Canada looks for a new animal image
What is Harper thinking??
The wolverine: A large land weasel that is know to give off an unpleasant odour and has an unstable nature...and is also known as "skunk bear" and "nasty cat".
Apparently in a battle fight between a wolverine and a moose, it could take a moose with the help of a snow bank but not a black bear...but how does it fair against an elephant or an eagle...that's the question...lol...if there really is any real significance to the animal/country representation...
Okay, so the beaver or the loon may not be the fiercest of animals...but if I was driving down the highway and I had to face a moose or a wolverine, I am sure my car could withstand the wolverine...but the tall Canadian moose, that's an animal you don't want to mess with.... and be able to walk away from…
The wolverine is not a good depiction of Canada.
S.
TENACIOUS, SMELLY--AND UNCOOL
Feb 15th 2007
Canada looks for a new image
CLOSE your eyes and think of Canada. Perhaps the picture that comes to
mind is one of a country of cold winters and civilised prosperity. But
Stephen Harper, the country's Conservative prime minister, has another
idea. This month he suggested that the national image was best captured
by the wolverine, a sort of weasel.
That seems odd. Wolverines have some unpleasant habits. They emit a
foul-smelling musk and eat carrion. They are close relatives of skunks
and their name translates as "glutton" in French. But Mr Harper was
thinking of their reputation for aggression and tenacity in the face of
much larger predators. Canada is no mouse beside the American elephant,
but a wolverine next to a grizzly bear, he said. "We may be smaller but
we're no less fierce about protecting our territory."
Mr Harper knows something about rebranding. He has changed his own
image from angry western neo-conservative to congenial centrist. He is
busy trying to repaint in green a government of climate-change
sceptics. The wolverine image is presumably designed to assure
Canadians that his friendliness towards George Bush is not softness.
In fact, Canada already has an official national animal: the beaver. It
is industrious but shy, and spends most of its time eating through
trees in order to create dams. That worthy, but undynamic, image is
just the one that some Canadians would like to live down.
So what would the image consultants have advised? Animals are fine,
they say. The United States is symbolised by the bald eagle, and then
there are the Chinese dragon, the Russian bear, and the British lion.
But the prime minister may have tried too hard. The chosen beast has to
appeal to the heart rather than the head, which the wolverine does not,
says Nicolas Papadopoulos, a country-branding specialist at Ottawa's
Carleton University.
THE ECONOMIST has already made its suggestion. We put a moose in
sunglasses on our cover[1] in 2003 when we argued that Canada's
combination of muscular North American capitalism and socially tolerant
democracy was rather cool. With global warming melting the frozen
north, the image is bang up-to-date. But the competent Mr Harper just
doesn't do cool.
The wolverine: A large land weasel that is know to give off an unpleasant odour and has an unstable nature...and is also known as "skunk bear" and "nasty cat".
Apparently in a battle fight between a wolverine and a moose, it could take a moose with the help of a snow bank but not a black bear...but how does it fair against an elephant or an eagle...that's the question...lol...if there really is any real significance to the animal/country representation...
Okay, so the beaver or the loon may not be the fiercest of animals...but if I was driving down the highway and I had to face a moose or a wolverine, I am sure my car could withstand the wolverine...but the tall Canadian moose, that's an animal you don't want to mess with.... and be able to walk away from…
The wolverine is not a good depiction of Canada.
S.
TENACIOUS, SMELLY--AND UNCOOL
Feb 15th 2007
Canada looks for a new image
CLOSE your eyes and think of Canada. Perhaps the picture that comes to
mind is one of a country of cold winters and civilised prosperity. But
Stephen Harper, the country's Conservative prime minister, has another
idea. This month he suggested that the national image was best captured
by the wolverine, a sort of weasel.
That seems odd. Wolverines have some unpleasant habits. They emit a
foul-smelling musk and eat carrion. They are close relatives of skunks
and their name translates as "glutton" in French. But Mr Harper was
thinking of their reputation for aggression and tenacity in the face of
much larger predators. Canada is no mouse beside the American elephant,
but a wolverine next to a grizzly bear, he said. "We may be smaller but
we're no less fierce about protecting our territory."
Mr Harper knows something about rebranding. He has changed his own
image from angry western neo-conservative to congenial centrist. He is
busy trying to repaint in green a government of climate-change
sceptics. The wolverine image is presumably designed to assure
Canadians that his friendliness towards George Bush is not softness.
In fact, Canada already has an official national animal: the beaver. It
is industrious but shy, and spends most of its time eating through
trees in order to create dams. That worthy, but undynamic, image is
just the one that some Canadians would like to live down.
So what would the image consultants have advised? Animals are fine,
they say. The United States is symbolised by the bald eagle, and then
there are the Chinese dragon, the Russian bear, and the British lion.
But the prime minister may have tried too hard. The chosen beast has to
appeal to the heart rather than the head, which the wolverine does not,
says Nicolas Papadopoulos, a country-branding specialist at Ottawa's
Carleton University.
THE ECONOMIST has already made its suggestion. We put a moose in
sunglasses on our cover[1] in 2003 when we argued that Canada's
combination of muscular North American capitalism and socially tolerant
democracy was rather cool. With global warming melting the frozen
north, the image is bang up-to-date. But the competent Mr Harper just
doesn't do cool.
posted by Sarah Wong at 6:56 PM
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