About - 1000 Towns of Canada
About 1000 Towns of Canada
Helping small towns get found
984 communities across every province and territory — one platform connecting travellers with the places that don’t make the guidebooks, but should.
Tofino BC
Parry Sound ON
Dawson City YT
Lunenburg NS
Canmore AB
Churchill MB
Revelstoke BC
Percé QC
Iqaluit NU
Watrous SK
Gimli MB
Cavendish PE
Sackville NB
Yellowknife NT
Twillingate NL
Mahone Bay NS
Elora ON
Cobourg ON
Baie-Saint-Paul QC
Fernie BC
984
997
towns listed
206K
Annual Visitors
10+3
Provinces & Territories
8,600+
Pages of Content
2016
Established
Our Story
One mission, hundreds of hands
In 2016, what started as a course project at Humber College made something clear: hundreds of Canadian small towns were essentially invisible online. A traveller looking for a weekend escape beyond the usual destinations had nowhere to turn. Tourist boards covered their regions, but individual communities — the kind with one main street, a local diner, and a story nobody had told yet — rarely had a voice that reached beyond their own residents.
Conversations with friends who shared a love of local travel turned that course project into something real. 1000 Towns of Canada started as a quiet attempt to change that. One town at a time, one page at a time. What began as a solo project gradually became something much larger.
Students and professors from over 30 universities across the country researched and wrote about communities they cared about. Local residents shared the places only locals know. Municipal and community representatives opened doors and pointed us in the right direction. Together, we built town pages and travel guides for hundreds of communities, and began telling the stories of the notable people who came from them — the Olympic champions, artists, and trailblazers that small-town Canada quietly produced. It turns out there were a lot of people who wanted these stories told.
A decade later, the platform features nearly 1,000 towns in every province and territory, with over 8,500 pages of content. More than 206,000 travellers visit each year — 85% of them Canadian — looking for their next small-town discovery.
The content belongs to the communities. Our job is simply to make sure travellers find your town, want to visit, and tell their friends.
How we got here
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 2016 | Started as a course project at Humber College’s Digital Media postgraduate program. Conversations with friends who shared a love of local travel turned it into something real — and the first blog posts went live. |
| 2017 | First town pages launched. The People of Small Towns project started. |
| 2018 | 50 towns reached across 8 provinces. |
| 2020 | Google Ad Grant approved — $10,000/month in search advertising, putting small-town Canada in front of travellers actively looking for their next destination. |
| 2021 | First university partnerships through Riipen, bringing student researchers and writers into the project from across the country. |
| 2022 | 500+ towns covered, with every province and territory represented. |
| 2024 | Trip AI and interactive planning tools launched, making it easier than ever for travellers to discover and plan small-town adventures. |
| 2025 | 132,000 visitors a year, with 30+ university collaborations coast to coast. |
| 2026 | 206,000 visitors a year. |
The founder
Vlad Umnov
Journalist, digital media strategist, small-town advocate
Vlad brings over 20 years of experience in journalism and digital media to 1000 Towns of Canada. He spent years working on national-scale content and audience development — then moved to Canada, enrolled at Humber College, and turned a course project into something nobody expected.
He started the project because he believed no town should be invisible online. Nine years later, with the help of hundreds of contributors from across the country, that idea has grown into Canada’s coast-to-coast small-town tourism platform.
Vlad leads the platform’s content strategy, Google search advertising campaigns, and community partnerships. The day-to-day work of building town pages, writing travel guides, and running research projects is carried out by university teams through Riipen, with web development handled by a dedicated technical team.
The result is a focused, efficient operation — nearly 1,000 towns, 8,500 pages, and $10,000 a month in managed Google Ads — built without the overhead of a large agency.
Academic collaboration
Built with 30+ Canadian universities and colleges
More than 200 students and professors from universities and colleges across Canada have contributed to 1000 Towns — researching communities, writing town profiles, building travel guides, and creating case studies. Many collaborate through the Riipen platform, where they work on real projects as part of their coursework or paid placements.
30+ universities and colleges across 8 provinces — and counting
Want to put your town on the map?
We partner with municipalities and tourism organizations to help small communities get found by travellers.
1000 Towns of Canada is built by hundreds of contributors from across the country — students, residents, and community representatives who believe small towns deserve to be found.