To the detriment of a great deal of work that needed to be done today, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Google Street View had finally been added to many cities across Canada today, Montreal included. For anyone unfamiliar with Google Street View, it is a function of Google Maps and Google Earth that allows you to see 360 degree photos at street level of any place where the Google car has gone. Once you’ve found a place you want to see, you can look in any direction as well as zoom in and out and “drive” down the street to any other street that has been mapped.
Street View first launched in 2007 in a few large U.S. cities where they have since mapped pretty much the entire country, not just cities, but also winding country roads, small towns, and freeways. A number of western European cities were added this year, with more to come. Canada would have had its cities go live much sooner had it not been for various issues concerning privacy laws that are different than those in the U.S..
According to today’s Globe and Mail, the Canadian cities that have been mapped include Toronto, Calgary, Banff National Park, Montreal, Quebec City, Halifax, Vancouver, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Squamish, Whistler, Ottawa, Hamilton, Kitchener and Waterloo. Fagstein has screen shots showing how much of each city has been mapped, along with a shot of the U.S. map. The photo above at 4076, Hôtel-de-Ville shows where the shooting for Street View “began” as pointed out by a commenter on Fagstein’s post. Moving one block north will show a very different autumn street which goes to show just how long it took to map the entire city and much of north and south shore suburbs. Not surprisingly, this is the same spot where the Street View car has been sitting for the past year.
11 comments
Unfortunately, many of the street names in Montréal are wrong on Google Street View.
Snore..
@ NeuMontreal : get a life
On a similar token, Street View automatically blurred Rene-Levesque’s statue at the Hydro-Quebec building.. I found that rather enjoyable
I think they started taking pics early this spring, as my place near where the car was parked is pictured in full leafless condition….and there’s still lotsa leaves on them trees outside right now. Cool observation about the season change!
Sorry, Bob, if you don’t think the French language is worth defending. I do.
NEUMontreal, I don’t think Google is meaning to disrespect anybody. The “Park Ave” thing is definitely a mistake. Most streets have their actual name. Write them an email in a non-defensive tone and I’m sure they’ll be happy to fix it :)
Great, now I can travel through Montreal whenever I want.
One day will a permanent thing to do.
They didn’t get the alleys!
Bob, you should move to Moronto if you want to be 100% english. Over there, you’ll get a medal for doing that.
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The face-blurring algorithm has some hiccups… Here, in Toronto, it blurred the “face” of a subway train…
Update: here, as you drive from Québec to Ontario, the terminology changes from french to english, but it seems they put the whole bridges in Ontario…
Wait, here, it seems the Interprovincial bridge has no designation at both ends…
Hmmm. On the Macdonald-Cartier bridge, it looks like the “autoroute” goes far into Ontario… (Click “forward”) twice to see it change…
And lastly, check the wierd changes of terminology, here, deep into Québec (and the whole bridge is in Ontario)…