Maps, like written documents, paintings and photographs, are human interpretations, rather than exact reproductions, of the world. Any map, being smaller than the world or a part of the world, necessarily has some things left out -- like trees or a tree fort or even a town. Maps sometimes also often include things we cannot see - like national or provincial boundaries that may not be marked by 'real objects' such as a fence or a wall. Because a mapmaker makes choices about what to include and what to leave out in their representations of the world, we can make inferences from maps about the kinds of things that were important to those who created, and those who used the map. Knowing about who created any particular map, why, and for whom, can give us a lot of information about how people saw the world, even a small part of the world.
Some of the maps reproduced on this site were handmade by surveyors who had actually visited Algonquin Park to measure out the dimensions of sections of land people asked to lease from the Province of Ontario. Once the dimensions of these leases were carefully recorded, the Province and the lessee – the person who wanted to rent the land – would sign a contract that described the dimensions of the land concerned, and the terms of the lease, such as its duration, the rent to be paid, and any conditions on regarding what the lessee could do on the property.