Columnists
The Mascot Bandwagon
It’s been a couple of years now since the new County logo (grapes, waves and sand, a barn and silo) came to live among us. Some people even quite like it.
But a logo is two dimensional. It sits flat on a page or a T-shirt. It doesn’t move. It doesn’t scream excitement. So perhaps it’s time for us to consider another way to convey the good news about the County to the world. It’s true we already have an official County song (created and performed by Jeanette Arsenault). We also have a County coat of arms (registered with the Canadian Heraldic Authority in 1989, it shows a man bearing an agricultural implement and a woman with the fruits of the harvest, together with the slogans “Blessed by Nature—Enriched by Man”; and “Loyally Founded, Loyally Built”).
But why not go a step further and name an official County mascot? Look at the success enjoyed by Quebec City’s Bonhomme Carnaval, who lures thousands to the city’s annual winter carnival. And the Montreal Canadiens’ mascot Youppi! has, in his former guise as a baseball mascot, been introduced into the baseball Hall of Fame. Who knows how many people have attended games because of him? A good mascot can pay for itself in squeezing value out of an asset into which you have already invested a lot. It can also generate extra revenue by appearing at community events such as car-dealership openings and appliance tent sales. So it’s clearly time for the County to jump on the mascot bandwagon.
Other municipalities of similar size to the County have mascots, so you could say it’s a tad embarrassing that we don’t have one already. By way of example, the town of Bow Island, Alberta (“the bean capital of the west,”) has Pinto MacBean. The Alberta Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo has Rave the Raven (“Like the raven, we can defend our community, be creative in our approaches to the challenges in our community, and spread the message of community pride.”). And the town of McCreary, Manitoba (“the ski and maple syrup capital of Manitoba”) has Alpine Archie. Closer to home, Belleville’s ribfest kicked off its 10th anniversary year this past year with the popular pig mascot Kris P. Bacon. So it’s not as if the County would be going out on a limb by naming a mascot.
A mascot can win the loyalty of hearts and minds. In Japan, almost every municipality has a mascot and there has been considerable pushback against a government report that supposedly concluded investing in mascots does not pay off. It also happens to be quite hip to have a mascot. Did you know that the makers of Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman just released a movie about a mascot competition?
Having a competition for a County mascot would also keep our children out of teenaged motherhood and away from street gangs. For example, PACHI the Porcupine, the mascot of the 2015 Pan American and Parapan games in Toronto, was created by a group of grade eight students from Markham. And Niibin, the mascot of the 2017 Canada summer games to be held in Winnipeg, was named by a grade three student. Students could also compete for the privilege of being the human being who makes the mascot come alive. It would be a great resume builder to say you has survived a summer with your dignity intact after lurching around in a mascot outfit in the heat of July.
Having set the cat among the pigeons, I should come up with some suggestions as to who, or what, the mascot could be. We could pick a mascot to bring out one of the themes in the County’s logo. With the winery theme, we could use “Vinnie the Vintner” or “Timmy and Tammy Tippler.” With a beach theme, we could do a lot better than “Sandie the Sandbanker,” or more simply the new-agey “Dune, the Non-Gendered Beach Creature.” For the agricultural sector emphasis, we could always turn to “Barney the Barn” and his brother “Silas the Silo.”
But we really need a mascot to embrace all of themes in the logo in some overarching way. Our County community development department markets us as having a “combination of rural calmness and sophistication,” and as a “hub for creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship.” How about “Rory the Creative Rural Economist,” or “Hilda the Innovative Entrepreneurial Hipster”? I have to admit those are pretty poor suggestions. All the more reason we should turn the task over to grade school students to get it done properly.
But let’s not, whatever we do, miss the chance to jump on the mascot bandwagon.
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