Riverview Elementary School revealed the Raven as their new school mascot in a school-wide assembly on Monday morning (May 6).
The school held nominations for the new mascot, with each class suggesting their own idea. The ideas were required to meet a few specific criteria: the name of the new mascot needed to start with an “r” in order to match the school’s name, it had to be a living creature, as well as significant to the local area and to the local culture and population. From that criteria, several classes suggested the raven, while others diverged.
Introducing the new mascot to the school, Principal Rob McGauley told students why they chose the raven: “We see them on a regular basis around Quesnel. You hear them. And they’ve also had a really important role with the First Nations myths and legend.”
The crowd of students gathered for the reveal responded largely with cheers at the sight of the new logo, which was designed by grade seven student Isaiah McMullen and school counsellor Lance Lindblom.
The pair spoke to the students about the thought and effort behind the design. They originally started working on the logo with the old roadrunner mascot, which they were trying to update for the school basketball team.
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When it came out that the school would be searching for a new mascot, it was back to the drawing board for McMullen and Lindblom, who had spent two months working on the logo already. When they heard what the new mascot would be, they set out to make the old logo fit. “So we swapped out a basketball for a medicine wheel, we swapped out a phoenix for a raven, and we added a tail and gave it a first nations touch,” says McMullen.
McMullen’s class takes part in something called Genius Hour, where the students get to choose a focus that they’re actually interested in and try to create a project around it, says Lindblom. “So he wanted to do some designing work and I do a lot of work with photoshop, so I told him it would be a good chance to see how photoshop works, and then to make a logo as well.”
Now, the logo will appear on the school’s official letterhead, uniforms, and around the school. Principal McGauley also hinted the logo might eventually appear on t-shirts and hoodies students could buy.
McMullen says he thinks the design would be “pretty adorable” on a shirt, and that he’s still surprised the logo was chosen at the official emblem of the school.
Heather Norman
Community Reporter
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