Google Maps ready to put Iqaluit on Street View

Google will put Iqaluit on the map. On the Street View map, that is.

Beginning March 19, a crew from Google will travel Iqaluit to begin filming the footage needed for its Street View map feature, allowing people from all over the world to take a virtual tour through the Nunavut capital.

Film crews will use backpacks loaded with up to 40 pounds of camera gear and hike the streets. The backpack option is being used because it’s too expensive to ship a specially equipped Google car up north and a Google trike won’t work in snowy conditions. However, Google wanted to capture the snowy landscape because its “seasonally appropriate,” spokesperson Aaron Brindle told Nunatsiaq Online.

The move is part of an overall effort to map more remote parts of the world.

Last summer, Google sent crews to Cambridge Bay, where they used a tricycle fitted with a camera to film the streets.

The company has been adding information about North Korea to its maps. This includes information about the location and size of the country’s large prison camps.

And, in January, Google released Street View footage of the Grand Canyon. For that project, film crews used the same backpacks that they will use in Iqaluit.