Google is giving Canadians advance notice today that their Street View cameras will be taking to the streets of eleven Canadian cities to record new photographs that will be added to imagery that the company has previously collected. In the coming weeks the vehicle-mounted cameras will drive along public roads, capturing immersive photographs that take in everything within 360 horizontal degrees and 290 vertical degrees, at intervals of every ten or twenty meters.

Google's Street View displays a street in Seattle.

The collected photographs will be published online as part of their Google Maps and Google Earth service and the intent is to allow online users to explore neighbourhoods and intersections as if they are actually standing there. To address concerns regarding privacy, Google states they will restrict their cameras to public roads only and will "capture imagery similar to that which anyone walking down a public street could take" and a system will be made available for Canadians to file a request to have their image removed (A YouTube video will full instructions is available here). Additionally, all faces and license plates will be blurred. 

 Here is a list of the cities that will be photographed in the coming weeks:

Calgary

Edmonton

Halifax

Montreal

Ottawa

Quebec City

Saint John

Saskatoon

Toronto

Vancouver

Winnipeg

At this time Google does not have an official launch date for their Street View service in Canada, other than to say that it is coming "in the near future".

Google has also confirmed that the Canadian Street View will be similar in features to the versions already available in Australia, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Google's Street View will be the second such service offered in here Canada, following Burnaby, B.C.-based Capages.ca which launched their own version earlier this month.