Val Marie cartographer releases second edition of popular Sask. wall map

The level of interest in a large and detailed wall map of Saskatchewan surprised cartographer Alex McPhee and resulted in the release of a second edition only a year after the publication of the original map. The first print run of 2,000 maps quickly found owners and left him empty-handed, which prompted his decision to create an upgraded second edition with some necessary changes and nine all-new insets.

“It was a blockbuster,” he said. “I was shocked. Of course, my commercial printer is happy to keep taking my money, so I can print as many maps as I want. I’ve launched a few different products, but this is the first one ever that I’ve actually run out of.”

He is an award-winning independent cartographer based in the village of Val Marie in southwestern Saskatchewan, where he started Prairie Heart Maps in 2021. In addition to designing and publishing his own maps, he accepts contracts and carries out custom work.

His first commercial product was a wall map of Alberta, but the Saskatchewan map has proven to be far more popular.

“I actually published Alberta first, because it has four times the population,” he said. “Saskatchewan has not just sold the same amount, given its smaller population, but it has sold about three or four times more than my Alberta map. So, proportionally, Saskatchewan is 12 or 16 times more popular.”

He felt part of the reason for the success of the Saskatchewan map is related to why people are interested in a large reference map.

“For a lot of people, the number one attraction is history,” he said. “People in Saskatchewan are closer to the family farm. Even in the cities, they feel very strongly attached to where their family was two or three generations ago. … It’s just all about the hometown in Saskatchewan. This is a map that shows every hometown and so it sells immediately.”

The map, which measures 36 inches wide and 66 inches tall, has been sold to customers in over 250 communities in Saskatchewan. One is hanging in RCMP headquarters in Regina and at least 10 members of the provincial legislature purchased a copy. It is against the wall of several municipal council chambers around the province. His map has been popular with vendors at various trade shows, probably because the information might be of interest to anyone travelling to different communities in the province.

“As far as I’ve been told, it’s been a very popular boardroom product,” he said. “Anyone who’s working in a highlevel strategic capacity really appreciates the diversity of features and topic areas that I have managed to fit into this map. … Even as a piece of interior decoration, there is still a large customer base for the types of maps that I produce.”

He decided for various reasons to not just reprint the original Saskatchewan map when he began to run out of copies, but to do an update and release it as a second edition.

“It would have been easier to just order more with an identical design, but I knew a few things were going to be changing year over year,” he said. “And because I sold so many, I just had more opportunity than I ever had before to talk to random people about what they found useful and attractive about it. So that was priceless.”

The second edition includes all the details that made the original map so popular. Modern maps are designed digitally with software programs. McPhee created a relief-shading algorithm for his map to highlight the contours of the landscape.

It includes a variety of details that are not commonly found on other print maps, for example community pastures, wind farms, irrigation canals, airfields and Hutterite colonies.

Historical details on the map include Treaty boundaries that were reconstructed from the original treaty texts and reserve boundaries. He also mapped land areas that were lost as a result of reserve surrender and land purchased through the Treaty Land Entitlement process.

The most visible difference compared to the original is the inclusion of nine colourful new insets in the upper right corner of the second edition map. He collects old school atlases from different eras and these map insets were inspired by the topics that were covered in those publications.

“I knew there were all kinds of additional topics that would be worthy of showing in an atlas, but which I couldn’t work into my giant overall map,” he said. “So on my second edition, because these ideas had been kicking around my head for a long time, I thought I’m going to try to come up with nine additional topics that are going to be the most relevant for Saskatchewan in the 21st century.”

Four of the insets reflect different aspects of Indigenous identity. The themes for the other insets are population density, elevation, annual mean temperature, annual mean precipitation and ecoregions.

“My biggest inspiration was the list of outcomes and indicators that are in use currently in our public education system,” he said about these themes. “The subjects all tie into the social studies curriculum. There is always more and actually making this addition made me think I really want to publish a whole atlas.”

The second edition map includes several updates to reflect changes in the province since the creation of the original map. It shows the location of six new Hutterite colonies, the updated names of a couple of fishing lodges and a change to the Regina municipal boundary due to the annexation of land for industrial development.

He incorporated other changes as a result of feedback received on the original Saskatchewan map. The boundaries and names of rural municipalities were shown on the original map. The new map adds the number of each rural municipality.

“They are often referred to by both,” he said. “So the second edition now includes the RM name with the number. That is officially my most requested change.”

Another change clarifies the location of grain elevators in relation to railway lines. In some areas the railway lines of competing railway companies are located in close proximity to each other. In those situations, the historical sources do not always clearly indicate on which railway line a grain elevator was operating, but feedback made it possible for him to make changes where necessary on the second edition of the map.

McPhee will be attending various trade shows with his improved map and he will be working on several ideas for future reference maps. He plans to create a similar wall map for Manitoba and he wants to design a wall map of Canada with an emphasis on modern treaties. He recently created a Val Marie visitor map as a project for a client and he is interested in doing more rural tourism maps.

Copies of the second edition Saskatchewan map can be purchased directly from McPhee through the Prairie Heart Maps website at www.awmcphee.ca