What does the Royal City name conjure up? Stuffy, old-fashioned British colonialism? Or a proud nod to the city’s rich history?
It’s a conversation we recently had in the newsroom, when a few of us mulled over how much the Royal City moniker really means to residents, if anything.
It certainly meant something in 2004, when a plan to drop the Royal City tag was buried in the back pages of a city document. Residents were aghast when The Record revealed the suggestion that the city drop the historic nickname.
The story caused such a flap at city hall that, after it ran, city staff jokingly anointed Record reporter Theresa McManus with her very own Royal City paper crown at a public meeting. (She still has it after all of these years.)
The story ran on the front page of the paper with the headline “City to look at ditching ‘royal’ name.”
McManus had discovered the name change recommendation while flipping through a synopsis of an economic development workshop held by the city. Buried on one of the last pages of the document, she read a paragraph that said the city needed to get away from the crown logo and Royal City line.
“It only has a small audience, which is resident and aging. Younger people don’t know or care about a Royal City. Don’t want to lose the historical component but need to incorporate it in a new way,” the document said.
The city never made a move toward dropping the name, and the furor subsided.
But flash forward almost 10 years, when “Condo King” Bob Rennie came to town as the keynote speaker for an economic development forum, where he suggested the city develop a hip “brand” and ditch the Royal City nickname in order to attract hip 30-somethings to town.
Rennie thought the city should adopt the acronym “NW” as a way to attract young homebuyers. His comments fired up Vancouver Sun columnist Shelley Fralic enough for her to pen a biting – and characteristically witty – column on Rennie’s calls for a rebrand.
Fralic, a longtime New Westminster resident, slammed the “Renniefication,” in the Sun.
“You’d like us to replace our Royal City insignia with NW, which you note can also stand for Northwest, … by the way, we’re northwest of nothing except Surrey,” she wrote.
There’s no doubt where Fralic stands on the name.
But what do others think about a tag that embraces English cultural traditions that have little to do with the city’s modern-day multicultural tapestry?
The city was named New Westminster by Queen Victoria herself – from that comes the Royal City moniker.
Now, more than 150 years later, is it time to cultivate a new nickname for the modern era?
And, if so, should it simply be New West? Twitter seems to think so.
There’s one dominant hashtag (a word or phrase that helps one hone in on a particular topic on Twitter) for those who want to know what is happening in the city by the Fraser.
It’s not #RoyalCity they search for. But key in #NewWest, and there are lots of locals bantering back and forth about the Royal City.
Maybe our digital tattoo says more about where we are going than where we have been.
Niki Hope is a reporter with The Record.
