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This project has ended. I am leaving the Star to pursue another opportunity, and my last day is today.

Thank you for your interest, and your patience as I slowly figured out the technology.

The blog itself had a total of about 1.4 million lifetime page-views, and you left just under 1,000 comments.

I would like to thank Star editors Neil Sanderson and Marissa Nelson, whose early support was essential to the project; Sanjay Singh, whose advice revolutionized the way I create maps; my wife Catharine Tunnacliffe, who was a source of enthusiasm and fresh ideas when my own waned; and the Information and Privacy Commissioner's investigators, whose careful and fair-minded handing of disputes was very helpful - several maps would not have been published without their help. I filed a total of 53 access-to-information requests for Map of the Week.

The access-to-information process can sometimes be antagonistic, but much more typically I found myself dealing with public servants who were interested and enthusiastic about the project, and often had not seen their own agency's data mapped.

I can be contacted through patrickcain.ca.

Here are some highlights of the last few years:

	Bedbugs Reports of bedbugs form a surprising pattern across the map of Toronto. Link to the map
	Organ donor registry A look at Ontario’s organ donor registry shows that Toronto has the lowest rates in the province. Why? Link to the map
	Toronto Centre by-election A detailed, fully interactive poll-by-poll look at the Toronto Centre by-election shows the voting patterns of this unique riding. Link to the maps
	Childbirth A map series looks at aspects of childbirth in the GTA, from homebirth to maternal age. Link to the maps
	Same-sex marriage What neighbourhoods do same-sex married couples come from? Two maps show how patterns differ between men and women. Link to the maps
	The Riverdale First World War project About 200 residents of Riverdale were killed in the First World War. This home-by-home map hints at the scale of a neighbourhood’s trauma. Link to the map
	Infectious disease Reports of infectious disease, broken down by the patient’s postal code, show TB, hepatitis and several STDs. Link to the maps
	Dog ownership Over 20 maps look at everything to do with dog ownership in Toronto, broken down by postal code. Link to the maps
	Impaired driving Where are Ontario’s worst postal codes for impaired driving charges? These maps will show you. Includes age graphs of drunk drivers. Link to the maps
	Real estate A growing and popular series of maps tracks trends in the GTA’s real estate market. Link to the maps
	Street racing A map of drivers charged with street racing shows very different patterns from the drunk driving map. Why so many in Caledon? Link to the maps
	Passports A map of rates of passport holding shows some revealing patterns. Link to the map
	Historic map overlays 1878 maps overlay the modern streetscape of Toronto, and the present Pearson airport site. Link to the maps
	Gun ownership A map series looks at gun ownership in the GTA by postal code. Link to the maps
	Neighbourhood crime maps A growing series of crime maps based on City of Toronto-defined neighbourhoods. Link to the maps
	Neighbourhood project We asked readers to define their Toronto neighbourhoods. This was the result. Link to the maps
	Smoking Maps show smoking patterns regionally in Ontario and in the GTA by census tract. Link to the maps
	Military recruiting Which neighbourhoods do the GTA’s military recruits come from? Maps break it down by postal code. Link to the maps
	Traffic safety Maps using a year’s worth of pedestrian and cyclist accidents show where Toronto’s danger spots are. Link to the maps
	Education Maps look at admission to the six campuses of the GTA’s three universities, and at where Toronto high school dropouts live. Link to the maps
	Agriculture Where farms have been lost in Ontario over the past ten years. Link to the map

Nuclear explosions, 1945-1998

Hat tip to the Map Room: a global map video of 2,053 nuclear explosions from the American desert tests in 1945 ('I am become death, the destroyer of worlds') to 1998. It is supposed to run at a rate of one second a month, but the 1945 segment is slowed down for some reason. As Jonathan Crowe points out, the pace picks up from the late '50s or so.

Map of the Week: Car ownership

TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO

Map: Cars as a percentage of households

These maps looks at cars as a percentage of households from the 2006 census.

The map shows a large area of low car ownership stretching from about Jane and Weston Road southeast along the Danforth to Victoria Park. The Yonge St. high-income corridor has higher rates:

This map of the 20 highest census tracts (of about 1,000) for car ownership is not all that surprising. Clusters in Newmarket, Markham and north Oakville account for most of them.

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However, this map of the 20 lowest census tracts wasn't exactly what I expected. One tract is in northeast Scarborough, at Morningside and Ellesmere. Another is at Jane and Weston Rd. Several cluster roughly along St. Clair from Scarlett Rd. to Old Weston Rd. Clearly this map has at least as much to do with income as anything else - not all of these areas have very good transit connections, though some do. Here we see the 1000m subway radius map superimposed on the car map. The neighbourhoods along the Bloor-Danforth line do have much lower car ownership, at least between Vic Park and the Humber, but this is less true of the YUS line, especially north of Lawrence.

A few tracts have household car ownership rates over 80% despite being within 1000 metres of a subway station: Rosedale, the part of Forest Hill west of Avenue Rd. and St. Clair, Lawrence Park, York Mills and the Kingsway. So the income-to-car-ownership relationship goes both ways.