Check even your reliable sources

If you like scenic drives, Highway 3 from Wheatley to Fort Erie is one of the very best in the province. Sadly, with the rise in level of Lake Erie there has been much damage along there. Highway 3 east of Wheatley has a long detour and the Erieau Community has had huge problems with dikes.

Recently, I read a story from BlackburnNews about work taken to address the flow of water from recent rainfall and raising levels.

In order to address the flooding concerns, conservation officials are planning to operate the McGregor Creek Diversion Channel either late Saturday afternoon or evening. However, water from the Thames River should still be expected to rise and flood the sidewalk along the river in downtown Chatham.

Now, I have relatives that live in Chatham-Kent so I was hoping that they wouldn’t be affected. I hadn’t heard of the McGregor Creek Diversion Channel so I asked my browser to find it for me using its mapping function.

I don’t maps in the browser all that often, but went with the default map for my browser which was Apple Maps. I was really taken back by the result that it gave me. Colborne? And not even Port Colborne which actually is on Highway 3, not this location on the other side of Toronto.

Now, I knew enough to know that this was an incorrect location so explicitly did a search using tools I more regularly use – Google and Bing maps.

I know that we all are aware of fake websites. The one that we frequently use as a media literacy example is the Pacific Tree Octopus.

It’s a reminder that nothing should be taken in absolutely faith without a second opinion or a reasonableness test.

I’m just glad that I wasn’t ready to hop in a car to go and visit the site. Other than the fact that we shouldn’t be leaving home these days, that’s almost a full day’s drive from here!