Putting my town on Google Earth
You know how in movies a grown-up kid comes home to find her bedroom exactly as she left it after she graduated from high school? Well that never happened to me.
The second that I moved out, my brother moved into my room and my stuff was out. And my mom laughed when I said I hoped it would stay exactly the same as when I left.
You can romanticize your life all you want but if others don’t play along, I guess you’re just left with reality.
So since 2006, I’ve been checking Google Earth to see what our family farm looks like when photographed from space. The farm and a large area around it, including our home town has been pretty much fuzzy since then. Basically you can’t zoom in like you can on other parts of Google Earth.
Back in 2006 Michael Jones of Google Earth did say at NAIT GIS Day that he hoped they would have higher resolution imagery of the entire earth within a couple years.
While it’s still not the case, I was happy to see a limited version of Google Streetview came to our mainstreet probably sometime in 2010.
Surely very few people ever have a need to look up my town of Girouxville (pop. 282) because it is so small and easy to get around if you do find yourself there.
The thing is, no matter how insignificant that tiny little town is to some, it is a big part of me.
Girouxville became my home because all four of my grandparents settled there. All four are also buried there, along with many other people I’ve loved.
My mom grew up in town in a house that’s still standing today and my dad still lives on a farm settled by my pépère Bégin seven and a half miles outside of town back in 1927.
Uploading pictures to Google Earth
So, to help preserve the town for me now that I live so far way, I decided to figure out how I could get a few pictures up on Google Earth. I tested it out in Toronto before I went home for the holidays and it basically takes two programs.
1. Google Latitude – Google Earth will only accept images that have location tracked on them. They do it through Google Latitude so I downloaded the app to my iPhone. Just a caution to remember to turn it off when you’re done or else people will keep knowing your exact location.
2. Panoramio – Google Earth uses location enabled Panoramio images, so I also downloaded this app to take pictures from directly once I linked it with Latitude.
Once you’ve uploaded images, it takes some time for the images to be reviewed by Google before they are posted.
Mine were approved within 24 hours. I took 33 pictures, but 31 were approved. The two that weren’t were a street sign and a monument near where the old wading pool.
The wading pool is now gone, as are the grain elevators and the school where I spent ten years of my life.
Next year, I’m told the curling rink will also be torn down.
The Edmonton Journal had done a piece on the town in 2009 when CN closed its rail line. The coffee shop owner that feared she’d have to closed shop since has.
Of the bits that remain, my favourite parts are the forest behind the grotto and the museum because they always seemed so mysterious. I spent lots of time as a little girl exploring both.
The good news is that there’s a recent addition breathing some new life into town – a four-lane bowling alley that opened in November 2011. (We went bowling after taking these pics.)
The busy bowling alley, like the full church on Christmas Eve, reminds you that no matter what the world outside thinks, there’s still life there.
The new year will mark the point in my life where I’ll have lived in cities longer than I lived in my little town. Even though I left home the moment that I had the means to go, I’ve always been proud of where I came from.
My story began in middle of nowhere and now, at least, nowhere is sort of on the map.
