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Amenities

The map covers 29 kinds of place. The inclusion criteria for each amenity are below.

  • Grocery
  • Pharmacy
  • Bakery
  • Restaurant
  • Café
  • Bars/pubs
  • School
  • Library
  • Park
  • Playground
  • Childcare
  • Community centre
  • Hospital
  • Clinic
  • Nursing home
  • Bookstore
  • Hardware store
  • Bike shop
  • College or university
  • Convenience store
  • Post office
  • Bank
  • Dentist
  • Laundromat
  • Dog park
  • Place of worship
  • Pool
  • Ice rink
  • Sports field or court

What counts as each

Section titled “What counts as each”

  • Grocery store: supermarkets and general grocery stores. Convenience stores and specialty food shops are not counted.

  • Pharmacy: a pharmacy service, including one inside a grocery store.

  • Bakery, playground, childcare and bicycle shop: places that OpenStreetMap or Overture lists as these. Dog bakeries, tutoring centres, day camps and adult day programs are not counted.

  • Café: coffee shops, tea rooms and juice bars. Vape, tobacco and hookah shops are not counted, even when OpenStreetMap or Overture lists them as cafés.

  • Restaurant: sit-down, casual and fast-food restaurants.

  • Bar or pub: public bars and pubs. A brewery or winery is not counted on that basis alone.

  • School: schools from kindergarten to grade 12. Tutoring businesses and single campus buildings are not counted unless the Open Database of Educational Facilities links them to a school. A school that teaches only preschool children is counted as childcare.

    • Elementary school: a school teaching primary grades (grades 1–6).
    • Secondary school: a school teaching upper-secondary grades (grades 10–12).

    A school’s levels are taken from the Open Database of Educational Facilities, then from OpenStreetMap’s level and grade tags, its category, or its name. A school whose levels are unknown counts only as a school.

  • Post-secondary: colleges, CEGEPs, universities and trade schools that teach only post-secondary levels. These are not counted as schools.

  • Library: libraries without private access, including branches inside other buildings.

  • Park: parks, dog parks, public gardens and nature reserves. Private grounds are excluded. Parks that touch or overlap are treated as one park, and are also counted by size:

    • Pocket park: under 0.5 ha.
    • Neighbourhood park: 2 ha or more.
    • Large park: 20 ha or more.

    A large park is also a neighbourhood park. A park mapped only as a point has no known size and counts only as a park.

  • Dog park: an off-leash dog park. It also counts as a park.

  • Community centre: a physical community or cultural centre. An organization’s office is not enough.

  • Hospital: acute-care hospitals. Rehabilitation and continuing-care centres, CLSCs and CHSLDs are not counted.

  • Clinic: general, walk-in, urgent-care and paediatric clinics. Specialist-only practices are not counted.

  • Nursing home: nursing homes, assisted living, care homes, residential hospices and retirement homes for seniors. A home whose name says apartments, tower, condo or supportive housing is not counted unless the name also says care, nursing, lodge or manor.

  • Bookstore: new, used, academic and comic-book shops.

  • Hardware store: hardware, home-improvement and DIY shops.

  • Convenience store: convenience stores and dépanneurs, including stores named for a convenience or fuel brand. These are not counted as grocery stores.

  • Post office: a Canada Post outlet or post office counter. Post boxes and parcel lockers are not counted.

  • Bank: a bank or credit union branch. ATMs, financial advisers, lenders and insurers are not counted.

  • Dentist: a general or paediatric dental practice. Specialist practices are not counted.

  • Laundromat: a self-service laundry. Dry cleaners, and laundries for the guests or residents of a hotel, campground or building, are not counted.

  • Place of worship: a church, mosque, temple, synagogue, gurdwara or other place of worship. A religious organization’s office is not enough.

  • Swimming pool: a public pool or aquatic centre. Pools at hotels and members’ clubs are not counted, and neither are unnamed pools in OpenStreetMap, which are almost all private.

  • Ice rink: a public indoor or outdoor ice rink or arena. Curling clubs are not counted.

  • Sports field: a playing field, court or running track. Golf courses, bowling greens, shooting ranges, equestrian grounds and private grounds are not counted.

A place can count in more than one kind when each is supported separately, such as a grocery store with a pharmacy counter or a restaurant that is also a café.

How places are classified

Section titled “How places are classified”

The places come from OpenStreetMap and Overture Maps, combined so a place listed in both counts once (how we match them). OpenStreetMap describes places with tags and Overture with a category hierarchy; our rules translate both into the kinds above. A specific tag or category counts as evidence and a broad one does not: a place filed under Overture’s general “hospital” category is not counted as a hospital or clinic unless another source or a manual review supports it.

We leave out places marked private or closed, and places whose sources contradict each other. We date each manual correction and tie it to the source entry for that place; if that entry changes, we review the correction again.

Before each monthly update, we compare the list with the previous one by kind, source and region. We check hospitals, clinics, nursing homes and pharmacies against Statistics Canada’s Open Database of Healthcare Facilities, which also adds facilities the other sources lack, and schools against its Open Database of Educational Facilities.

Something missing or wrong?

Section titled “Something missing or wrong?”

Email feedback@aportee.ca with the place, the kind of amenity and what looks wrong. On the map, click a dot and choose Report an issue. If the place comes from OpenStreetMap, correcting it there carries into a later monthly update, and helps other OpenStreetMap users.