Prospect lake road

[Bosie]

For those of you who dont regularly go out to Prospect lake road, it seems that it will be closed from the 18-29 of this month for roadworks.

Just means that if you are coming at it from Burnside road, you will be committed to Munns road

Craig

[Claire]

Just means that if you are coming at it from Burnside road, you will be committed to Munns road

Craig

Excellent - forced hill training!

(And thank you for the correct locals' spelling of "Munns" Road... people who drop the s are clearly outsiders... it's now evident your funny accent is just a clever disguise.)

[Rolf]

(And thank you for the correct locals' spelling of "Munns" Road... people who drop the s are clearly outsiders... it's now evident your funny accent is just a clever disguise.)

I'm pretty sure local governments have the exclusive legal capacity to designate the names of roads that are not highways. And the District of Highlands posts several maps on their website which clearly mark it as "Munn Road". See the District's "Address/Zoning" Map and their Parks and Trails Map, for example. You'd also think the CRD's Regional Map would be dependable—and it says "Munn Road" throughout.

However, if we next look at the Province's Digital Road Atlas, which says it's "a single, authoritative source of road data for the Province of B.C.", we notice the problematic "s" appears.

These maps may be outdated, or they may not reflect the formal legal designation. But by jove, for the armchair debater, they offer some pretty darn convincing ammo for both camps.

If Claire hadn't made her assertion with such typical audacity, I probably wouldn't have given this further thought (or just wasted 15 minutes cutting and pasting hyperlinks.) But there's something about unsubstantiated smugness that draws me out every time.

So Claire: share your rationale, please. Or the misanthrope in me is likely to start referring to it with a plural possessive apostrophe—"Munns' Road"—just to ensure universal dissatisfaction.

p.s. To swing this thread back to its origin: I rode most of Prospect today north to south and it's got a bad case of end-of-winter road acne. It's good to know they'll be filling in some of the nastier holes.

[Claire]

Well, far be it from me to pass up an opportunity to spar with a willing partner (and to validate my friend Rolf's seemingly insatiable appetite for frivolous internet searches).

Mostly, it comes down to being old and stubborn and having lived in Victoria my whole life. You see, even before I was reading road signs, the road was known as Munns (no apostrophe). It rolls off the tongue nicely and is so embedded in my brain.

Then newcomers started to pronounce it funny and next thing I knew, even the road signs had changed! WTF?

The debate rears its head occasionally - with participants mostly following a predictable locals/newcomers divide.

There's very little on the interwebs, but I did come across this minor debate in my hunt. Apparently back in 2010 there were about equal appearances of Munn and Munns on maps and such.

If someone could proffer a logical reason for changing it from what I know to the newfangled s-less version, I might be willing to conform.

But conforming is for chumps, so probably not even then.