‘Sheild’ street sign be wrong, mate
‘‘Surely, if you're going to honour the woman, the least you can do is spell her name right.’’
A Porirua street sign tribute to a distinguished Kapiti politician has backfired in a name-spelling blunder.
The embarrassing botch-up arose in homage to Dame Margaret Shields, who has a street named after her in a subdivision under construction in Porirua’s Aotea suburb.
The street sign reads ’’Margaret Sheilds Ave’’ and has drawn the ire of Porirua resident and former Wellington journalist Mike Duncan who decried the mistake on his Facebook page in what he called ‘‘the Facebook era.’’
‘‘Clearly a case of Sheild be right mate. Surely, if you’re going to honour the woman, the least you can do is spell her name right.’’
Kevin Alkema, project manager for subdivision developers Carrus Corporation, apologised and said the gaffe was regretted and it was ‘‘not good enough’’ especially given Shields’ stature.
Shields - who died in 2013 aged 71 - was Labour’s Kapiti MP between 1981 and 1990 and was acclaimed for launching the women’s movement in New Zealand - she worked tirelessly throughout her career campaigning for women’s rights.
She was elected as Porirua representative of the Greater Wellington Regional Council in 1995, and appointed deputy chairwoman in 1998 and chairwoman from 2001 to 2004.
Shields had held offices in the UN Development Fund for Women, the UN International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women, the National Council of Women and the Federation of Graduate Women. She was invested as a Dame Companion of the NZ Order of Merit in 2009.
The subdivision features streets named after prominent local politicians.
The avenue is a through road requiring signs at each end - one sign was spelled correctly, the other had the mistake and is still standing on the Ken Douglas Cres end of the avenue.
RTL marketing and sales manager James Smith said it was not possible to tell how the error happened as the order was a year old and the company had since changed its computer software.
Smith confirmed a new - correctly spelled - sign had been made and delivered to the developer’s installation firm.