Further influencing the design of the 1952 license plate was the revelation in 1950 that, for the first time, Canadian tourists had spent more in the United States than had American tourists coming to Canada.

In May of that year, the American Consul General in Vancouver, Alfred Klieforth, had given a speech to the Vancouver Junior Chamber of Commerce in which he suggested that Americans travel to Canada in order to “find different things from those seen at home” and that “some organization should seize on the colorful traditions of the people of different nationalities in Vancouver and develop them.”  Klieforth then mentioned license plates as the ideal way to “increase the tourist trade” through the use of a unique symbol or slogan.

Taking their cue, local business leaders determined that British Columbia needed differentiate itself from the rest of the continent as a tourist destination and that the best way to do this was through the commodification of West Coast Native art culture - namely the totem pole.

To this end, the “Totem-Land Society” was formed in July of 1950 and included a “who's who” of the Vancouver political and business elite. Honourary positions were granted to the Premier (Byron Johnson), Attorney-General (Gordon Wismer), Minister of Trade and Industry (Leslie Eyres), and President of the BC Native Brotherhood (Chief William Scow). Active positions included the Mayor of Vancouver (Charles Thompson), President of the PNE (H.M. King), President of the Vancouver Board of Trade (William Swan), President of the BCAA (Peard Sutherland), and so on ...

In announcing the group, Mayor Thompson declared its purpose was to help “publicize B.C. and preserve the Indian science of totem-carving” with the specific goal of lobbying the provincial government to include a Thunderbird totem pole emblem and “Totem-Land” slogan on British Columbia license plates.

While the inclusion of a totem slogan and emblem was reported to be a “long standing dream” of the group's honourary solicitor R. Rowe Holland, it was the Society's Secretary, Harry Duker who was the “power behind [the] movement to popularize [the] totem pole as [a] tourist attraction.”

Duker's job of getting the emblem on license plates was certainly aided by the presence in the Society of Wismer, who was responsible for the MVB as Attorney-General, and Eyres. Both men were also reported to have endorsed the idea of a totem emblem.

	At left is Harry Duker, whose shtick included always being seen sporting a neck tie displaying a totem design (as shown). At centre is R. Rowe Holland and at right is Attorney-General Gordon Wismer.

Like clockwork, the Vancouver Province newspaper chimes in with an editorial a few days later praising these “publicly-spirited men” and extolling the virtues of a totem pole on BC license plates (“free advertising”!).

A mere one-month later, the Society appeared to have achieved its objective when Superintendent Hood (who reported to Wismer) announced that “the new semi-permanent license plates, to be issued in 1952, will carry the Thunderbird figure as emblematic of B.C.” (NOTE: the inclusion of an emblem on a license plate was labeled by the press as going “American”)

In rejecting the inclusion of the “Totem Land” slogan, Hood provided a somewhat implausible excuse of the dies for the new plates having already been settled upon and it was too late to adjust these for the slogan (but not the dies?).  More likely was that there simply was not enough space on the new plates to accommodate the date, serial number, jurisdiction and, now, the inclusion of an emblem.

What changed between August of 1950 and March of 1951 is unknown, but when Members of the Legislature were provided with a sneak peak of the 1952 license plates, the Totem had been replaced with an outline of a Maple Leaf!

The Vancouver Province newspaper quickly printed an editorial expressing its disappointment. After many years of asking the provincial government to put some form of emblem on license plates the newspaper had hoped that the emblem would “be more than the black maple leaf now proposed ... [and that] a colorful B.C. totem pole would be a better highway ambassador when our cars on traveling in far places.”

While it is not known what had served as the inspiration for placing the Maple Leaf on the plates, the notion that provincial license plates should indicate “CANADA” in order to help orient Americans as to where the driver resided had been floating around for years.

What happened next is unknown and probably lost to time, but two months later (May of 1951) it was being reported that “some thousands of the 1952 plates have already been made”, and by September of 1951 it was formally confirmed that the design of these plates had been changed to include a totem pole ... inside the maple leaf emblem!

This emblem, likely the result of bureaucratic decision-making by committee, had the result of detracting from both the Maple Leaf and the Thunderbird as they each became lost within the other.

The design was criticized almost immediately after its unveiling. The Province newspaper acknowledged the shortcomings of the design and editorialised that “the totem pole should look like a totem pole” while the Victoria Daily Colonist questioned the relevance of totem poles to contemporary British Columbia (“How many genuine Indian carvings are left . . . to see?”) and the merits of the design (“It isn’t simple enough to be really striking”).

