25 years of ‘.ca’: Celebrating Canada’s own domain registry

The two letters at the end of many Canadian website URLs may not seem like much to celebrate, but 25 years after they first became available, Canadian cyberspace could be a very different place without it.

This year, Canadians can reflect upon 25 years of the .ca domain registry and the kind of impact it's had on the Canadian online media landscape. Back in 1987, UBC computer science student John Demco thought that researchers across Canada could benefit from a top-level domain across the web.

"I saw the domain name system, and the .ca name in particular, as maybe part of the beginnings of a way to bring the disparate groups together," said Demco in an interview with The Canadian Press.

[ More Right Click: Rolling Stones 404 page may be one of the best out there ]

While the official anniversary of .ca was May 14, 2012, the creation of .ca wasn't a single-day event. While attending UBC, Demco exchanged a number of emails with Jon Postel, administrator of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. On May 14, 1987, Postel made Demco responsible for assigning the .ca domain to interested parties.

"Little did I know what I was in for," said Demco in an interview.

At first, it was a slow start: only eight parties were interested in the .ca domain. Eight months after becoming responsible for .ca, Demco began accepting applications. The University of Prince Edward Island was the first to acquire a .ca web address, followed by five more universities and two research labs. They were registered on January 12, 1988.

Demco allocated the domain to those who requested it at no charge, running the operation out of his B.C. office for 13 years. Over 100,000 domain names were registered during that time.

[ More Right Click: Ask and the universe shall answer — via Twitter ]

In December 2000, control of the .ca domain was passed to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), created specifically to manage the allocation of the domain.

During the handover from Demco and UBC to CIRA, Demco co-founded Webnames.ca, who was one of the original companies dedicated to .ca domain names. There are now more than 90 certified registrars for .ca.

Today, there are over 1,940,000 .ca domain names registered, and Demco anticipates that it will reach the two million mark by the end of the year. Out of 250 registries worldwide, .ca is the 14^th most popular.

While Demco acknowledges how important the .ca domain has become, he admits that he didn't expect it to still be talked about all these years later.

"I'm not surprised to see the continued interest in networking and electronically-mediated social interaction with people," Demco said in a News1130 interview. "But I had no idea that this particular part of it would still be so relevant."

You can watch this video to hear Demco tell the story of the evolution of .ca in his own words. And to view an interactive timeline of .ca's history, check out this page from CIRA.