All sights in Canadian Regions & Territories

Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.

The editors: James & Alex

Up Periscope!

Posted by Alex Turnbull, Thursday, 8th November 2007

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Nearby our sighting of the USS Ohio a few of weeks ago, we can see what very much looks like another submarine, running at periscope depth.

Thanks: Neil Harrington

USS Ohio (October 07 Image Update)

Posted by James Turnbull, Thursday, 11th October 2007

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This is the USS Ohio, an Ohio class submarine cruising along the US/Canada border in the Straight of Juan de Fuca. Flanked to the north and south, it looks like it has its missile tubes open, as seen in this image.

The best thing about the appearance of this sub is that it tells us that the October 07 image update has finally made it onto Google Maps! Expect lots of exciting new posts, and get submitting your sights!

More about the Ohio class submarines at Wikipedia.

Thanks: DelPeiro & pooms

Tonight’s Dinner

Posted by James Turnbull, Thursday, 6th September 2007

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For tonight’s dinner we’re following what might well be the world’s largest recipe – as it’s written in large type all over the surface of Google Earth.

To start with, on the coast of Nova Scotia a vineyard uses the fields to do more than grow the grapes – they also advertise wines and their website.1

So we’ve got some wine. Next, if you happen to be driving down this motorway on the Danish island of Zealand, and feel a little peckish, you can stop off and buy some peas from the top of the hill.

You’ll know when you’re at the right place by the giant advertising for “Ærter” (that’s Danish for peas), but it sometimes it says “Æbler” instead (apples).

Lastly, a roof in Columbus urges us to “Eat Trout“. Clearly not a trout farm, from what I can gather the building is (or at least was), some sort of night club – so perhaps it’s just a public service announcement?2

So there we have it, a complete meal in Google Earth: fish, peas on the side and a glass of wine! But can anyone find me some dessert?

Thanks to Greg_Yetman, sladys and Dave Collins

(This post was updated 8th September to correct the location of the peas. Thanks to those in the comments!)


  1. Hang on, is that not spam? 

  2. The Trout Association claim all sorts of wonderful benefits from eating the fish. 

Island and Lake Recursion (Island Week 2)

Posted by James Turnbull, Monday, 3rd September 2007

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(It’s the last day of Island Week 2 here at GSS, which means we’re almost done with posting about islands. And it’s lasted about a week.)

Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Canada is officially the world’s largest island that is located within a lake.

That’s pretty simple, but within the island there are an additional 180 lakes…

Within one of those lakes, Mindemoya Lake (to be precise), is the largest island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake (in the world). Still with me?

But we’ve missed out a step! On the island of Sumatra in Indonesia we find Lake Toba, and its principal island of Samosir – which at 630 square km is easily the largest island, in a lake, on a island.

After Samosir, the second largest island within a lake is Glover Island, which is in the Grand Lake on the island of Newfoundland.

However, Glover Island’s largest lake also has many islands, of which the largest is about 2 acres. This tiny, unnamed island is therefore the largest island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake, on an island!

Unfortunately, it has no lakes in which we might find further islands. :D

Seeing as it’s island week, we’ve left out many additional facts about the largest lakes found on islands (some of which are larger that the lakes containing islands we’ve mentioned here) but I think this post has been confusing enough!

Wikipedia: Manitoulin Island, Samosir & Glover Island

Thanks to Dee, kejoad, Daryl, Chris W, Boing boing, Elbruz.org and World Island Info.

Autumn

Posted by Alex Turnbull, Wednesday, 21st February 2007

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There’s a nice story on Vanity Fair about how the author, Nick Tosches, spent more than a year attempting to track down the shot location of a desktop picture called Autumn that came with his copy of WIndows.

autumn-desktop-pic.jpg

Eventually Nick managed to track the image back to the Corbis library, and in turn to the photographer, Peter Burian. With a little coaxing, Peter eventually remembered that he took the photo in the village of Kilbride, near his home in Milton, Ontario.

Of course once we had the address, we managed to find the exact tree-lined path and barn in a couple of minutes – thanks to Google Maps :D

autumn-desktop.jpg

And although these particular trees are still green, there’s thousands in this area that have started to turn a fantastic shade of orange!

Via Kottke.org.