title: 'utf-8' codec can't decode when using readshapefile on python basemap
body: <p>I'm trying to read boundary from Canadian Map from <a href="http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/access_acces/alternative_alternatif.action?l=eng&amp;dispext=zip&amp;teng=gcma000b11a_e.zip&amp;k=%20%20%20%20%206773&amp;loc=http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/geo/bound-limit/files-fichiers/gcma000b11a_e.zip" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a></p>
  
  <pre><code>import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
  import matplotlib.cm
  
  from mpl_toolkits.basemap import Basemap
  from matplotlib.patches import Polygon
  from matplotlib.collections import PatchCollection
  from matplotlib.colors import Normalize
  
  m = Basemap(resolution='c', # c, l, i, h, f or None
              projection='merc',
              lat_0=56.1304, lon_0=106.3468,
              llcrnrlon=-141.0, llcrnrlat= 41.2, urcrnrlon=-52.3, urcrnrlat=69.8)
  
  m.drawmapboundary(fill_color='#46bcec')
  m.fillcontinents(color='#f2f2f2',lake_color='#46bcec')
  m.drawcoastlines()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>until here everything works great, but when I try to add boundary,</p>
  
  <pre><code>m.readshapefile('mypaths/gcma000b11a_e/gcma000b11a_e', 'gcma000b11a_e')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have this <code>utf-8</code> error:</p>
  
  <p>the code is from this great <a href="http://www.datadependence.com/2016/06/creating-map-visualisations-in-python/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">tutorial</a></p>
  
  <pre><code>UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xe9 in position 11: invalid continuation byte
  </code></pre>