The Totem-Land Society was even less forgiving, proclaiming “it doesn’t look like anything. The totem is not even a copy of an original and is practically obliterated on the maple leaf background.  All that was needed was a bright totem pole and the word “Totem-Land” or better still, “Land of the Totem” . . . we are making a mess of a colourful and interesting publicity idea for B.C.”

It also soon came to light that the Totem emblem had been copyrighted to the Vancouver Board of Trade and its use by businesses, groups or individuals in promotional or advertising material required the submission of a $35 application ($415 in 2023 dollars) to the Board of Trade for its consideration.

This raised the hackles of many motorists who, in an era when the use of license plates for promotional purposes (whether civic or otherwise) was still contested ground, objected to having their cars turned into mobile billboards for the Vancouver Board of Trade.

To obscure the emblem raised the risk of citation by the police for defacing the license plates, while the Motor Vehicle Branch (MVB) did not offer any alternative options for drivers who objected to the design.

On March 14, 1952 - two weeks into the new vehicle registration year - the major Vancouver newspapers reported that “for the first time in Canadian parliamentary history, an Indian legislator has delivered an address in his native tongue from the floor of a provincial legislature.”

Frank Calder (shown at right) had been elected to the Legislature in 1949 as the Member for Atlin as part of the (then) Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) Party.

After speaking for what was reported to be three minutes in “Nishga” (now spelled Nishga'a), Calder repeated his comments in English “for the benefit of those who are new in my country.”  

The topic that Calder had chosen to speak on was license plates(!) and was summarised by the press as follows:

He advised the [Coalition] government to discard the insignia of a totem pole on the automobile license plates, as it was too small and insignificant to attract attention, and replace it with the legend “totem-land.” This, he thought, would “have the magic touch” compelling attention.

He said totems should be left on the reserves and not be removed to public parks; but if they were to be erected there, and for those already so displayed, native Indians should be secured to explain them to visitors.

Calder went on to serve over 20 years in the Legislature for three different political parties (CCF, NDP and Social Credit) and is most famous for the 1973 Supreme Court of Canada decision that bears his name (Calder v British Columbia) and established that Aboriginal title exists in modern Canadian law. To read more about Frank Calder, Click here!

The Totem also landed at a time when car culture was firmly taking root across North America and governments were just beginning to understand the symbolic significance of “signscapes”; being the use of signage and other symbols on, and along the side of roads aimed at drivers to produce “larger meanings and representations about place, culture and identity.”

License plates were a important component of this as they were “moving signs” whose imagery and slogans could influence “people’s sense of place – [and] how they conceptualize themselves as being geographically situated.”

In the coming years, governments across Canada and the United States would increasingly use the design of their license plates to try and script identities.  Yet, according to Jon Leib (see his “Identity, Banal Nationalism, Contestation, and North American License Plates”) this scripting was not always a top-down process, as individuals contested official representations being imposed by the state;

... controversy over the designs of license plates reinforces the contention that “even the most banal forms of nationalism clearly have the potential to become foci of heated identity battles if a perceived sense of threat emerges.”

While the use of the Totem was clearly pursued in support of an economic agenda and not a desire for meaningful reconciliation, its use nevertheless engendered “a perceived sense of threat” amongst some.

Writing in the Vancouver Sun, Harold Weir, confessed that “I realize it's a frightful heresy to say so, but I think ... totem poles are so unspeakably hideous that I would gladly walk a mile to avoid one ... We plaster them all over stationery and even our motor license plates ... but to the great majority of British Columbians these objects are nightmares of grotesque shapes and crude colorings ...”

In Victoria, David Brock was writing in the Daily Times that the Totem is “evidence ... [of] the Motor-Vehicles Branch [compelling] you, whether you like it or not, to drive round advertising your fake eagle-ism. If you refuse to turn your car into a billboard ... of the Eagle clan, then it becomes illegal for you to drive. Which is not only tyranny, but a very nasty pun, what with ill eagle and illegal and all.”

The pages of the Letters to the Editor also carried the opinions of residents, some of them bigoted, such as Gladys Shrapnel of Victoria who complained that “motorists must now carry the effigy of a heathen idol on their motor cars whether they are heathens or not.”

