mapping Tariffs

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Screenshot from Mapping Tariffs, an interactive choropleth map of Canada showing the impact of U.S. tariffs on Canadian communities.
mappingtariffs.org (screenshot)

Mapping Tariffs visualizes the impact of U.S. tariffs on Canadian businesses. “Since May 2025, Tara Vinodrai and Karen Chapple have led a team of researchers at the School of Cities to develop interactive mapping and visualization tools that measure and explore the potential impacts of tariffs on jobs and businesses across Canadian cities and communities at the neighbourhood and city level. Our tools illustrate the highly localized and uneven potential impacts of U.S. tariffs reflecting Canada’s underlying urban, regional and sectoral specializations.” CTV News coverage.

The United Nations, Mercator and Equal Earth: A Follow-Up

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Matthew Edney’s response to last week’s UN resolution on phasing out the Mercator projection in favour of Equal Earth: “This event and the responses to it show that we are still being haunted by Arno Peters’ damnable arguments. They were cursed when Peters publicized them, about fifty years ago, and they seem doomed to torment us even now.” See also André Ourednik’s take (in French), which points out the biases and editorial choices even in Equal Earth.

The transcript of the General Assembly debate on the resolution shows that Ukraine abstained from the vote because the Equal Earth map shows Crimea as disputed territory (which is a point about the default map, not the projection), and the United States felt the resolution trivialized the institution (which the U.S. would never do) and dismissed it as part of a “radical ideological project.”

Update: Japan’s mad about how Equal Earth depicts the Kuril Islands. Can no one understand the difference between a projection and the default map using it?

The First Trilateration of the Globe

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

J. B. Crawford’s long essay on geodesy looks at the challenge of synchronizing the datums created by the various national surveys, giving the reader sufficient background technical information for understanding the culmination of those efforts: the North Atlantic Tie, by which the North American, British and European datums (NAD27, OSGB36 and ED50) were linked together, and the eventual creation of WGS60—just in time for satellite observations to take over. Worth a read.

Explaining MapQuest to Younger People

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Comedian Josh Johnson (you may know him from The Daily Show) explains what MapQuest is to younger people. (It was my running joke to say, “Remember MapQuest?” except that I’ve been doing this for 23 years and now people might simply say “no.”) Includes side quests to paper maps and TomTom, because we’ve had maps on our phones for a while now.

Forthcoming Tolkien Conference Explores Maps and Landscapes

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The third Tolkien Conference Switzerland, to be held in Lucerne on 13 March 2027, will have as its topic Maps and Landscapes in Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

Tolkien’s maps are never merely geographical. While they guide the traveller through the carefully drawn landscapes of Middle-earth, from mountains and forests to ancient kingdoms, they also chart moral and spiritual dimensions—from the corrupted wastes of Mordor to the timeless grace of Lothlórien. In Tolkien’s world, place is never neutral. 

In this conference, we will explore how Tolkien’s landscapes and cartographic imagination—from the vast plains of Rohan to the enclosed safety of the Shire—address deeper issues of belonging, loss and the meaning of home. How does the act of map-making reflect a longing for order, memory and possession? How should we interpret Tolkien’s geography in light of contemporary debates on ecology, mythology, and the human need to find safety in an unpredictable and perilous world?

Without reducing his world to mere allegory or escapism, the third Swiss Tolkien Conference will delve into the full imaginative depth of Tolkien’s spatial vision and examine what his Middle-earth landscapes might reveal about our own sense of belonging and the timeless question of what it means to lose it.

This conference couldn’t be more relevant to my interests, enough that I may have to work out whether I can manage to attend it myself. (One talk to be presented, Jost Schmid-Lanter’s “Fantasy Maps in the Context of Medieval and Early Modern Cartography,” even cites a couple of my articles. The other talks look just as compelling.)

Apple Maps Has Ads Now

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Belatedly noting that ads have started rolling out on Apple Maps in the U.S. and Canada. 9to5Mac explains where and where they’ll appear (in Suggested Places, and in search results). John Gruber and Oliver Roick have some initial thoughts.

Previously: Apple Exploring Advertising in Maps; Ads Coming to Apple Maps: Report; Ads Coming to Apple Maps This Summer (U.S. and Canada); Online Maps Roundup: July 2026.

A Severe Geomagnetic Storm’s Extensive Disruption of GPS

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

We’ve seen before that solar storms can have an impact on GPS accuracy. A study published in Geophysical Research Letters determined that a severe geomagnetic storm in November 2025 caused positioning errors in excess of 10 metres—enough to disrupt autonomous vehicles and precision agriculture—and in mid-latitude regions that are normally calm. [ScienceAlert]

South Park Renames Itself

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
A promotional image from Comedy Central announcing new episodes on September 16 for the TV South Park, except that Park has been replaced with America.
Comedy Central

South Park’s creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have announced that they are changing the show’s name. Variety: “Inspired by the bravery and patriotism of Apple and Google, we are changing the name of ‘South Park’ to ‘South America,’” the pair shared in a statement. “We especially want to thank our parent company Paramount—a Skydance Capitulation.”