Ibycus Topo mapping is complied from freely available Canadian Government geodata resources, GeoGratis for the topographical information (essentially the data on government issue 1:50,000 topo maps) and GeoBase for the road network. The coverage is impressive (see this map), virtually all of Canada is included.
In towns and cities, Ibycus Topo compares favourably with Garmin's City Navigator® NT North America. The road network coverage appears identical.
Vancouver - City Navigator NT (click picture to enlarge)
Vancouver - Ibycus Topo
It's in the wilderness, though, that the Ibycus Topo mapping really shines. The mapping has 20m contour lines and better definition of topographical features such as lakes and rivers. This obviously gives you a greater appreciation of the terrain when viewing mapping on a computer. (Garmin offers a separate product TOPO Canada for showing this additional detail, but it costs of course)!
Squamish, BC - City Navigator NT
Squamish, BC - Ibycus Topo
One thing to note, the Ibycus Topo mapping is NOT currently routable. Nor does it have an address database or a general POI database (topographical POIs only). If you need any of these features, you'll still need Garmin City Navigator or equivalent mapping. At the very least, the Ibycus Topo mapping is great for viewing on a computer and for using as an additional mapping layer on a Garmin GPS device. I think I already mentioned this mapping is free!
Ibycus Topo is currently at version 3.1 (just released April 2010). Unfortunately, it can only be downloaded via a torrent (search for "Ibycus Topo") and the download file is huge at more than 3GB. If downloading torrents sounds scary, you can also get a DVD direct from the map creator for a small fee.
If you're only interested in a relatively small area of Canada (or like me, a narrow corridor across the country), an earlier version of the mapping, Ibycus Topo 2.1, is currently hosted at http://www.mediafire.com/acrosscanadatrails in the directory "NTS Grid (all data)". The IMG tile sets are arranged according to Canada's National Topographic System (NTS Grid map). Note that to install individual IMG files into MapSource is quite a technical operation and you'll need a couple of free 3rd party programs - cGPSmapper (free version) and either GMapTool or MapSetToolKit - and some reasonable googling skills...
Ibycus Topo and Open Street Map (OSM)
The collaborative mapping project Open Street Map is a great source of free mapping, but for Canada the coverage is currently variable. OSM data quality in large Canadian cities may even exceed commerical mapping, but can be good to patchy elsewhere.That could be about to change. The same underlying Canadian Government geodata that Ibycus Topo uses is currently being imported into OSM. Once the import is completed, OSM should have comprehensive coverage of Canada. It's also possible to build routable Garmin compatible mapping with OSM data, so this development could be very interesting indeed! (See OSM Map On Garmin for some background reading and OSM Map On Garmin/Download for some Garmin compatible maps currently available for download).
The background and timetable for this data import initiative can be found at WikiProject Canada. Worth keeping an eye on...
