Of Yellowknife and I agree with her. Yellowknife should have at least one webcam that looks over the city from one point of view or another.
Heather of Chris, Me & NWT has been a resident for almost two years now and loves it in Yellowknife. This is not uncommon about Yellowknifers. I, myself, am a lifer who built this website around my passion for the community and wanting to share it, so I understand exactly where she is coming from.
Her blog post outlines why she thinks Yellowknife should have a webcam and it is really quite simple. Those who don’t live in Yellowknife are genuinely interested in the north. Her previous post about Yellowknife webcams was her most popular post but she also cites many example like Arctic Air, Ice Pilots NWT and a hit YouTube video of people being interested in the north.
In the last two decades I can only remember two webcams that use to stream a shot of Yellowknife. I’m not completely certain where it was but I do recall a webcam that was on top of the Northwestel Building. I don’t know where it streamed, and it might only have been on the community channel. The other was a resident of Old Town who use to stream a constant shot of old town from their house on Pilots Monument This webcam was up for years but a couple of months ago shut down. There was no explanation, however one reason could have been that too much traffic was finding it and it was causing bandwidth issues for the operator.
Heather, in her blog post, is asking the City of Yellowknife to consider setting up a webcam of the city themselves and public stream it. Another avenue that would be worth considering is Northwestel, the primary Internet Service Provider in the norther. As an ISO they don’t have the bandwidth constraints and it would be a great community project.
What are your thoughts? Should Yellowknife have a webcam? Would your family watch it?
UPDATE Feb 5, 2013 5:50 p.m.
It turns out that the webcam that use to be in Old Town is still live but moved Internet locations. It is part of a weather station run by CAH Consulting Ltd. and other sponsors. It can be found at this address: http://lw-app.com/view/yk-pilots-monument. On top of that there is also one in Kam Lake at Cascom, which you can see here: http://lw-app.com/view/cascom/. However this aren’t real webcams the only seem to capture an image every so many minutes.
And there is the AuroraMAX webcam at http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronomy/auroramax/connect.asp
The two links above are only weather stations ( which are interesting) bit still no views of the life up there. I visit there often ( luckily) and would view a web cam of real time views of some part of Yellowknife. I am in favor of someone setting up a web cam to show the beauty of the life in Yellowknife.