About Digital History Canada
Ben Woodward is an award-winning geographer and web map developer at both the national and international level. Ben won the Canadian Geographic Challenge in 2017, placed third worldwide at the International Geography Olympiad in 2019, and placed third nationwide at the Esri Canada App Challenge earlier this year.
Ben is also passionate about local history, volunteering or working for the Bayfield Historical Society in 2016, 2020, and 2021. Ben digitized the Bayfield Historical Society’s historical maps, photographs, and postcards, and created the Bayfield Historical Web Map to showcase this rich collection. The Bayfield Historical Web Map won a peoples’ choice award at the Western GIS Days conference last November.
Ben started creating the Local History Atlas in September of 2021, and founded Digital History Canada in June of the following year with the support of the Ontario Summer Company Program and Huron County Economic Development. The Local History Atlas is a product of the lessons learned from creating the Bayfield Historical Web Map and working with collections management software as a summer student. It seeks to unite historical information from various primary and secondary sources (maps, photographs, postcards, videos, podcasts, plaques etc.) and organizations (local and county museums, archives, historical societies, and other organizations). As with his previous projects, Ben wants to create a platform that allows those who are new to local history to explore, immerse themselves, and hear stories without needing to know where to start.