The Guardian Messed Up Spelling Montreal, Quebec And More On A Map Of Canada

An intense nationwide search for two British Columbian teens who are accused of killing three people has forced Canada into the international news cycle.

Which means foreign news outlets are now explaining Canadian geography to their readers as suspects Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod made their way from northern B.C. to the marshlands of northern Manitoba.

Watch: RCMP confirm B.C. murder suspects might have received help. Story continues below.

Which to be fair, isn’t easy. Even Canadians spend a decent chunk of time in school learning to memorize the order of the provinces.

Sunday evening RCMP announced it was shifting the focus of its search from Gillam, Man., to another northern Manitoba community, York Landing, and that twist in the story triggered another geography lesson from international media.

One of those outlets got it a little off, though.

VICE reporter Mack Lamoureux pointed out on Twitter that British newspaper The Guardian put out a map of the search area that had more than a couple inaccuracies.

The 198-year-old paper already gets major flak from its own readers for typos. It’s been nicknamed ‘The Grauniad’ by British satire news magazine Private Eye.

Canadians didn’t hold back, either.

The Montreal mistake is easy to forgive. “Montraal” is close enough to the original spelling that it can be considered a typo. But “Qumbec” pushed it to the limit.

To the chagrin of Francophones, Quebec is famously mispronounced by English-speaking Canadians. But the Guardian’s version is so far removed, the paper practically renamed the province.

Others pointed out that the map also features an exaggerated number of lakes with an intense concentration of them in Eastern Canada.

Some even theorized the map designer might have accidentally copied and pasted extra lakes. There are three versions of Lake Winnipeg that seem to get bigger in size. 

To be fair, Canada does have an incredible amount of lakes for one country. We don’t, however, have any lakes over the Atlantic Ocean. 

Some people couldn’t resist the opportunity to bring up old grievances.

The British haven’t paid this much attention to us since Canadian-based actress Meghan Markle married into some old English family , so they’re bound to get some things wrong.

The paper published a corrected version of the map, which doesn’t list Quebec and Montreal, and doesn’t have most of the country submerged under water.

The mistakes, if anything, were a sort of temporary comic relief from the reality of an otherwise dire situation. Schmegelsky and McLeod are still-at-large. 

To be fair, even Canadians don’t always do well with foreign geography. Our only NBA team mixed up the incredibly famous Golden Gate bridge for something else.

Ferrari once mixed up Toronto and Montreal in a promotional video, which is arguably a bigger crime than exaggerating how many lakes we have.

We hope the jokes haven’t discouraged British reporters from taking on Canadian news in the future. Feel free to Qumbec come back to us if you need to double-check your map next time.