From fragile system to scalable platform

Historic Places Days is a national initiative led by the National Trust for Canada. It connects people with historic sites and cultural experiences across the country, encouraging discovery, participation, and a deeper appreciation for Canada’s heritage.

But the platform behind it was not built to support that vision.
The existing website relied on a collection of third-party plugins assembled over time. While it functioned, it was fragile, difficult to maintain, and increasingly unreliable as new features and content were added.

For a campaign that depends on:

• Public participation across the country
• Contributions from organizations and individuals
• Seasonal spikes in traffic and engagement

This created real risk.

Before anything new could be built, stability had to be restored.

National Trust Canada needed more than a redesign. They needed a platform they could depend on and grow with.

Success meant:

• Stabilizing the existing system to address immediate issues
• Rebuilding the platform from the ground up with a long-term perspective
• Creating a flexible structure to support places, events, and user contributions
• Ensuring reliability during peak campaign periods
• Establishing a foundation that could evolve year after year

When funding was secured through Parks Canada, the opportunity became clear. Move from patchwork fixes to a purpose-built solution.

Stabilizing before rebuilding

We began by stepping in as a support partner, identifying and resolving critical issues within the existing platform.

This allowed National Trust Canada to continue operating while we planned a more sustainable path forward.

Rebuilding with intention

With a clear understanding of the platform’s challenges and goals, we designed and developed a custom solution from the ground up. The focus was to create a platform that could support a nationwide, participatory initiative in a stable and scalable way.

At its core, the platform needed to make discovery simple for both visitors and contributors.

We introduced a structured system that allows historic places and events to be added, managed, and explored in a consistent and intuitive way. Each listing supports rich content such as descriptions, image galleries, amenities, videos, and connections to nearby places. This helps users understand not just what to visit, but why it matters.

To support exploration at scale, we built:

• A dynamic map interface with distinct location types
• Proximity search based on a user’s location
• Filtering tools to help users find experiences that match their interests

Designing for engagement and return visits

Beyond discovery, the platform needed to encourage deeper engagement.

We introduced features like VisitLists, allowing users to save, organize, and share collections of places they want to explore. This shifts the experience from passive browsing to active planning, while also making it easy to involve others.

By turning individual interest into something shareable, the platform creates more reasons for users to return and helps extend the reach of the initiative organically.

Built for accessibility, inclusivity, and scale

Given the national scope of the initiative, the platform was built to be fully bilingual in English and French, ensuring accessibility for users across Canada.

The experience was also designed to be fully responsive and mobile-friendly. Many users engage with Historic Places Days while actively visiting locations, so it was important that the platform works just as well on the go as it does at home.

Every component, from content structure to search and navigation, was designed to support long-term growth, increasing participation, and evolving campaign needs.

Evolving through ongoing partnership

Since launch, the platform has continued to evolve.

Each year, we work alongside National Trust Canada to:

• Introduce new features and improvements
• Enhance usability and performance
• Adapt to changing campaign needs
• Support ongoing content and technical updates

What began as a rebuild has become a long-term partnership focused on continuous improvement.

Today, Historic Places Days runs on a platform designed to support its growth.

The system is:

• More stable and reliable during peak usage
• Easier for the National Trust team to manage and update
• Better equipped to support participation from across the country
• Continuously improving year after year

What was once a fragile system is now a dependable foundation. One that allows the National Trust to focus on their mission, not their technology.