When Don Boyes was driving up north last week, heading to a cottage where he had never been before, he brought along his iPhone.

Armed with an app that serves as a GPS device, he could manoeuvre all the right turns along the roads.

Suddenly at one point, where cellphone service became spotty, he lost his connection, and his directions. But Boyes, a senior lecturer in the geography department at the University of Toronto, wasn’t worried, because his car’s glove compartment is stuffed with paper maps that could guide him to his destination.

About 15 minutes later, he got his phone connection back, but Boyes says this incident illustrates why he thinks paper maps won’t disappear.

“I hope people will still have them around. I don’t think we’re at a point where we can rely 100 per cent on technology,” said Boyes, who specializes in Geographic Information Systems, where databases are attached to a map.

He points to horror stories of individuals who blindly followed the voice on their GPS, telling them to drive toward a lake or the wrong way on a highway, saying millions of data points have to be recorded, so there can be mistakes.

“It is interesting how psychologically, people want to depend on these things and want to believe that they are always right,” Boyes said, adding sometimes people ignore their common sense because that’s what the GPS says.

Even though more people will be using electronic maps and new technology, Boyes believes a digital divide remains in Canada, with smartphone use at about 33 per cent.

“It’s going to change as prices come down, and people see the value of it,” he said. “But I hope if people are driving in the country or some place where they haven’t been before, will keep that paper map handy.”

The summer is peak travel season and the south central Ontario offices of the Canadian Automobile Association has seen an increase in requests for maps, especially for domestic travel, despite online mapping programs and GPS.

Requests for the classic TripTik — the precursor to Google maps, where members can request individualized routes through Canada and the U.S. — has fallen almost in half in the last decade.

This year, the CAA in this region expects to issue about 80,000 classic TripTiks, complete with arrows to highlight the route, down from about 150,000 a decade earlier, said Anna Halkidis, manager of community relations and auto travel.

“There’s far more detail. You can see where there is construction, gas and lodging, or areas of interest,” she said. “It’s not a typical Google map or MapQuest map.”

Halkidis says many members stick with the classic flip maps for the detail it offers, but an electronic version is now available online.

Peter Heiler, CEO of Map Art Publishing Corporation, an Oshawa-based map company, said demand for paper maps has fallen by at least half, with the peak being in 2005.

“It’s a tough business,” Heiler said. “The problem is maps have to be updated, whether you sell one or 10.

“But people still like paper maps. They are friendly for some people. You can open them up and have an overview,” he said. “I think there will continue to be a market for it.”

“If you’re listening to your navigation system, you really don’t know where you are, or don’t know where the lake is in relationship to where you are.”

Heiler estimates that the consumer map business — from maps, books and atlases — is worth about $30 million today in Canada, and seems to have stabilized after a dramatic drop in sales.

Police departments, delivery companies and taxi drivers often have both electronic navigation systems and paper maps in their cars and trucks, he said.

Heiler believes paper maps are sometimes more attractive because they are often updated annually, compared with online or GPS maps that sometimes lag behind, due to the cost of mapping all the data navigation points.

Despite the boom in mapping apps and new technology, paper maps will continue to serve a purpose, he said.

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“If you’re going to visit a new city, and you’ve looked at a map, and you know where the water is, where the train station is, you have a nice overview,” Heiler said.

“On a GPS, turn right, go left, do this, do that, you don’t really know where you are.”

Questions about map reading

Are we producing a generation of people who can’t read a map?

University of Toronto’s Don Boyes credits the advent of Google maps for making people comfortable with maps, in the context of where you are and where you need to go, getting from Point A to Point B.

But if Boyes put someone in the middle of nowhere with a paper map and compass, he isn’t sure they would be able to find their way out, by using only landmarks and a compass.

Can map reading have an impact on aging?

Map Art’s Peter Heiler believes map reading does force the brain to work in different ways from a GPS navigational tool.

“It does do a different mind exercise, to study a map and try to retain the trip in your memory, and maybe the places you might want to stop off in the trip,” Heiler said.

McGill University researchers last year presented studies that showed the way we navigate the world today may affect how well our brains function as we age.

When people are trying to find their way, there are two different strategies. One is a spatial navigation strategy where people build cognitive maps using things like landmarks as visual cues. The other is a stimulus-response strategy, going left or right, as the most efficient way to get from point A to point B. If you use a GPS, that stimulus-response may seem familiar.

In the McGill study, those who navigated spatially had increased activity in the hippocampus, an area of the brain believed to be involved in memory and navigation and play a role in finding shortcuts or new routes.

The study found health young adults tended to use a spatial approach when navigating a virtual maze, while older adults used a response strategy.

That shift may lead to atrophy of the hippocampus, a risk factor for cognitive problems in normal aging and in Alzheimer’s disease.

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