‘Good time’ for McGill to retire Redmen handle

Ross Montour said the time is right for Montreal’s McGill University to change its team nickname.

Montour, a chief on the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, said that his First Nations community south of the city would welcome a move from McGill to stop calling its men’s sports teams the Redmen.

He may get his wish by the end of the year as an online petition posted by the Students’ Society of McGill University has garnered nearly 10,000 signatures and led to a referendum among the student body on the issue starting Friday.

“It’s a good time for that to happen,” Montour said Wednesday.

“I think it’s a healthy sign. The fact that the petition exists and that there are people willing to take it on as an issue for them, I couldn’t be happier, really.

“Over time I think people have changed. People are learning to question: ‘Really, is that OK?’ ”

McGill’s male teams are called the Redmen, while their female teams are the Martlets, an English heraldic bird that resembles a swift or a house martin.

The Redmen nickname dates to the 1920s. Some alumni claim the name’s origin is either a tribute to the team’s red uniforms or the red hair of Scot founder James McGill and not a pejorative term to describe Indigenous peoples.

But there have been such connections in the past.

Through the 1950s, male and female teams were colloquially referred to as the “Indians” or the “Squaws” respectively.

Several McGill sports teams used a stylized logo with an Indigenous male wearing a headdress in the 1980s until the school stopped using the emblem in 1992.

“I’ve heard the sort of disclaimer that it’s only because of the colour of the uniforms, but I think that’s a pretty thin defence of the name,” Montour said. “It’s from another era, which clearly thought it was OK to do that.”