James Britton: Leading a Quiet Revolution in Mapping

“GIS is anything that helps a person or a group make sense of space,” says James Britton. For nearly five decades, James has done exactly that—quietly transforming how people navigate the world, whether through napkin sketches or provincial-scale digital maps.

His journey with maps began in childhood, tracing routes across book illustrations and family road atlases. Born in London and raised partly in Canada, James found comfort and curiosity in cartography. “My parents said I was collecting maps when I was six or seven,” he recalls. “They’d end up on my bedroom walls, helping me make sense of where we lived.”

That early passion quietly evolved into a career that shaped one of Canada’s premier GIS programs at Fleming College. What started as a few hours of teaching became a full-time commitment to education and a lifelong mission to build foundational knowledge in the field.

“I don’t grow anything,” James says, quoting a farmer. “I just set the conditions by which growth can occur.”

That’s how he saw his teaching—creating the space where students could struggle, explore, and thrive. He helped launch a program that was only expected to run for seven years. It lasted more than 30, influencing thousands of careers.

But there were doubts. As GIS technology rapidly evolved—from pen and Mylar to cloud-based platforms—James and his colleagues had to adapt curricula on the fly. “It was hard,” he admits.

“We were revising a third of the material every year. Just when you thought you had it right, something new would come along.”

The struggle, however, was part of the process. “We had arguments, sure,” he says. “But always with the passion to move technology and teaching forward.”

Today, James works at Ontario’s central mapping agency, supporting foundational data layers like roads, water, and elevation across a region larger than France and Germany combined. His team doesn’t just build maps—they empower others to understand “where” in meaningful ways. “You have to ask, ‘How is the user going to use this?’ It’s not about the software. It’s about helping people.”

Asked what’s humbled him most, James points to the people—students, colleagues, and the end users who rely on maps for decisions big and small.

“When someone says, ‘Your data helped me,’ that’s what stays with you.”

Through every shift—technological, professional, or personal—James has stayed rooted in one idea: that geography isn’t just data. It’s a lens through which we understand our place in the world.