Sechelt is back on the map, and it has social media and the blogging world to thank.
Several business professionals on the Coast, including real estate agents, the Bed and Breakfast Association, even the District of Sechelt were alerted to the fact almost a year ago, that Sechelt was pinpointed incorrectly on the Google mapping system on the Internet.
Despite repeated requests, emails, even a letter on official District letterhead from Sechelt Mayor Darren Inkster to Google asking them to correct the error, nothing was done.
That was when the blogging world took over.
Local web designer Robert Dall, who moved back to the Coast last February, found out about the problem and started to investigate himself. He too reported the problem to Google, to no avail.
But after attending a recent WordPress convention in Vancouver, he met up with a colleague, Rebecca Bollwitt, a tech savvy blogger based in Vancouver, who put her talents to the test.
"Rebecca didn't believe me at first, but when she saw the problem, she immediately went to her blog and Twitter," Dall said. "She has something like 20,000 followers on Twitter, and she is pretty influential in the tech world. She wrote a story on her blog, and when it went viral, within 48 hours Google had fixed the problem. I really had nothing to do with this. If it wasn't for Rebecca posting this, I don't think anything would have changed."
Dall said this situation begs the question: is the technological world sometimes moving too fast?
"I like to call it the digital divide," he said. "Technology is impacting smaller communities, I think, more and more. The mapping system was wrong and the efforts to correct that problem should not have taken as long as they did."
And there are other errors that still have not been corrected with other Sechelt businesses.
"I noticed when I moved back that my parents' home in West Sechelt was located where the Petro Can station is," Dall said. "The Tems Swiya museum in Sechelt is, in fact, located at the corner of Norwest Bay Road and Derby Road according to the map, and we all know that is wrong. I do know that Google is changing their mapping system, but the communication from Google has been nothing. Why did it take so long for them to act when so many people before me reported the problems?"
Jack Pope, who owns Coracle Cove Beach House & Waterfront Suite, was just one of the many B&B owners on the Coast who first reported the problem. While he is grateful to Bollwitt and the social media effort to get the map changed, he is still frustrated with the situation.
"Anyone who was searching for a B&B in Sechelt was directed to Whistler because that was where the nearest geographical location was, according to the map," Pope said. "Anyone with a website who owns a small business was at the mercy of this Google error. When you need to find a place or a business, we all rely on search engines. I'm sure that over the past year, many Coast businesses lost business because of this error. I know I did."
