Conférenciers


Jeff Allen

Jeff Allen is a PhD student in geography at the University of Toronto. He has previously worked as a student at the University of Toronto’s Map and Data Library as well as at Scholars Portal. Some of his projects are online at http://jamaps.github.io/.


Jo Ashley

Jo Ashley is the GIS Analyst at Scholars Portal, a service of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL). She holds a MSA in Geography from the University of Toronto. She works primarily on spatial data loading in the Scholars GeoPortal, and enjoys playing her part in helping to provide dependable, good quality data to the academic community, in order to facilitate creative and innovative research.


Rebecca Bartlett

Rebecca Bartlett is the GIS and Digital Resources Librarian at Carleton University.


Gordon Beck

Gord Beck is McMaster University Library’s Map Specialist. He has worked in the Lloyd Reeds Map Collection since 1997. His area of expertise is military cartography upon which topic he frequently lectures and is interviewed by the news media. Gord acted as a consultant for the CBC Radio documentary, ‘Vimy Ridge: how a Cape Breton farmer led the battle for Hill 145,’ and has appeared in the Canadian Geographic documentary, ‘Drawn to Victory,’ which tells the story of mapping and aerial photography in WWI. In 2018 he curated an exhibit of Napoleonic era maps for the McMaster Museum of Art, and most recently, he is the lead on an ongoing project to digitize WWII cartography.


Francine Berish

Francine Berish is the Geospatial Data Librarian at Queen’s Library. In addition to serving as the liaison librarian for the Geography and Planning department, she is responsible for the Library’s collection of maps, geospatial data, atlases, books, air photos and Statistics Canada Data Liberation Initiative (DLI) data utilized by campus and community groups alike.


Stéfano Biondo

Détenteur d’un baccalauréat en géographie de l’UQAM et d’une maîtrise en science de l’information de l’Université de Montréal, Stéfano Biondo a développé, au cours des dernières années, une expertise dans la gestion et la diffusion des données géospatiales au sein des bibliothèques universitaires. À l’origine de la création du Centre d’information géographique et statistique (Centre GéoStat) de la Bibliothèque de l’Université Laval, où il occupe la fonction de cartothécaire depuis 2005, il participe à l’acquisition, à la conservation et la mise en valeur des collections cartographiques et géospatiales. Il est d’ailleurs le coordonnateur principal des données de l’entente BCI-MERN (Bureau de coopération interuniversitaire et le Ministère des Ressources naturelles du Québec). Il est également coauteur de L’Apparition du Nord selon Gérard Mercator (éditions du Septentrion, 2013).


Chris Brackley

Chris Brackley is a cartographer, who has been making maps for the last twenty years. Inspired by a love of the nature, and the topographic maps that reveal the interconnection of the natural world, Chris started “improving” canoe tripping maps by manually adding historical sites, modern management areas, and whatever other information he could find in the 1990s. By the end of that decade, he had begun making maps of his own, drafting them manually with pen and ink. Eventually trained at Sir Sanford Fleming College as a digital cartographer, he started his freelance map-making company, As the Crow Flies cARTography in 2004. Since then, As the Crow Flies has made maps with a wide range of focuses and intents. They have worked with environmental organizations, making maps to educate and inspire politicians and the general public to greater protect the natural world. They have made fanciful maps to accompany books and films. And for the last eight years, Chris and As the Crow Flies have been making all of the cartographic content for the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and their national magazine Canadian Geographic. In this role Chris has created hundreds of maps for the magazine, and a dozen Giant Floor Maps (8 x 11m), with three more currently in development. He lives in Limehouse Ontario with his wife and two children.


Jay Brodeur

Jay Brodeur is the Associate Director of Digital Scholarship Services in the McMaster University Library.


Julien Brown

Julien Brown is a co-founder and the Treasurer of the Canadian Research and Mapping Association (CRMA). He also serves as a an assistant researcher and lead developer to CRMA partnership and community outreach programs. Julien works with all partners in connecting Canadians and the world to Project ’44. A background in Marketing and business operations he has worked with a number of international brands. With a keen passion for Military History Julien has been involved with army cadet movements, supported legion and veteran commemorative initiatives and projects and has worked with other historical organizations such as Vintage Wings of Canada.


Marcel Fortin

Marcel Fortin is the head of the University of Toronto’s Map and Data Library. He has been a member of the ACMLA since the early 1990s.


Kara Handren

Kara Handren is a Metadata Librarian at Scholar’s Portal, a service of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL). She works on a variety of metadata management projects involving eBooks, eJournals, and Geospatial data, and is interested in tools and projects for enhancing information discovery, access and literacy among the wider community.


Drew Hannen

Drew Hannen is a co-founder and the Vice-President of the Canadian Research and Mapping Association (CRMA), a not for profit that specializes in digital preservation, collection management systems, and mapping of Canadian military history. He currently works on the CRMA’s Project 44, and has actively been taking part in coordinating the digitization of over 65 historical war diaries and situation maps. With a background in urban planning and geography (B.A.), Drew also works as a GIS consultant, particularly with First Nations groups. Through this work, he has developed a keen interest in understanding people’s connection with the land through land use and occupancy, and the role contemporary and archival maps play.


Christine Homuth

Christine Homuth is the Spatial Information Specialist in the McMaster University Library.


