A petition to save the city’s sternwheeler logo has begun to circulate.
“I think if I can save the logo, I can save thousands of dollars that we could spend elsewhere in the city,” said Vanessa Brault, who is circulating the petition.
Brault hit the streets with her petition Wednesday, and as of press time had already garnered 400 signatures.
“My goal is to get 1,000 signatures by Monday,” she said.
In the initial survey conducted by the city, a majority of the almost 700 respondents indicated they would be open to changing the logo.
“I’m getting a lot of support that indicates that’s not quite a fair representation of how the citizens feel,” said Brault. “If 681 people is enough for them to go ahead and do this, then 1,000 is something I really feel they can’t ignore.”
She is also conducting an informal survey about the city’s slogan.
“I’m asking are you satisfied with the current logo, ‘The Wilderness City,’ and I’m getting 90 per cent yeses on that,” she said.
The city missed an opportunity to really engage the public, said local artist Jim Robb.
“If they would have given a $500 prize I think the children of the Yukon would have come up with something more original and save all those thousands of dollars,” he said. “They should have asked everybody from truck drivers to artists.”
Brault is hoping that along with her petition she can get some members of the public to write letters to mayor and council before she appears in the chamber on Monday.
She has also created a Facebook group called, Whitehorse Save Our Ship, to raise awareness about the issue.
The city has already spent $70,000 developing the new logo and slogan.
But it hasn’t said how much it’s going to cost to implement it.
That’s the money that Brault is trying to save.
“I really feel strongly that this is not a good place to be putting our money,” she said. “Even if our logo is outdated, we have bigger things to worry about.”
Contact Josh Kerr at
joshk@yukon-news.com