Apparently Wellesley Street has been renamed Lourdes Lane -- at least according to Google Maps. As I was putting together my post on "hidden" streets in Toronto, I kept on getting confused by the fact that Wellesley Cottages appeared to run north off of Lourdes Lane. I knew that didn't look right at all, so I started tracing Lourdes Lane in a westerly direction until it became clear that map was playing tricks on me.

As demonstrated by the screen grab above -- and most particularly the location of Wellesley Subway Station! -- Google's got a bit of a glitch going on. The error is likely the result of a recent by-law that was passed to rename Wellesley Lane (not Street) to Lourdes Lane as per a request made by a local resident. According the background report linked to above, Glen Simourd of Our Lady of Lourdes Church wished the name to be changed "in recognition of Our Lady of Lourdes Church, which is adjacent to the lane and is celebrating its 125th anniversary in 2011."

Interestingly, when one searches for the correct name of all the streets in question, Google is still smart enough to take you to the right place despite the denominative error.

In a weird bit of circumstance, I wasn't the only one to notice the error. When I searched for an explanation, I was brought to blogTO's very own Morning Brew, where a commenter (Daniel) posed the exact same question I had.

So if you've ever felt shame for a typo -- which seems to happen to me daily -- perhaps this'll offer a bit of solace: even Google screws up once in a while.

Update (4:35 p.m.):

As "qwerty" points out in the comments, the naming problem does result in some directional challenges if one types in an exact address (see example below). 14 Wellesley St. East should place the user at the subway station, but the map defaults to Wellesley Avenue and asks if the correct address was typed in. How presumptuous...

The error has now been reported to Google.