Nathan Kehler

Nathan Kehler is a co-founder and the Executive Director of the Canadian Research and Mapping Association (CRMA). Nathan served in the Canadian Forces for 12 years and has served in both Afghanistan and Latvia. His expertise is in web mapping and data management, and his passion lies in showing the history of where. Through digital preservation, his team at CRMA is bringing history to a new generation of Canadians and ensuring that anyone can see and understand the complexity of geography, and how it has affected Canada’s history.


Tanya Kenesky

Tanya Kenesky is the GIS/Data Support Specialist at the UofT Mississauga Library.


Sanja Hinić-Frlog

Dr. Sanja Hinić-Frlog is a Biology Professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and has taught courses in Ornithology for several years.


Roddy McFall

Roddy McFall is a Senior Archivist at Library and Archives with responsibility for – among other portfolio assignments – the cartographic records of both Natural Resources Canada and Environment Canada and Climate Change. He spent five years writing on Canadian politics for The Economist Intelligence Unit,and spent three years at the Bermuda Government Archives assisting in the creation of its nascent government records programme. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in History and Political Science as well as a Master of Arts in History, both from Carleton University.


Bryan McPherson

Bryan McPherson (MLA, B.Sc.) has over 20 years landscape assessment & visualization experience on parkland projects, working with Indigenous communities, and on infrastructure & aviation projects. Bryan’s work on land use valuation aided in the expansion of parks & protected areas throughout Ontario. His West Coast work has included land appraisals, flood mapping, being an expert witness at appeal tribunals, and acting as a land use mapping professional for Indigenous communities. He is a graduate from a Masters of Landscape Architecture program (University of Guelph). Bryan is a researcher with the Six Nations of the Grand River and the University of Waterloo – where he works on historic surveys, pre-settlement land class visualization, and on 3D laser cut topographic maps.


Phil Monture

Phil Monture is Mohawk from the Six Nations of the Grand River. From 1975 to July 2002, he was the Director of the Land Claims Research Office at the Six Nations of the Grand River. Phil developed a long-term research program and supervised the research for the Six Nations of the Grand River as it relates to lands which are no longer used for their benefit or legal surrender obtained under prevailing legislation. He was the principal architect of the ongoing 1995 litigation against Canada and Ontario for an accounting of all Six Nations Lands, resources and assets supposedly held and managed on Six Nations behalf by the Crown(s). Over the years, Phil has facilitated various workshops in relation to items such as Land Claims, assisted in policy review and community planning. He was also a member of the Planning Team for the National Land Claims Research Conferences and Summits. Phil brings many years of experience related to land rights and constantly challenges Canada’s extinguishment of Indigenous Rights policies.


Andrew Nicholson

Andrew Nicholson is the GIS & Research Data Services Coordindator at the UofT Mississauga Library.


Rosa Orlandini

Rosa Orlandini is the Map and GIS Librarian at York University Libraries and is a former president of ACMLA. She recently created a dataset, in collaboration with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, that describes the precise location of the Indian Residential Schools in Canada.


Sherri Sunstrum

Sherri Sunstrum is a cartographic specialist at Carleton University and the subject specialist for Earth Sciences and Geomatics.


Evan Thornberry

Evan Thornberry is the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Librarian at the University of British Columbia Library where he supports geospatial teaching, learning, and research on campus. In his work, he coordinates efforts to improve existing resources for maps, atlases, and geodata collections, as well as library services to better equip a wide range of GIS users. Previous to his role at UBC, Evan was the Reference and Geospatial Librarian for the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library where he worked within a publicly accessible historical map collection. He is also one of the organizers of the local Vancouver chapter of Maptime - a regularly scheduled Meetup event that provides a time and space for collaborative learning, exploration, and map creation using mapping tools and technologies. Currently in his spare time he spends countless hours painstakingly restoring old Schwinn bicycles that are probably worth less than $100.


Jean Tong

Jean Tong (B.A, Grad. Dip TchLn (NZ), OCT, FRCGS) is the K-12 Teaching and Learning Manager at Esri Canada. She has been in this role since 2007; previously she was teaching grades 7-10 Social Sciences, Geography and History in Toronto, Ontario. She is actively involved in presenting and conducting training workshops about the use of GIS in education to educators, professionals, and the community. Jean has been involved as a co-author on “International Perspectives on Teaching and Learning with GIS in Secondary Schools” Canada chapter, a contributing partner/writer to the McGraw Hill textbook “Geography in Action”, involved as a stakeholder writer/reviewer of the Ontario curriculum 2013-2015 Social Studies, and Canadian and World Studies with a focus on spatial technologies, and contributor to Nelson Publishing grade 7 and 8, Geography and History textbooks to bring the use of spatial technologies to their activities and case studies. Because of her work in GIS with K-12 schools, Jean serves as a representative on various committees including the Association of Ontario Land Surveyors (AOLS) Geomatics Recruitment & Liaison Committee, the Ontario Association of Geographic and Environmental Educators Association (OAGEE), and the Ontario Geography Consultants & Ontario History, Humanities and Social Science Consultants’ Association (OG-OH). Jean is a graduate of Canterbury University and McMaster University with degrees in Education and Geography. She also has a Certificate of Applied Digital Geography and GIS from Ryerson University.