The Canadian Register of Historic Places, better known as the historicplaces.ca website, is coming down. Parks Canada announced in late...
The Canadian Register of Historic Places, better known as the historicplaces.ca website, is coming down. Parks Canada announced in late 2025 that the searchable database – a cornerstone for understanding heritage places in Canada – will be permanently unplugged in spring 2026. Heritage advocates are scrambling to save the data and find a replacement.
In December 2025, Parks Canada shared with provincial and territorial partners that the Canadian Register of Historic Places would be taken down in spring 2026. The existing database is at the end of its technological life. There is no plan for its replacement.
The Register is an online searchable database of historic places in Canada which have been formally recognized for their heritage value by federal, provincial, municipal or territorial authorities. It is administered by Parks Canada and is publicly accessible on its dedicated website historicplaces.ca.
The Register was launched in 2004 as part of the Historic Places Initiative, a collaboration between the federal, provincial and territorial governments to improve protection of the country’s historic sites and to foster a culture of heritage conservation in Canada. The provinces and territories invested millions in creating the Register. Their initial response has been described as ‘shock and disappointment’.
There are approximately 13,500 historic places listed on the register. It is a vital tool for the heritage community and particularly for those jurisdictions who rely on it as the system of record for historic designations.
The impacts of the loss of the Register for the use and management of heritage in Canada are significant: The Register is used by federal, provincial, territorial and municipal officials and governments as a definitive source of information. It’s illustrated entries are used for public policy development, education, real estate proposals, investments, and private and public sector projects, and to assess potential designations, modifications, and demolitions. Without a common register, information about historic places will become more fragmented, inconsistent and difficult to find. Information will be lost or invisible to the Canadian public. Inconsistencies between registries will lead to confusion and gaps. The Register is the only Canadian tool that allows a search for listings across jurisdictions. Without it, any coordinated action or analysis for heritage places in Canada will be impeded.
Join Us as We Take Action
Decommissioning the Register creates an urgent need to salvage the information in the Register. In the longer-term, a solution to keep comparable information about historic places in all jurisdictions easily accessible is needed.
A download of their listings is being provided to each participating jurisdiction. These downloads, in the form of excel tables, do not include images. Work is underway in some provinces and territories by government officials and heritage organizations to ensure that critical information is saved.
The National Trust has written to the federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for the Register, calling on them to work together to ensure that comprehensive information about Canada’s historic places remains accessible to Canadians. We, along with our partners in the National Council, are ready to contribute to finding a contemporary solution that ensures on-going access to the Register’s rich information.
If you use the Canadian Register of Historic Places, write to the federal Minister of the Environment ([email protected]) and to your provincial or territorial minister responsible for heritage to let them know that you care about what is being thrown away.
“These are occupations, with what looks and is intended to look very much like a military force, which is acting like a military — far more than actual soldiers and National Guard do, because centuries of training and law curb those impulses. They’re being sent into these cities to menace and overawe, like some modern day equivalent of the Normans dominating the English countryside with their motte-and-bailey castles. Part of civilian government and civic democracy is that you can resist things all you want. You just can’t break laws. Most of civic freedom is contained in the empty spaces between those two things. If you look at the trend of Trump rule in blue cities and blue states, the clear trajectory is that not being dominated is getting closer and closer to being a criminal offense, likely through conspiracy laws and such. When we think about how to understand Trumpism and what to do about it, we need to be thinking way beyond the literal and technicalities. It’s really about how we got to be like conquered territories in our own country and how we un-get there. That requires thinking beyond the narrow technicalities of civilian and military laws and life.”
— Don’t Be So Literal About What Counts as a Military Occupation
From the government shutdown beginning on the first, the demolition of the East Wing of the Whitehouse, and finally the imminent hearing on
We all know the news cycle moves fast these days, even in our niche field of archaeology. Take a seat and explore the effects of the current Trump administration on the field of archaeology in the United States, just in October, 2025. Let’s just say, it’s a busy one. From the government shutdown beginning on the first, the demolition of the East Wing of the Whitehouse, and finally the imminent hearing on the Section 106 consultation process by the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources. The administration has had significant effects across the federal government, with trickle-down effects into state, local, and tribal governments, archaeology, historic preservation writ large, not to mention energy development across the board (but that’s a different episode). Since Mr. Trump loves AI so much, we just could not resist. Enjoy the cover image for this episode. Please note: technical issues meant the episode audio is not as high quality as we like, so pardon the variable volume.
Hey, archaeologists! As archaeologists, we tend to be the doing sort, the busybodies shovelling and sorting, keeping and caring, custodians
"Hey, archaeologists! As archaeologists, we tend to be the doing sort, the busybodies shovelling and sorting, keeping and caring, custodians of time, places, people.
It’s time to lean into that, to do some things we are particularly good at doing. We aren’t asking you to do all the things, just one or two–it takes all of us, and there will be people who can help out in other ways."
Mister Rogers says that when terrible things happen, to look for the helpers.
This is so important to me, I have the tattoo.
Terrible things are happening. I’m upset. And I’m angry. And I’m so sad.
While I am looking for the helpers, I am also doing my best to be a helper.
I have to be honest: when a domestic terrorist organization, created and unleashed on us by our own government, are…
I am an archeologist. I specialize in a somewhat obscure but by no means boring or meaningless Neolithic culture in Germany.
It has a Wikipedia page. A well curated, surprisingly extensive Wiki page that encapsulates all the important information about the culture, including literature references for further research.
One day, we asked Chat GPT about this culture. W were curious which details it would get wrong.
ALL OF THEM, except for the fact that it's a culture in present day Germany.
It didn't even get the chronological time frame wrong and called it a celtic culture.
When we told it it's wrong, it came at us with made up literature sources. Literally made up. It took two well known German archeologist who weren't even active at the same time, added a year - both were already dead - and sold that as source.
And it LITERALLY would only have had to quote Wikipedia to get everything right.
THAT is how unbelievably shitty and wrong all those AIs are.
They are making shit up. They are not sourcing information, they're just slapping words together by their most like relative occurance.
Do not trust ChatGPT or any other so-called AI ever.
There are a lot of archaeologists with cool designs on Redbubble and there are a bunch of great sales on stickers. Think about supporting your fellow archys this holiday season!
WIA was joined by three of the producers of the NAGPRA Comics series: Sonya Atalay, Shannon Martin, and John Swogger. NAGPRA Comics is a gra
On this episode, the hosts are joined by three of the producers of the NAGPRA Comics series: Sonya Atalay, Shannon Martin, and John Swogger. NAGPRA Comics is a grant-funded comic series that is community-based and collaboratively produced, which shares stories about repatriation from tribal perspectives. It was an incredible opportunity to learn about how the comics were created and the unique way comics can provide a space to share the stories and point of view of Native American communities and their experience with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).
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