Oh boy. It’s been one busy 8 months. Since January, I’ve been on a co-op with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) – an incredibly interesting, productive, and fun experience. But that’s not all; The Canadian Atlas of Palliative Care: Ontario Edition was published; I participated in my first-ever ECCE App Challenge; attended the 2025 ESRI User Conference; and worked as a GIS practitioner in a real-world professional capacity—and I’ll give you a spoiler – I liked it.

Canadian Atlas of Palliative Care: Ontario Edition – Published

After a couple more months of work, we published the Ontario Edition of the Atlas – we’re in the final stages of things now, 2 down, 1 to go. We aim to publish the Alberta Atlas by end-of-year.

What is the Canadian Atlas of Palliative: Ontario Edition?
I explain more about the Atlas Project in my prior post on the BC edition of the Atlas, but in short, this is the first-ever comprehensive, data-driven overview of palliative care service availability in Ontario. The Canadian Atlas of Palliative Care: Ontario Edition consolidates provincial and regional data in a single interactive resource. It offers an unparalleled overview across key domains, such as policy, services, and education — equipping government leaders and health policymakers with critical data to drive equitable access to palliative care.

Why is palliative care important?
Palliative care plays a critical role in improving the quality of life and reducing avoidable hospital visits for people with life-limiting illnesses and their families. Yet in many parts of Ontario, particularly rural and underserved communities, access and quality of care remain inconsistent. Until now, no single resource has brought together data on service availability in a way that supports system-wide planning and coordination. The Ontario Edition of the Atlas fills that gap and provides the foundation for more equitable and effective palliative care delivery.

“For the first time, we have a comprehensive and actionable overview of palliative care in Ontario. This Atlas helps us see what’s working, reveals the inequities and gaps that too many patients and families experience, and provides us with the knowledge to change that. If we want to build a health system that truly delivers compassion, dignity, and quality of life at every stage of care, then palliative care must be part of the foundation. With this Atlas, we now have the tools to make that vision a reality for everyone in Ontario.”

Jeffrey Moat – Pallium CEO
Ontario Atlas of Palliative Care, linked to https://www.pallium.ca/ontarioatlas/

Linked Here – Give it a read!

It may not be a topic that’s enjoyable to think about, but the reality of the matter is that Canada is an aging country, and we must act now to put systems in place to preserve the quality of human life and dignity.

2025 ECCE App Challenge

I also participated in my first ever app challenge!

All of this year’s entries can be viewed on the 2025 ECCE App Challenge Home page. Team GeoGINI consisted of Matthew Kastanis, Nolyn Lakhanpal, and myself, and it was the first app challenge for each of us. It was definitely a steep learning curve getting this all together in time (particularly while working full time), but we ended up with a product we were all proud of. The hardest part of the whole process ended up being deciding what we actually wanted to do, and then finding the data!

Affordability is a critical topic in today’s economic climate. When we think of affordability, many of us would think of housing. Today the housing market is reaching unprecedented rates, because of this, people often look for solutions. This process can lead to gentrification, a process that by definition is taking away from affordable housing that is lacking in the current housing options. This causes displacement of low-income and vulnerable populations. Our mission is to inform people about gentrification and its influence on affordable housing, while providing an index through our app, HomeInsight, communicating dissemination areas in the GTA at greater risk of gentrification. Communicating a quantification of gentrification has ethical risks, to mitigate this, our goal is to provide actionables for those accessing our app, providing information about how to communicate with local elected officials to, to policy instruments for mitigating displacement and advocating for affordable housing discussed in the app.

Matthew Kastanis – GeoGINI

All in all, it was quite an enjoyable experience, and now that I understand things a little bit better, I think I will have a strong entry for next year!

DFO, GIS in a Professional Capacity, and the 2025 ESRI User Conference

My 8-month co-op with DFO (the Department of Fisheries and Oceans) was kind of hectic at times, but equally, quite intriguing and educational.

Part of my duties involved ongoing incidental support work to assist departmental colleagues, but the vast majority of my time, I was working on major projects. I made a substantial collection of models to facilitate database workflows (acting to interface a departmental database with our GIS databases), custom python scripts as part of those models, and pluripotent custom geoprocessing tools to support our unique needs. I also created two application stacks, worked to deploy those application stacks federally, and had my first exposure to VertiGIS (which seems like a most promising platform). Lastly, I worked with AWS, Ubuntu, and R-Shiny applications as part of those aforementioned application stacks. There were also some very useful tricks and tips I picked up, like how to use ArcGIS Server Manager, or that you can replace all instances of a layer’s ID in the JSON for a Dashboard in AGO Assistant to change what data source is being used without having to reconfigure any dashboard elements.

This co-op was representative of a normal, everyday, career job in GIS. The work was, well. Real. Normal. Representative of what I could expect to do everyday in a career. And I’ve been given certainty that I would enjoy this as a career, because all this GIS stuff, and the programming in particular, is problem solving. Each day, I get to approach new problems and find ways to solve them: I get to be creative and find my own approach to solve the task at hand. It’s intellectually stimulating, and means that I don’t find the work boring.

The 2025 ESRI User Conference

This was the first User Conference I’ve been to – and I have to say – it was pretty cool. In particular, I’m rather excited about some of the announcements/updates about the ArcGIS Online (June 2025), Enterprise 11.5, and Pro 3.5. Frankly, the sheer amount new or updated content precludes talking about all of the content, but just to highlight a few…

ArcGIS Pro – the updates to the Calculate Field tool: It’s called “indispensable” for a reason. With how frequently the tool is used, any extensions to its functionality are certainly appreciated most highly! Additionally, I think I might end up making use of the new Panel Sets, because different workflows often involve very different sets of tools, and having a selection of them easily at hand seems like quite the handy added convenience.

ArcGIS Enterprise & ArcGIS Online – Data Pipelines in AGO and Data Pipelines beta in Enterprise: I’ve wished for a significant upgrade in the ability to transform, manipulate, and analyze data in AGO/Enterprise since I was introduced to the platforms, so I’m very happy to see this. If Data Pipelines ends up developing to the level of VetriGIS workflows… well that would be a dream come true!

What’s Next?

As I mentioned earlier, the hope is to publish the Alberta Atlas of Palliative Care by the end of the year, and in the future, expand the scope of our work to cover the rest of the provinces and territories. On the school side of things, I’ll be getting my claws into remote sensing for the first time – I’m excited to be rounding out my GIS skills with that experience. Additionally, I’ll be continuing to work for DFO in a continuing capacity.

The Canadian Atlas of Palliative was developed in partnership with the McMaster University Division of Palliative Care. Pallium Canada is a registered Canadian charitable organization, registration number 801479825 RR 0001.