Street View, a mapping feature that offers interactive panoramic views of real world streets, will finally be turning its zooming gaze towards Canadian streets in March, but not through Google, the company that first introduced it. Canpages.ca, a Burnaby, B.C.-based localized search and commercial listings service, has licensed the technology and created their own version, due to launch in a couple of weeks.

The first cities to receive the Street View treatment are Vancouver, Whistler, and Squamish in British Columbia. These areas have already been captured by several camera crews that were sent out last November and operated by San Francisco-based imaging specialists MapJack.

Similar to Google’s Street View, Canpage’s version will allow users to click on selected areas within their online mapping portal to switch to a panoramic street view that can then be rotated about, both horizontally and vertically to take in a complete view of the area from that spot. Users can zoom into the high resolution photographs to pick out subtle details and can advance their location forward and backward at intervals, creating the illusion of walking or driving down the street. A little icon of a figure shows the position of the view on the map as well as the direction and radius of the viewpoint itself.

But where Google’s Street View is limited to roads, Canpages’ version is captured using two types of camera teams, including both vehicle-based and a portable system that allows a cameraperson to guide the system off the streets and along walk paths, trails, and into parks.

According to the company’s marketing director Michael Oldewening, they can potentially take their cameras into the lobbies of hotels, retails stores, and even into shopping malls.

Canpages offers detailed profile pages for retailers, including promotional videos produced by Canpages themselves. When the Street View service launches, users will be able to click on the storefronts of companies with listing to access their detailed profiles. The intent is to include Street Views of their retail lobby’s as part of the service.

Canpages will not be limiting their gaze to public roads, but have also included residential streets. Users will be able to locate their own homes and gaze upon their front lawns as if they’re actually standing there. Oldewening says the company doesn’t have any plans to offers specific features for residential areas captured in their service, but admits that real estate services could be possible in the future.

Of the two areas, it will only be the main commercial roads that will have their imagery updated on a regular basis.

Since its launch in the United States, Google’s Street View has drawn considerable criticism over concerns relating to privacy as the service captures and publishes photographs of people going about their lives without their knowledge.

In contrast to Google, Canpages will be blurring the faces and other identifying features of those who were caught by their cameras while recording street locations.

Oldewening says that the first Street View images of Vancouver, Whistler, and Squamish will be ready in approximately two weeks, to be followed by coverage of Toronto and Montreal, and then eventually as much of Canada as possible.