#06 - The Great Plate Debate

Will a proposed raven-shaped licence plate ever take flight?

When the Yukon government announced plans to remove the iconic gold panner from our licence plate in the late 1980s, public outrage put an end to that idea. The miner, who’d been riding the bumpers of Yukon vehicles since 1953, was instead given a multi-colour makeover. And so he remained, undisturbed in his crouch beneath “The Klondike,” for almost two decades.

Then a Yukoner named Bill Barnie re-opened the plate debate. Or, as some critics might say, he went stark raven mad.

Years ago, Barnie was the art teacher at my Whitehorse high school, where he had the good fortune never to count me among his students. Now, the 60-year-old owns The Frame Shop, does fine art printing, and produces the occasional original painting. But his most famous—and controversial—endeavour is almost certainly his ongoing effort to give the Yukon a licence plate in the shape of its official bird.

“I came to the Yukon in ’84 from the NWT, so I was pretty familiar with shaped plates and I always felt that a shaped plate here would draw attention to the Yukon,” Barnie tells me.

Unfortunately, when he decided to release his most recent raven-shaped plate prototype into the wilds of public opinion in 2006, it flew straight into the face of the resident gold panner. And that’s about as far as it went.

According to Barnie, people got the wrong idea.

“One of the main reasons it never went through is a lot of people felt, incorrectly, that it was being proposed as a replacement for the existing plate—and I’ve never done that,” he explains. “The raven plate was always proposed as a designer plate that you’d actually have to pay a premium for.”

But Yukoners who are protective of the miner’s exalted status weren’t the only vocal locals who had a bone to pick with Barnie’s raven. While some loved the design, others suggested that the artist took excessive licence in his interpretation of the raven’s shape. Barnie has already made some changes, but he emphasizes that there are design constraints.

“It will always be an abstract just because it also has to function as a licence plate,” he says. “There has to be four holes…. There has to be certain room for the lettering…. But I believe, as much as people have criticized the design I’ve come up with, that my plate looks more like a raven than the NWT’s plate looks like a polar bear.”

This argument may only serve to ruffle the feathers of a whole new batch of Northerners. Yet Barnie forges ahead on the strength of his convictions and thick skin. He maintains that his plate design is a surefire winner because it also incorporates the colours black and gold, which have a long association with placer mining.

“I think that my plate—my raven plate—says more about the Yukon than anything that has ever been said before, because it speaks to its wildlife and it speaks to its history and it’s also representative of one of the First Nation clans in the Yukon, which have the crow as their symbol.”

However, Barnie won’t play favourites with the clans.

“After the raven plate comes out,” he promises, “I’m going to propose a wolf plate.”

His note of certainty seems completely genuine.

“I’m used to seeing things happen,” Barnie says, alluding to his contributions to the development of the Yukon Arts Centre and Whitehorse’s waterfront trolley. “I’m a little bit frustrated that this one is taking so long, but….”

Sooner or later, he suggests, the raven plate will get off the ground and eventually soar to great heights in the collectibles market.

“I’ll always pursue it,“ he says. “I’m always willing to talk about the raven plate.”

This column was first published in the November/December 2007 issue of above&beyond magazine.

© 2007 Mark Koepke