Learn Google Maps Heads North...Way North

Search for [cambridge bay] on Google Maps too you’ll wing to a tiny hamlet located deep inwards the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut inwards Canada’s Arctic, surrounded past times an intricate lacework of tundra, waterways too breaking ice. High to a higher house the Arctic circle, it’s a house reachable only past times airplane or boat. Zoom inwards on the map, too this isolated hamlet of 1,500 people appears equally only a handful of streets, amongst names similar Omingmak (“musk ox”) Street too Tigiganiak (“fox”) Road.


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Cambridge Bay inwards Google Maps
There are 4,000 years’ worth of stories waiting to live told on this map. Today, we’re setting out on an ambitious mission to say some of those stories too to ready the nigh comprehensive map of the portion to date. It is the furthest due north the Google Maps Street View squad has traveled inwards Canada, too our outset see to Nunavut. Using the tools of 21st century cartography, we’re empowering a community too putting Cambridge Bay on the proverbial map of tomorrow.

The hamlet of Cambridge Bay
We’re non doing it alone, but amongst the assistance of the community too residents similar Chris Kalluk. We outset met Chris, who plant for the nonprofit Nunavut Tunngavik, lastly September at our Google basis Outreach workshop inwards Vancouver, where he learned how to edit Google Maps information using Google Map Maker. Today Chris played host to a community Map Up number inwards Cambridge Bay, where hamlet elders, local mapping experts too teenagers from the nearby high schoolhouse gathered only about a dozen Chromebooks too used Map Maker to add together novel roads, rivers too lakes to the Google Map of Cambridge Bay too Canada's North. But they didn’t cease there. Using both English linguistic communication too Inuktitut, 1 of Nunavut’s official languages, they added the hospital, daycare, a nine-hole golf game course, a territorial commons and, finally, the remnants of an ancient Dorset rock longhouse which pre-dates Inuit culture.

Catherine Moats, a fellow member of the Google Map Maker Team, working amongst Chris Kalluk too others at the Community Map Up.
Now we’re pedaling the Street View trike only about the gravel roads of the hamlet too using a tripod—the same used to capture business interiors—to collect imagery of these amazing places. We’ll develop Chris too others inwards the community to go some of this equipment too then they tin sack go to other communities inwards Nunavut too proceed to ready the nigh comprehensive too accurate map of Canada’s Arctic. As Chris position it to us, “This is a house amongst a vast total of local cognition too a rich history. By putting these tools inwards the hands of our people, nosotros volition say Nunavut’s even out to the world.”

The Street View Trike collecting imagery of Cambridge Bay.
So remain tuned, world. We await forrard to sharing amongst y'all the spectacular beauty too rich civilization of Canada’s Arctic—one of the nigh isolated places on the planet that volition shortly be, thank y'all to the people of Cambridge Bay, only a click away.

Posted past times Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Google basis Outreach team

(Cross-posted on the Lat Long Blog too novel Google Canada Blog)

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