Fonds 1209 - William George Dean fonds

Correspondence, notes, memoranda, reports, manuscripts, articles, brochures, reviews, photoprints and maps documenting the production of the Economic Atlas of Ontario which appeared in 1969. The project was directed by Professor William Dean of the Department of Geography.

The production of the Economic Atlas of Ontario was undertaken by the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto by a group of staff and graduate students headed by Professor William Dean. The principal financial sponsors were the Ontario Department of Economics and Development and the University of Toronto through the "Varsity Fund".

Its purpose was to provide new insights into the complexity of economic activities in Ontario and their relationship to the physical and behavioural environments. When the Atlas appeared in 1969, it was immediately recognized as a superlative example of its genre, both for the information it provided and for its design. In 1970 it won the world's highest international design award, the gold medal at the International Book Fair in Leipzig. In 1973 it received the Wallace W. Atwood Prize for "the work which is of greatest significance and which has made the greatest contribution to the field of geography in the continent".