Sources
Where every entry came from
The List holds 5,682 entries, compiled 24 JUL 2026. Every one of them names the public source it came from and carries the date it was last seen there. This page is the full account of those sources: 2,280 distinct websites, grouped by the kind of body that publishes them, with the number of entries each group accounts for.
What the register is set from
Businesses' own websites
The business said it itself, on a website it owns. This is the long tail of the register, and it is the source I trust most.
Chambers of commerce and tourism bodies
Member directories from the chambers in Cranbrook, Trail, Fernie, Sparwood, Elkford, Kaslo, Castlegar, and the Columbia Valley, plus the tourism and regional bodies: Nelson Kootenay Lake, Tourism Fernie, Tourism Rossland, Destination Castlegar, Discover Nelson, Nakusp and Area, South Country, the Slocan Valley, and Central Kootenay Food.
Municipal business licence rolls
The towns publish who holds a business licence. Cranbrook, Castlegar, Kimberley, Elkford, Sparwood, and Montrose each put a roll or a directory out in public. Many entries were first traced through those rolls, and then rebuilt around better sources: the business's own site where one exists, a directory a reader would actually recognize where one does not.
OpenStreetMap
The open map of the world, kept by volunteers. The licence and the credit it requires are set out below.
Provincial regulators and registries
Technical Safety BC's licensed contractor search, BC Housing's registry of licensed residential builders, the BC Data Catalogue, the province's list of liquor licensed establishments, and the public registers kept by BC's health colleges and professional bodies: accountants, dentists, veterinarians, notaries, and financial services.
Interior Health's food premises register
Restaurants, cafes, bakeries, and every other food premises Interior Health lists in its public inspection portal.
Other public listings
Better Business Bureau profiles, the regional press and business magazines, business pages the owner published on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn, and a handful of one-offs, like the Co-op's public list of the farms it buys from.
The counts are entries, not links, and they add up to more than 5,682 on purpose: 2,259entries turn up in more than one kind of source, and each is counted in every group it belongs to. The row for businesses' own websites covers 2,210 separate domains, which is why one line here is hundreds of different links in the record.
OpenStreetMap and the Open Database Licence
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence (ODbL).
706 entries on the List draw on OpenStreetMap, and for 298 of them it is the only source I have. OpenStreetMap is built by volunteers who map their own towns, and the licence they publish it under asks for credit and for openness in return. The credit is stated here and in the colophon at the foot of every page.
The openness is honoured too. Every entry keeps its sources, so the rows that draw on OpenStreetMap are a separable database of their own, and that database is published under the same licence: download the OSM-derived entries (ODbL, regenerated with every compile). What the volunteers gave the List, the List gives back.
BC open data and the Open Government Licence
Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – British Columbia.
This covers the entries drawn from the BC Data Catalogue and the province's published datasets, such as the list of liquor licensed establishments.
What all of it has in common
Every source above is public. It is either a record a public body publishes, like a licence roll, a registry, or an inspection portal, or a directory a chamber or tourism body publishes for its members, or an open map anyone can download, or something a business published about itself on its own website. Nothing on the List came from Google, Google Maps, or any platform whose terms forbid it. I do not buy data, and I have never paid for a list.
Each entry keeps the link to the source it came from, and the date it was last seen there is printed on the listing. If a source is wrong about you, the List will be wrong about you until somebody says so, which is what the corrections page is for.
What the List does with it
- The register is free to read and free to be in. Nobody pays to be listed.
- There is no advertising on the site, and no paid placement. Nothing is sorted or featured by who paid, because nobody pays.
- I do not sell the data. Not the register, not the entries, not the emails of anyone who writes to me.
- There is no mailing list, so being on the List does not sign you up for anything.
If you want out, or want it fixed
Any business can ask to have its entry corrected or removed, for any reason or for none, and it gets dealt with promptly. You do not have to explain yourself and there is no form to argue with. Write to hello@kootenaylist.ca, or read the page below first.