Crown land is public land held by the province, and on much of it you may camp without paying or asking. This map shows which parcels are public so you can see what is open ground before you plan a trip. Ontario and Quebec are mapped so far. Ontario calls its share crown land and it covers roughly 87 percent of the province. Quebec calls its share the terres du domaine de l'État. The two are separate legal regimes with separate camping rules, and this page keeps them separate.
Shaded parcels are public land in the provincial records. In Ontario that means land the Crown never patented. In Quebec it means land the province records as public rather than private. Unshaded ground is something else: private property, a First Nations reserve, federal land, or a parcel the province has granted to someone.
Both provinces are drawn in the same colour on purpose. The legal words differ, but the question a paddler is asking does not, and a river does not change character at the border.
Zoom past the province level to see parcel outlines. Parcel detail is stored to zoom 10 and stretched beyond it, so when you zoom right in, the boundary you see is the last stored detail rather than a survey line. Very small parcels are left out below zoom 8, where they would be smaller than a pixel.
Crown land is not the same thing as permission to camp. A parcel can be crown land and still sit inside a provincial park or conservation reserve, or be under someone else's land use permit or lease, where different rules apply. Ontario also states that its own mapping is illustrative and should not be relied on as authoritative. Check the Crown Land Use Policy Atlas and any posted signs before you camp.
The Quebec layer carries the same warning from its own publisher. The MRNF states that the public and private limits in the dataset behind it were adapted for the ministry's needs and differ from the official record, the Registre du domaine de l'État. It is the best published parcel level tenure map for Quebec, and it is not the legal record.
Free for residents of Canada on most crown land, up to 21 days on any one site per calendar year. Non-residents need a permit north of the French and Mattawa Rivers. The Ontario crown land camping guide sets out the details, with sources.
Quebec runs a different regime, and none of the Ontario figures above carry across the river. Camping on the terres du domaine de l'État needs no authorization in most places. Your stay has to be temporary and cannot run past seven months in the same year, and your equipment has to be mobile rather than fixed to the ground. There is no residency test and no fee for ordinary backcountry camping. Several MRCs have adopted their own camping rules, so the local one governs where it exists. The province sets out the current rules on using public land legally.
A lot of this country is only reachable by water. The canoe route map carries 226 mapped routes in Ontario and the Quebec routes alongside them, with traced river geometry, rapids, portages and campsites.
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