Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Buxton Settlement · Photo: NearEMPTiness · CC BY-SA 4.0Older housing stands out in Chatham: 40% of homes predate 1961, where the typical town has 18%. The registers put 4 historic places inside its boundary, 2 of them of the highest rank. Measured against its size, 0.4 per 10,000 residents puts it ahead of 73% of Canadian towns. Counted by designation, there are a heritage railway station and a Recognized Federal Heritage Building.
You can start with Buxton Settlement and Fairfield on the Thames. Photos show 3 of the places Chatham’s registers name; the others show their record instead. 3 different photographers shared them on Wikimedia Commons.
Photos from Wikimedia Commons, each credited to its photographer with its licence; names open the place’s page. Tap a photo to step through them full screen.
On one line by date: 3 old photographs of the town and the oldest view of one of its historic places. Scroll the strip and tap a picture to open it.
1875
c. 1883
1885
1905Public domain or CC0, made before 1950, from Wikimedia Commons; old views of places can be drawings, prints or maps of their time. Each credit opens the image’s page.
On the open record, Chatham as a municipality goes back to January 1, 1998, though that may be a charter rather than a first settlement. North Buxton Train Station, the earliest station on record, opened in 1870.
Every place on the registers inside the town, by its designation.
Names show on hover, and a tap takes you to the place’s page.
What the map shows is the open record: the federal directory in full, and from provincial or municipal lists only the places Wikidata ties to an encyclopedia article.
Points from Wikidata (Parks Canada’s files carry none) and from Québec’s register, as mapped there. One place, placed by its register’s municipality, has no point and isn’t on the map.
They include Fairfield on the Thames and Buxton Settlement. National Historic Sites and Classified Federal Heritage Buildings, Canada’s highest federal recognition. Designations came from 1945 to 1999. Each one opens its own page.
They were designated between 1995 and 2007. Here that means a Recognized Federal Heritage Building and a heritage railway station. Recognized Federal Heritage Buildings, heritage railway stations and lighthouses. Each one opens its own page.
Only 18% of Chatham’s homes were built from 1981 to 2000, less than the typical town’s 23%. Few of Chatham’s homes date from 2001 to 2015: 6.3%, the norm 15%. Homes built from 1961 to 1980 make up 34% of Chatham’s, against 27% in the typical town.
2021 Census, private dwellings by period of construction (Statistics Canada); the typical town is the middle Canadian town of 2,500 or more.
58 people on the record were born here before 1914. The last born is Robertson Davies, in 1913. Of the 58, 46 were born in the decades after Confederation. It starts with Josephus Nelson Larned, born in 1836. The timeline shows the 20 best known.
Everyone born in Chatham → Born before 1914 (the page’s periods: Confederation to the First World War). Birthplaces from Wikidata, each checked against the person’s Wikipedia article.
In Chatham, 40% of homes were built before 1961, against 18% in the typical town. There are 4 historic places in all, 2 with the highest designation; Fairfield on the Thames heads them. Robertson Davies (1913), Ernest Burgess (1886) and James J. Couzens (1872) lead its people of the past. For the rest, it has 4 historic places, about typical for a town its size (the middle one has 5); and its places were designated between 1945 and 2007.
By its record, Fairfield on the Thames, from 1792 (National Historic Site).
40% predate 1961, where the typical town has 18%.
These: Fairfield on the Thames and Buxton Settlement.
Only federal designations are fully open outside Québec. One more listing in Chatham is known through Wikidata alone, so it is counted, not paged.
Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada (Parks Canada).
Sources: Parks Canada, Directory of Federal Heritage Designations · Canadian Register of Historic Places (federal extract) · Wikidata (CC0) for map points, other names and articles · Statistics Canada, 2021 Census (homes by period of construction). Under the Statistics Canada Open Licence.
Adapted from Statistics Canada (Census of Population 2021, population estimates 2025, 2021 census boundaries) under the Statistics Canada Open Licence; this does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada. Neighbourhood names in some cities © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).
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