A university based in Sudbury, Ontario, is considering changing the name of its varsity sports teams to align better with its mandate and to alleviate concerns over the current name’s association to the colonization of Indigenous people.
Laurentian University is a member of the Ontario University Athletics conference of U Sports with men’s and women’s teams competing in basketball, cross country, curling, soccer, track and field, golf and nordic skiing. The school’s teams have been known as the Voyageurs since it was founded in the 1960s.
But the university’s president told CBC News last week that a name change could be in the works.
“This initiative really came out of our strategic planning process a few years ago where we did a widespread community consultation,” Laurentian president Lynn Wells said. “One of the things that was heard during that process was a desire to review the varsity brand.”
Wells added that Laurentian has put the call out to the Sudbury community for name suggestions. The new name should align with the university’s “tricultural mandate of offering an outstanding university experience, in English and French with a comprehensive approach to Indigenous (First Nations, Métis and Inuit) education.” It should also fit with their traditional blue-and-gold colour scheme, and is “chantable and cheerable.”
But Wells also acknowledged that many alumni have strong feelings about the name, and she has invited them to be part of the consultation process.
Voyageurs were 18th- and 19th-century French and French-Canadian fur traders who transported furs by canoe throughout what is now Canada and the United States. In February 2020, the Sudbury News reported that Laurentian was shelving its “Victor the Voyageur” mascot after students raised concerns that both it and the team name symbolized colonization and the destruction of Indigenous culture.
“A lot of the pushback I’ve received in saying that is people saying the voyageurs weren’t all bad, but we still need to consider the fact that they do represent colonization,” said Ryan Michael Wildgoose, who was pursuing a Ph.D. in human studies at Laurentian in 2020. “Therefore on a university campus with a strong Indigenous cultural and a tricultural mandate, we need to be conscious of what that means for the Indigenous peoples.”
Wells told CBC News that “all options are on the table” ahead of the September 21 deadline for new name suggestions.
“We want to make sure that we’re responsive to what the community wants in terms of the varsity brand, what resonates with the community, what makes people feel comfortable and that they have a sense of belonging with the institution,” she said.
