Aerial photography offers detailed, time stamped views of landscapes and cities. This data is perfect for change detection, site planning, and historical research. Below are high quality sources for browsing and downloading modern orthophotos and historical air photos from municipal, provincial, and federal archives.
Scholars GeoPortal — Ontario’s academic geospatial repository with search/preview/download tools and thousands of Ontario air photos (including historical sets).
City of Toronto Archives – Aerial Photographs (1947–1992) — High-resolution scanned air photos documenting Toronto’s urban change, organized by year and accessible online.
Ontario GeoHub – Open Ontario Imagery (Provincial program) — Province wide orthophotography acquisitions (e.g., SWOOP/COOP/DRAPE/NWOOP), much of it now released under the Ontario Open Government License.
Ontario Imagery Web Map Service (OIWMS) — A public WMS/WMTS service for viewing Ontario aerial and satellite imagery directly in GIS or web maps. Click to get service endpoints and layer details.
Archives of Ontario – Black & White Aerial Forestry Photos (FRI Index) — Interactive index to provincial black-and-white air photo coverage (many mid-20th-century flights).
National Air Photo Library (NAPL) / NRCan EODMS — Canada’s federal archive of 6+ million aerial photographs dating back to the 1920s, searchable via EODMS.