Sources, labels and checks behind every listing
How a provider is added
Everything starts with the provider’s own website, where we note what it offers children: age range, weekly schedule, each fee with its period, language of instruction, trial classes, and whether a parent is expected to stay.
Its Google Maps entry can add the address, the map point and opening hours. Where a place has no site of its own, its page is built only from that listing and gives the address and any hours. Membership of a sports club in a city, provincial or national sport body can come from that body’s published member list.
For every fact we keep the web address, the day it was read and a brief extract of the page. We do not take facts from other directories, the press, booking sites, social networks or customer reviews.
The three source labels
Three labels tell you where a fact was found: “published by the place” for the provider’s own website, “Google listing” for its Google Maps entry, and “federation list” for the member list of a sport body or a league.
Next to every fact, the provider’s page prints its label and the day it was read: who said it, and how recently.
When a fact is missing
Where our sources are silent on something, the provider’s page reads “not published” and the table cell holds a dash. It says nothing about what the provider really offers, only about those pages.
We leave a gap as a gap. Grades stay grades rather than becoming ages, and a fee stays tied to the period its provider names. Our only arithmetic is the ≈ fee per class: a package, term or season fee split over the number of classes it pays for.
Class times versus opening hours
Times sit in two separate columns. “Class times” is when a class, an after-school program or a camp day actually runs, in the provider’s words; “Hours” tells you when the doors are open, and frequently comes from Google.
A leisure centre may have its doors open all afternoon with nothing running for a child of your age. Such a row, with door hours and no class times, is moved under the line beneath a heading saying why.
For the after-school pages the window is weekdays 3:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., from the last bell to supper. A class makes the list when any of its groups begins inside it; care makes it when its hours, late pickup counted, cover the whole window.
What we do not assess
- No provider, coach, instructor or program is rated, scored or ranked.
- Nobody from the directory visits providers; we go only by what they publish.
- We make no judgment on the quality of teaching, coaching or supervision.
- Whether a class still has openings is not something we can see; ask the provider.
- We do not check licensing under Alberta’s Early Learning and Child Care Act, police information checks, insurance or any other permit.
- A fee is shown as the provider published it, with its period and reading date; nobody confirms it with the provider.
Corrections from providers
If you run a listed provider and something is wrong, missing or outdated, send it through the corrections form with a link to the page that shows the correct fact.
When your own pages confirm the change, it goes into the next update and is logged in the list history. If a provider shuts down, its page stays online with a closed notice and its rows come out of every table.
To have a provider taken off, choose “Remove a provider from the list” on the corrections form and include a contact showing that you run it. We then remove the page, the table rows and the data-file records for that provider, within a month of the request.
Dates and updates
No provider goes more than 6 months between readings of its sources. When a fee belongs to a period that is over, the provider’s page keeps it with that period, while it no longer counts in the filters or in the summary line.
How the site pays for itself
Providers are listed for free, and no payment changes what a row says or where it sits.
One clearly labelled link to Zartrace, a service tied to this directory, can appear on a provider’s page. Presses of contact buttons are tallied as totals, never with personal information.
Open data
The whole directory is open data, as JSON with a record for each provider or as CSV with a row for each program. Both files keep the sources, labels and dates, and state their licence.
Communities, distances and the map
Calgary has more than two hundred residential communities, too many for a page each, so an area here is a group of neighbouring communities under the names parents use: Kensington and Hillhurst, Marda Loop and Altadore, Tuscany and Royal Oak, Auburn Bay and Mahogany. Names in brackets are communities the short name leaves out, and no name carries a quadrant. A location just outside the city limits in Rocky View County is filed under the county.
Distance runs in a straight line from the point you choose to the provider’s nearest location, rounded to half a kilometre. Only the location button asks where you are, and the answer stays in your browser.
A map point set from a street address is only approximate. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Community boundaries: The City of Calgary, City of Calgary Open Data. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – City of Calgary.