`KEVIN WAS A CHARACTER'
Creator of Sens logo and mascot dies at 57
With the death this week of Kevin Caradonna, the Sens Nation lost a significant alumnus from its early days, but the spirit Caradonna helped foster between the club and its fans remains an enduring legacy.
A graphic designer and entrepreneur, Caradonna was the creator of the current incarnation of the Senators' mascot, Spartacat — the warmer and friendlier version of an earlier mascot — as well as the club's forward-facing Roman senator logo that for 13 seasons, until this year, was the club's primary crest. He also was responsible for numerous other designs familiar to longtime fans, including the Palladium logo and menus at Marshy's, the former bar and restaurant at the Canadian Tire Centre.
Caradonna also finished third in an international design competition to create the mascots for the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.
Former Senators owner Bruce Firestone, who founded the modern-day franchise, said this week that much of the credit for the strong bond that formed between the hockey club and its fans rests with Caradonna.
“When you're starting a new franchise and trying to get a little closer to your fans, you obviously want to get them involved. In our first year, Spartacat signed 120,000 autographs, so he was by far our most popular player.
“Kevin was such a nice man; gentle, kind and always thoughtful,” he added. “He always had a can-do attitude, and was always willing to listen to what others had to say.
“I just wish him a speedy trip to heaven.”
Former Senators president and CEO Cyril Leeder remembers Caradonna as always full of life.
“Kevin was a great guy. When we asked him to design the Senator logo, I think he felt like we were asking him to be the first man to walk on the moon. I don't think he went home for three days, and he did a great job.”
About a decade ago, Caradonna also started Sportswraps, a company that provides branded sports equipment, including vinyl wraps for water bottles, helmets and lacrosse and hockey sticks, chiefly for minor league teams.
Non-sports fans, meanwhile, may also be familiar with his work. “Every time you enter a City of Ottawa public washroom and see a chart on how to wash your hands properly, think of Kevin,” said his wife, Gina Parkhouse.
Kevin John Caradonna, 57, died of liver disease on Monday at The Ottawa Hospital's Civic campus, decades after receiving a life-saving shunt for the congenital condition at the same hospital. He was on the waiting list for an organ transplant. “That shunt gave him 32 more years of a very good life,” Parkhouse said.
Caradonna was born in 1963 in Toronto and grew up in Manitoulin Island and Espanola, with siblings Deanna and Paul. He moved to Ottawa shortly after graduating at the top of his class at Cambrian College in Sudbury, in 1985. He had a son, Corbin Mott, from a previous marriage.
He was an avid gardener and home renovator, liked to travel and camp, and was a fan of NASCAR, the Senators, and the Toronto Raptors and Blue Jays. He was especially gifted on the air guitar.
“If there was a really good tune playing, he'd start doing his air guitar thing as if he was actually part of a band,” Parkhouse said.
“He was adventurous. He never sat still. He taught me ice-fishing and snowshoeing, and we downhill skied. Winter is a horrible time, but Kevin always found a way to make it exciting.”
He and Parkhouse met in 2005 at Brown's Your Independent Grocer in Stittsville, where he was selling a coupon book he'd designed, and she was a customer.
She approached him to see what he was selling, she recalled, “and he started talking to me and his lip started quivering, and I thought, `Oh, I make this guy nervous. I like that.'”
Leaving the store, she realized she'd forgotten to buy windshield washer fluid, and so went back in, whereupon Caradonna gave her his card and asked her out for coffee.
“And then his lip started quivering again, and I thought, `OK, this guy is not a player — he's sincere.” A few days later, she called. Caradonna worked with the Senators for more than a half dozen years as head of the club's graphic design department, and although not boastful about it, Parkhouse said he took pride in the obvious connection between fans and their mascot.
“He was humble and wouldn't bring it up. But when we went to games, he enjoyed it and always had a smile on his face when he'd see Spartacat across the way, dancing, or on the rink with the kids.”
But Caradonna didn't just create the Spartacat now in use, he periodically was Spartacat, on occasions when whoever was supposed to don the costume was sick or otherwise couldn't make it.
“Kevin was a character in his own right,” Parkhouse said. “He loved stuff like that.
“A lot of people have said they've never met anybody like Kevin, because of his ridiculous energy. He loved life, and lived larger than life.”