Google Street View maps Nunavut national parks

Parks Canada worker Fiona Currie carrying the 20 kg backpack that holds the Google Trekker device used to create images for Google Street View. (PHOTO COURTESY OF PARKS CANADA)

A Google Street View worker collects images from North Pangnirtung Fiord. Parks Canada did not give the man’s name. (PHOTO COURTESY OF PARKS CANADA)

Google Street View is coming to national parks in Nunavut where the closest street may be hundreds of kilometers away.

“I think it’ll be wonderful for people who are either planning a trip, to get a sneak-peak of what to plan for, or otherwise just to dream and get a virtual visit,” Fiona Currie, a media spokesperson for Parks Canada told Nunatsiaq News Aug. 14.

Google Street View maps offer 360-degree, ground-level views of selected locations, usually built-up urban areas.

Parks Canada has been working with Google since summer 2013 to bring Google Street View to some of northern Canada’s more remote regions, a project scheduled to last two years, a news release from Parks Canada said in June 2014.

Among the national parks already captured this summer is Baffin Island’s Auyuittuq National Park, though the images won’t go online until later this fall, Currie said.

“Now that we have Parks Canada team members trained to use the equipment, I’m sure we’ll be back to do more… Personally I’d love to get to Sirmilik Park,” Currie added.

Currie used a Google Trekker, a 45-pound backpack carrying a battery and panoramic camera atop a pole, to capture images of Tuktuk Nogait National Park in the Northwest Territories earlier this summer.

A similar backpack was used in March 2013 when Iqaluit’s streets were added to Google’s Street View maps.

Cambridge Bay, in August 2012, became the first community in Nunavut to show Google’s street-level maps.

Currie said it was an enormous privilege to capture images for Google, but that the technology brings all of us a little closer to the north’s beauty.

“We really had a sense, as we were capturing images, that we were taking people — friends and family — along on the trip with us,” Currie said.