Hello everyone! I'm popping back from my little blogging hiatus due to exciting, breaking news!
After years of criticism about its inappropriate use of an "indigenous-people-as-mascots" team name, the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League finally bowed to pressure yesterday and dropped the name. YAY!
Until then, team management had tried to avoid this result by relying on a series of evasive, intellectually dishonest and increasingly nonsensical rationalizations. Desperately clinging to that insensitive name also simply reinforced the Canadian stereotype of Albertans as a bunch of backward rednecks who can't move with the times, another negative image that we don't need either.
What changed? Taking a page from the playbook of sponsors who forced the Washington NFL team to change its racist name, a couple of Edmonton's sponsors similarly threatened to withdraw financial support. The entire CFL is on the verge of economic disaster right now anyway due to Covid-19 so no team can afford to lose any sponsors. MONEY TALKS, BABY!
A new team name will be chosen in due course. There's no huge rush because it's not clear if there will even be a CFL season this year. But, as always, I am ready, willing and able to offer suggestions, advice and wise counsel on this important matter.
The team does want to keep its "Double E" logo, so that will put some alphabetical limitations on a new name. If we go the wildlife route, there's the following possibilities: eagles, elks, emus, egrets, elephants or eels. The "Edmonton Eagles" is a bit too American, I think (despite most of our players actually being Americans). The "Edmonton Elks" could be a good choice since elks are plentiful and native to Alberta, and can be kinda scary, badass mofos if provoked, which brings a bit of an intimidation factor. The other E-wildlife names are clearly non-starters.
Five years ago on this blog, I advocated the "Edmonton Edge" as a new team name because it sounds modern and, well, edgy. Shut up, it's still my favourite until I hear anything better! I will email the team and offer it to them gratis. I'm sure they'll get right on it. If it gets chosen, remember you read it here first, LOL!
My sister rather waggishly advanced the "Edmonton Enemas" as the new team name, but she's a Saskatchewan Roughriders fan and you know how they are.
I strongly suspect, however, that the new team name will be something like the "Edmonton Energy" in order to remind everyone of Alberta's oil-and-gas based economy. Even though hard times are upon that industry right now, Alberta never gives up hope of reclaiming its powerhouse economic status.
During last year's Translesbigayapalooza, I wrote a post about the first lesbian book and the first gay book I ever read. Afterwards, I realized:
"D'oh! I should have written about
the first TRANS book I ever read too!"
So, on the principle of better late than never, here it is!
In her early life, Jan Morris was James Morris, a well-known Welsh historian, author and travel writer. He was also the reporter embedded with Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953 when they reached the summit of Everest. A former soldier and British spy as well, James Morris began transitioning in 1964 at the age of 38. In 1974 Jan Morris released her autobiography Conundrum about her life path from male to female. The famous opening words of the book are:
"I was three or perhaps four years old
when I realized that I had been born
into the wrong body, and should really be a girl.
I remember the moment well, and it is
the earliest memory of my life."
In the 1970s, openly transsexual/transgender people were still pretty rare and the book became a sensation and a best-seller. I think Jan Morris's honest and moving account helped many people, including me, understand this profound journey better than we might otherwise have.
In 1949, James Morris had married Elizabeth Tuckniss and they had 5 children together. British law forced the couple to divorce following Jan Morris's transition (because same-sex marriage was illegal), but their relationship endured and they remain a couple to this day, 71 years later.
Now 93, Jan Morris's latest book Thinking Again: A Diary has just been published in the UK and will be released in North America in a few months. Among her many honours, she has been named by The Advocate as one of its 2020 Women of the Year.
