> Maps. �Some places are rather thin in the available maps department.... and some maps are thin on detail.

When last in Canada (last year) I bought a heap of the official
1:50,000 topomaps of southern BC/Vancouver Island. When I looked at
them I was shocked... they looked like New Zealand maps from the
1940s. No shading; almost no naming of coastal features.

The current New Zealand equivalents are shaded, so you can see land
features... even distinguish faults and folds in the rocks. The only
problem is that they use a NZ-specific grid. A new series is going to
be made, with the UTM (universal transverse mercator) "world" grid. I
just hope that they use a the existing digital terrain model (DTM) as
the map base, as this gives a photographic-quality definition of
landforms. The NZ DTM can be magnified to give 1m resolution over the
entire country.

I was told by the map shop in Calgary that the Canadian maps, which in
some cases have not been updated since 1975, and to be discontinued,
which makes zero sense to me.

-- 
Regards
Andrew Grebneff
Dunedin, New Zealand
Fossil preparator
Mollusc, Toyota & VW van fanatic