In the Vancouver Sun, an equally bigoted writer using only the initials “K.B.F.” complained “there are enough Americans who think that Granville Street has nothing but Indians on it now without calling our province Totemland or putting totem poles on the plates ... Those who really want to carry a B.C. slogan or emblem on their cars could be given appropriate window stickers through gas stations or tourist information places”.

“Sylvia”, also writing in the Sun, stated that “while I have only friendly feelings for our native B.C. Indians and regard the totem as an interesting specimen of primitive and barbaric art, I can't bring myself to regard it as a suitable emblem for our province ... I don't like it on the motor license plates ...”

Few, however, were as put out by the design as E.A. Simmons, a local Funeral Director (shown at left), who proceeded to wage a one-man crusade against totem poles through the Letter to the Editor pages of the Vancouver Sun and Province.

Writing in the Vancouver Sun, Simmons proclaimed the Totem design to be a “Jumbled Freak” and an embarrassment when traveling outside of the province;

This mess of tin failed to create any degree of impression on my [fellow guests] as to its worth-whileness and my explanation of the historic background and significance of the two emblems, although interesting to my listeners, could not be deciphered by them in that ill-conceived freak of metal.

Simmons lamented that “years ago, we used the excellent and appealing slogan 'Canada's Evergreen Playground.' I am bold enough to suggest that we should re-adopt this as our provincial slogan and carry it as an advertising medium on our license plates.” We shall hear more from Simmons below ...

It was further announced that use of the Totem emblem as well as letters in the serial number was unlikely to be continued and that no decision had been made about the introduction of a slogan such as “Evergreen Playground” or “Dogwood Land”.

Apparently, the use of letters, at least the way they were utilised on the Totem base, was found “to complicate filing systems, and law officers find identification difficult under some circumstances.”

The provincial election of June 1952 had also brought to power the Social Credit Party under W.A.C. Bennett, which had little representation in the Vancouver area or from the Vancouver business community and likely felt little allegiance to the Totem design.

Predictably, the Vancouver business community, supported by the editorial pages of the major daily newspapers rolled into action at this news. The Victoria Times wondered why a slogan such as “The Land of Parks” or something similar could not be used to “draw attention to the attraction of this part of Canada to the tourist?”

In March of 1954, Harry Duker traveled to Victoria in order to lobby the provincial government in the hope that it would retain some form of Totem branding on the 1955 license plates, which were to be manufactured beginning the following month.

Duker's proposed compromise was the inclusion of a “Totemland” slogan to be placed along the top of the new plates.  In a blast from the past, the Victoria Junior Chamber of Commerce (JCC) revived its work from the late 1920s and called for a license plate design that included an insignia promoting the province such as “Sportsman's Paradise” or “Home of the Totem.” Regarding the current Totem design, the declared it to “indecipherable and unintelligible”. (January 1953).

Working against Duker and the JCC was a broader initiative to standardize license plate design across North America in order to facilitate car design and the specifications needed for mounting the plates. This was going to result in a mandatory 6 inch x 12 inch plate size, which was 2 inches shorter than the 1952 base and left little space for a stamped emblem. To read more about this standardization of plates, see the next page; 1955-63.

The usual suspects came out to oppose the continuance of the Totem emblem, including Harold Weir, who reminded his readers that he “would feel silly as all get-out in proclaiming to the world at large that I hailed from 'Totemland' ... When I have to carry that bit of foolery around on my car I'll taker to wearing ruffles on my underpants.”

The Victoria Colonist headlined an article “Totemland Slogan Scored as Fraud Against Tourists” on the basis that “whatever it may have been in the past, B.C. certainly is not a totemland today” and inducing tourists to come to the province to see something that doesn't exist was simply misleading advertising.

On April 26, 1954, the government officially nixed the inclusion of any slogan on the 1955 license plates, including “Totemland”, “Industry Moves West” and “Land of Beauty”.

In a celebratory mood, E.A. Simmons wrote a letter to the Editors of both the Sun and Province newspapers commending the provincial government for “its wisdom” in rejecting the “Totemland” slogan. He further suggested that;

Now that the totem pole has been eliminated from our license plates it would be an opportune time for our provincial and civic publicity bureaus to follow the precedent and discontinue for good the use of this hideous and grotesque design which has no understanding or appeal beyond our local boundaries.

A minor dissent was registered by the Canadian Daughters' League (CDL) who objected to the removal of the Maple Leaf emblem from the license plates.