The District of Sechelt's new logo was unveiled to boos and angry comments from the audience gathered at the March 6 regular council meeting.
"I was totally embarrassed for the judges and invited guests, including contest winners, by the boorish behaviour of some members of the gallery at the regular council meeting," said Coun. Doug Hockley, who spearheaded the effort to come up with a new logo for Sechelt. "They were demonstrating disgraceful behaviour, but for some of them I have come to expect that, and I take it as I recognize the ignorant source, but for the guests who came to participate in the unveiling, I was embarrassed for Sechelt."
Hockley launched a contest for residents to come up with their own logo and tagline for Sechelt after stumbling upon another company that had Sechelt's former tagline "Naturally Spirited" copyrighted.
The former tagline and logo (a circle of yellow S's) was created by an off-Coast company at a cost of around $23,000, something Hockley also felt was inappropriate.
In February 2012, after being elected to council, Hockley came up with a contest to have locals design a new logo.
After extending the deadline to encourage more entries, the contest closed on Nov. 21 with about 80 submissions. Three winners were chosen.
From there Hockley and local designer Ron Steven worked to create "a composite of the top three in the second week of January," Hockley said.
Sechelt's arts coordinator Siobhan Smith was also queried for her input and then a selection of composites was distributed to council for voting.
"So each council member got to choose, independently, [his or her] first and second preferences," Hockley said.
The winning design depicts a yellow half sun beside the name Sechelt in a sans-serif font atop three wavy lines of blue, green and blue, meant to symbolize "the land between two waters," which was the original tagline for Sechelt. Land between two waters is also the literal meaning of the First Nation word Sechelt.
"I really want to thank Mr. Ron Steven for his invaluable assistance in composing all of the elements presented over the last year into the final conclusion. As a resident artist of Sechelt, he exemplifies exactly what I knew in my heart existed in bringing about this community's graphic identity," Hockley said after unveiling the logo.
His enthusiasm wasn't shared by those in the gallery that night, who booed at the unveiling and called out questions like: "All that for this?" and "That's it?"
But Hockley stood behind the logo, saying it was fully owned by the District of Sechelt and created locally at a cost of about $875, not including the cash prizes given out for the contest.
"The overall loaded cost for this year-long process came in at under $2,500," Hockley said. "Compare to the $23,280 expense for an off-Coast produced, no community involved product that the previous council thought was good even though it had someone else's tagline."
He said the new logo is already being printed on District materials, but noted signs and vehicles will get the new logo when they are being repaired or purchased in the future.
