canada looks for new animal image

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