This talk will attempt to summarise the first 50 years of the CCA since its co-founding by an academic cartographer / geographer and a practicing surveyor / cartographer. From 1975 on, each decade can be described from mid-decade in the focus of the Association, its membership, and contemporary developments in the practice and technology of Cartography and GIS in Canada. These periods range from photo-mechanical map production, early digital mapping/GIS and the growth of the CCA, its rapid expansion during the development and maturing of GIS through to the present environment of data and application rich mapping. Through these times, the CCA has experienced fluctuating membership numbers, at times enduring the increasing dominance of GIS at an apparent cost to traditional cartography, but maintaining a committed membership and long term goals linked to the broad range and confluence of the digital mapping technologies.