Leashless

Leashless lists every public off-leash dog area we can find in BC, Alberta and Ontario. Each one is checked against the city's, regional district's or park board's own pages, and links to the page it came from.

Where the data comes from

Every listing has been checked against the municipality's, regional district's or park board's own pages, and each park page links the page we checked and the date. Where a city publishes its own off-leash data (in Metro Vancouver: Vancouver, Surrey, Delta, Burnaby, Coquitlam, New Westminster, Port Moody, Maple Ridge and the District of North Vancouver; elsewhere: the Central Okanagan, Kamloops, Penticton, Revelstoke, Cranbrook and Summerland), that data is the starting point. Everywhere else we start from the city's own list of off-leash areas. OpenStreetMap only helps find candidates and fill gaps such as a park outline, and the park's page says when it has. A park the city's own pages don't confirm is marked Not confirmed, and one that's shut for now is marked Temporarily closed. Off-leash areas inside the same park are grouped into one listing, the way the cities group them.

Patios, vets and cat cafés

Dog-friendly patios and breweries are listed only when the venue itself or the city says dogs are welcome.Vets and animal hospitals start from OpenStreetMap; what each clinic treats and offers comes from the clinic's own website, linked from its listing with the date we checked. If a clinic doesn't say, we leave it blank. Cat cafés are checked by hand, one by one. None of this is veterinary advice: always phone a clinic before you go.

What "not recorded" means

It means the source doesn't say. It does not mean the park lacks that feature. Fencing is the big one: it's recorded for 825 of 1628 parks. Vancouver's dataset, for example, records shade, water and washrooms for every park but leaves fencing blank.

We never guess. A park is only marked fenced when a source says so, and that source is named on its page.

Corrections

Every park page has a "Suggest an update" button: tell us whether it's fenced, muddy, has a small-dog pen, or anything else you saw. Each suggestion is checked by a person before it changes the page, and the park's page says where its information came from. (The form is being set up and will appear on park pages shortly.)

Posted signs at the park always win over anything here, and the city's own parks page is the best place to check hours and seasonal rules.

Photos and film

Every image and video here is free or openly licensed. The film on the home page comes fromMixkit under its Free License and Pexelsunder the Pexels License; both allow commercial use. Park photos come from Wikimedia Commons and Flickrunder Creative Commons licences or in the public domain, and each one is credited with its photographer and licence where it appears.

We only use a photo when its title names the park, so a nearby building never stands in for the park itself. We avoid images where people's faces are visible. Where no suitable photo exists, a park is shown by its actual off-leash outline instead.

Licences

City and regional data is used under each government's Open Government Licence, which requires the credit lines below. Leashless is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of these governments.

Park data from OpenStreetMap is © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under theOpen Database Licence. Map tiles by OpenFreeMap, © OpenMapTiles, data from OpenStreetMap. Clinic details come from each clinic's own website, and venue dog policies from each venue's own website or its city.