How the table is made and where each fact comes from
Where each fact comes from
We read a place’s own website and write down what it offers children: ages, weekly times, fees with their period, languages of teaching, trial classes and whether a parent has to stay.
The address, the point on the map and the opening hours may also come from the place’s Google Maps listing, and membership in a sports body from the club list that body publishes. A place without a website of its own may be listed from its Google listing alone when that listing shows it is meant for children; its page then holds only the address and opening hours.
Every fact is stored with the address of the page it came from, the date it was read and a short quote in that page’s own words. Other directories, news articles, registration platforms, social media and reviews are never used as sources.
Source marks
Three marks show who said what. Published by the place: its own website. Google listing: its Google Maps entry. Sports body list: the club list of a provincial or national association.
Every fact on a place’s page carries one of these marks and a date, so you can see where it comes from and how recent it is.
Missing facts
If the pages we read do not mention a fact, the place’s page says not published and the table shows a dash. That describes those pages and nothing more.
We fill in nothing. A grade, such as grade three, is never turned into an age. A fee keeps the period the place attaches to it; the only arithmetic we do is the per-class fee marked ≈, which divides the price of a package or a full program by its number of classes.
Dates, class times and opening hours
Two columns deal with time. Days and times: when a class meets, an after-school program runs or a camp day takes place, as the place publishes it, with a camp’s dates. Hours: when the building or office is open, often taken from its Google listing.
A place can be open with nothing running for a given age at that hour. Rows that only have opening hours are moved below the line, beneath a heading that gives the reason.
Monday to Friday, the after-school pages consider the hours between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.. Ottawa bells are spread out because the buses serve several schools in turn: early schools let out around half past two, late ones near half past three, so the window starts when most children are free and ends when many parents come for them. A class is included if any of its groups begins in that span; an after-school program is included only if its hours span all of it.
What we leave alone
- No place, instructor or coach is rated or ranked.
- We never inspect places in person; what you read comes from published sources.
- We have no view on the quality of any class, team or program.
- We cannot tell you whether spaces are left; ask the place.
- We do not check licences, insurance or police records.
- Fees are shown as published, with their period and date, and the place has not confirmed them to us.
Corrections from the places listed
If you run a place on the list and a fact is wrong, partial or out of date, send the right version through the form along with a link to the page that shows it.
Once the place’s own pages confirm it, the fix appears with the next update and gets an entry in the recent changes. When a place shuts down, its page stays up with a closed notice, and it drops out of all lists.
You can also ask us to take down a place you run: pick “Remove a place” in the form and leave a way for us to confirm that it is yours. Within a month the place is gone from the table, the site and the data files.
Dates and updates
We read a place’s sources again within 6 months of the last reading. Fees for a period that is over remain on the place’s page, tagged with that period, but the filters and the summary line ignore them.
How the site pays for itself
Being listed is free, and money never changes a row or where it sits in the table.
A place’s page may show a link to Zartrace, a service connected to this directory and marked as such. Clicks on contact buttons are counted in totals only, without any personal details.
Open data
Download everything as JSON, with a record for each place, or as CSV, with a row for each program. Sources, marks, dates and the licence travel with both files.
Neighbourhoods, distance and the map
A neighbourhood here is a group of the Ottawa Neighbourhood Study’s neighbourhoods under the name families use: Centretown, the Glebe, Westboro or Vanier in the old city, then Alta Vista, Nepean and Gloucester, and further out Kanata, Stittsville, Barrhaven, Riverside South and Orléans, each of the larger suburbs in a few parts. Gatineau, across the river in Quebec, is not searched, because its school calendar, its taxes and its city programs differ from Ontario’s; a place found there is filed under Hull, Aylmer or Gatineau, and its dates and fees follow Quebec’s rules, not the ones these pages describe. Chelsea, Manotick, Greely, Navan and Carlsbad Springs are handled the same way.
Distance is a straight line from the spot you choose to the nearest location, rounded to the nearest half kilometre. We ask where you are only if you press that button, and the answer stays on your device.
Points worked out from a street address are close, not exact. Streets and boundaries: © OpenStreetMap contributors. Neighbourhood outlines: the Ottawa Neighbourhood Study, City of Ottawa open data, under the Open Government Licence – City of Ottawa.