For more than twenty years, the Canadian Register of Historic Places has served as the country’s only searchable, cross-jurisdictional database of heritage sites.
Launched in 2004 as part of the Historic Places Initiative, the Register (better known by its web address, historicplaces.ca) brings together roughly 13,500 places formally recognized for their heritage value by governments across the country. It is the only tool that allows Canadians to search for historic places across municipal, provincial, territorial and federal jurisdictions in one place, and it has become a system of record relied on for public policy, education, real estate and development, and decisions about designation, alteration and demolition.
In December 2025, Parks Canada told provincial and territorial partners that the Register would be permanently taken offline, citing the aging platform’s obsolete and unsupported technology. No replacement was announced. The news was met with what has been described as shock and disappointment among the provinces and territories that helped build the Register, and heritage organizations across the country have since raised concerns that losing a common register will fragment heritage information and make coordinated action on historic places vastly more difficult.
A report, released in April 2026, found strong public demand for a modernized, publicly accessible register and concluded that saving the Register is technically and financially achievable, but doing so will require new, sustainable funding and governance. An e-petition, signed by over 2.400 Canadians in every province and territory has called on the federal government to transfer stewardship of the Register to the National Trust for Canada and provide a one-time federal endowment to permanently stabilize and modernize the project.
As of this writing, historicplaces.ca remains online, but its long-term future depends on collaboration between jurisdictions, commitment from stakeholders and acknowledgement that the Register is too important to lose.
Location: National
Endangered Places List: 2026
Status: Endangered
