Anything that happens in the United States tends to also happen later in Canada. The Washington NFL franchise has abandoned their “Redskins” nickname (although to many the “Washington” part is at least as offensive) but have not yet announced their new moniker. Edmonton is in the same situation, with no new name yet decided upon:
“Edmonton eskimos wordmark” by Pabstheiniker is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
I said an anticipatory farewell to the name of the Edmonton Eskimos football club in this space in 2017; on Tuesday the team’s front office executed the sentence, announcing that the team’s nickname, in use for Edmonton sports clubs for over 110 years, will be retired. (Note that the Canadian Football League is only 62 years old.)
But there is always some kind of minor surprise on the scaffold, and in this case it was that the team has not yet decided on a new name. This, I see, is where I made a mistake back in 2017.
I saw that getting rid of “Eskimos” was a relatively simple problem with an affordable cost that would have to be paid eventually. In the event, the final push was supplied, unsurprisingly, by corporate sponsors — themselves all in a state of vulnerability and panic in conditions of pandemic disease. The CFL team had played public-relations defence whenever the issue was raised aggressively before; they were, self-evidently, playing for time.
I noted in 2017 that the same P.R. apparatus was obviously trying to propagate “Empire” as an alternative by-word for the team, and it filed a trademark application for “Edmonton Empire” in 2018. The team can start selling new green-and-gold gear to fans as soon as it settles on something, and a new nickname beginning with “E” would preserve the team’s stylish double-E logo. “Empire” might even work well with the team colours if “gold” were interpreted more literally in the uniform, rather than serving as sales talk for “yellow.”
[…]
Speaking as an Edmonton-born fan of Edmonton Ellipsoidal Ball Sport Sodality, I see now that I may have prepared adequately for the end of the Eskimos, but my heart didn’t anticipate the dual nature of this decision any more than my brain did. I know — hell, my friends and my readers know — that I will dislike whatever they pick. Contests and polls of the public produce embarrassments like “The Toronto Raptors,” so the mere thought of any such exercise plunges me into despond.
