Robert Maher
Bob Maher obtained his Ph.D in Geography from the University of Western Ontario. He subsequently went to teach at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Department of Geography – Quantitative Methods, Computer Mapping and Biogeography. In 1980, he joined the faculty at the Nova Scotia Land Survey Institute and was instrumental in its transformation into the College of Geographic Sciences (COGS). Between 1988 – 1999, he was a GIS consultant in Indonesia, and worked for ESRI in the United States, and across Canada with universities and government agencies. He returned to COGS in 2000 taking up the position of Senior Research Scientist in the Applied Geomatics Research Group (AGRG). He retired from AGRG in 2011.
Articles by Robert Maher
Island Geography: Haida Gwaii
Canada, with its endless coastline, has thousands of islands. Besides the physical islands with tangible, defined boundaries, there are also…
Geography Education: First Thoughts from Haida Gwaii
One of the joys of leaving your residence on one coast (Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia) and moving to a new…
Opinion: Canada Doesn’t Have Too Many GIS Programs
Are there too many GIS post-diploma programs and University GIS certifications in Canada? In the late 1980s, the prevailing notion…
Geography Education: Changing Scale and Viewpoint
In England, as a teenager, we used to conduct ‘table top’ car rallies, using the 1 inch to 1 mile…
Geography Education: The Map is Not the App
David Lepage, in his blog for Axiom News, expresses concern for “the map is not the territory” in a community…
Geography Education: Travels to England and Nunavut
Geography education is about understanding our relationship to the world around us. We need to seek out the best examples…
The Changing Face of Geography: Learning Opportunitites
This article is a companion piece to the September 23rd article “The Changing Face of Geomatics: Learning Opportunities,” which focused…
The Changing Face of Geomatics – Learning Opportunities
In Nova Scotia in 2000, we formed the Applied Geomatics Research Group (AGRG) at the Nova Scotia Community College. The…
Using Geomatics to Describe our Profession and Industry in Canada
Over forty years, the writer has witnessed a series of transitions and changes in terminology related to changes in the…
The Myth of COGS
When Jonathan Murphy mentioned to me ‘the myth of COGS’ as a topic of conversation in Ottawa I agreed to…
The Story of COGS
Editors note: Dr Maher is writing “The Story of COGS,” and through articles in the GoGeomatics Canada magazine, like the…
Thinking about GIS or Whatever Happened to the Geography Teacher
(This title borrows from Tomlinson’s book of the same name, as well as a new book by Donald Savoie ‘…
