A good map can change your life. This is exactly what happened to David Sherlock.
In the late 1980s, Sherlock discovered firsthand how useful a well-designed, detailed, and accurate map book could be. During an extended trip to Australia, Sherlock relied heavily on local street maps to get around: seeing family, scuba diving, and other adventures on Australia's unfamiliar roads. Back home in Winnipeg, nothing like that existed.
When Sherlock returned home, he got to work, and in June 1988, Sherlock Publishing Ltd. was incorporated.
"Sherlock has embarked on his Winnipeg odyssey for information to go into a map he's making. A super map. One he says will be unlike any any other Canadian city has."
Ted Weatherhead, CBC News
Winnipeg Free Press, October 27, 1993
Undeterred by the fact that he had never designed a map or printed a book, Sherlock dove in headfirst. For months, he drove every street in Winnipeg, ensuring every detail was accurate and noting the location of stop signs, parks, outdoor hockey rinks, off-leash dog parks, and 24-hour gas stations. Sherlock would soon learn that compiling all this information was just the first step of many.
Designing and printing the maps required its own steep learning curve. A full-colour map needs just four ink colours — cyan, magenta, yellow, and black — but in 1989, producing four print-ready plates was a painstaking, two-step process: first cutting and assembling every letter, street, and symbol by hand onto transparency film, then converting those transparencies into printing negatives. Today, a digital file goes straight to the plates.
A local printer believed in Sherlock and his map ideas, showing him the basics of printing and allowing him to use the shop after hours.
For the next four months, Sherlock spent his evenings at the print shop, often staying until two or three in the morning. As he puts it: "I had no clue what I was doing. It is a good thing I am a fast learner."
After nearly 3 years of meticulous, around-the-clock work, the first edition of Sherlock's City Map of Winnipeg was published and hit the shelves in June 1990. The map was full-colour and 76 pages, bound with the yellow spiral binding that Sherlock would become known for.
Winnipeg Sun, December 12, 1995. "Puts us on the map"
Growth through the 1990s was steady. Wall maps were introduced, and a Calgary edition soon followed. Each year brought an updated edition with expanded coverage of surrounding towns and an average of more than 2,000 changes per update. With each update, Sherlock's City Map of Winnipeg became an essential tool for taxi drivers, couriers, emergency dispatchers, tradespeople, hockey moms and dads, and generally any Winnipegger who needed to find their way around.
