About
ottrec.ca is an unofficial website created by Patrick Gaskin that makes it easier to find City of Ottawa drop-in recreation activities and facilities.
Articles
- ottrecql — the advanced search query language reference.
- data quality — how the schedule data is scraped, parsed, and verified
- regions & sectors — how the region/sector labels for facilities are determined
Feedback
You can send a message below, or email info@ottrec.ca.Advanced Search
The schedules page has an advanced search that filters drop-in times with a small query language, ottrecql, by activity, facility, weekday, time, date, and location. The query language reference documents the syntax with examples.
Starred Facilities
Facilities starred on the map and schedules pages are stored locally in this browser.
Dataset
The dataset powering this website is available at data.ottrec.ca and updated daily. There's also an API for getting historical versions.
Data is available as simplified CSV/JSON, or raw Protobuf/Textpb/JSON. A detailed schema is included for both formats.
Terms
This site is provided as-is, without warranty of any kind. Although I have tried my best to ensure the data is complete, there may occasionally be missing errors or outdated information.
Nevertheless, this site will be more accurate than pretty much other one since I parse the data in a much more reliable way and have many more verification passes on the data. Most importantly, unrecognized data will result in an error being shown rather than silently leaving out times or schedules.
If you need to confirm information, check the links to the official schedule page (and keep in mind the even these have been outdated in the past, so call the facility if you really want to know for sure).
Data Sources
All schedule information is automatically collected from the individual facility pages on ottawa.ca every evening. The date of the data in use is shown at the top of every page, and each facility links back to its source page.
Dates, times, and activity names are parsed and normalized automatically, and categories are matched by activity name, so entries can occasionally be missing, miscategorized, or out of date. When something on a source page fails to parse, an error is displayed on the facility's schedules.
For information about the region labels, see here.
Attribution
Compiled data © Patrick Gaskin. https://github.com/ottrec/scraper
Facility information and schedules © City of Ottawa. https://ottawa.ca/en/recreation-and-parks/facilities/place-listing
Address data © Patrick Gaskin.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
Map tiles © CARTO
Website © Patrick Gaskin