Clerical error misspelled war hero’s name on sign
Mistake in town of Shelburne led to wrong street name on IDs and health cards
Nobody noticed a simple clerical error as the town of Shelburne, Ont. attempted to honour war hero Brigadier-general Elgin McKinnon Wansbrough by naming a street after him.
Soon, street signs went up in a subdivision for “Wansburgh Way.”
More than a dozen houses and IDs and health cards and all sorts of other government forms were registered to “Wansburgh Way.”
Then someone realized they all should have been spelled “Wansbrough Way.”
Now, the Wansbrough family is trying to get things set right and finding there’s no easy way to fix the simple error, made back in 2005.
Mayor Ken Bennington declined to comment on the mess.
“No thanks,” Bennington said. “No comment. Have a good day.”
Six Wansbrough family members drove to town for a council meeting on Monday to try to correct the error.
His grandson, Doug, told council on Monday that the family appreciated the effort, if not the error.
“As a family, we actively support naming streets after veterans,” Doug Wansbrough reportedly said.
“It’s a great initiative to name streets after veterans, we just have to do it right.”
No one’s disputing that the brigadier-general deserves respect.
He served in both World Wars (he enlisted in the First World War as a 17-year-old).
He won the prestigious British Military Medal, among others, in the First World War, for his courage as a member of a machine gun crew.
Back in Canada, he received a degree in dentistry from the University of Toronto, then practised in Shelburne.
He re-enlisted for service in the Second World War and after he was promoted to Brigadier-general.
He died in Ottawa in 1970, having risen to become director general of Canadian Forces’ dental services.
There was the suggestion of keeping “Wansburgh Way” as it is and calling some other street in town “Wansbrough Way.”
That sounded good, but was shot down because of confusion it could cause for emergency workers.