Trek lover’s ASIMIL8 plate gets pulled
Whether “assimilation” is by fictional aliens in the television series Star Trek or in real life against Indigenous people, the meaning is the same and should never have been approved for a personalized licence plate, a senior executive with Manitoba Public Insurance says in internal email.
The unusual government discussion of alien species came during panicked discussions by senior staff at the Crown corporation that approves and issues the province’s licence plates after social media buzz about a Star Trek fan’s personalized plate “ASIMIL8.”
The government immediately cancelled the plate in 2017, after two years of it decorating Nicholas Troller’s truck. For Troller, the phrase is associated with the Borg, a partially cybernetic group of protagonists in the science-fiction series. The Borg grow by assimilating new species into its collective.
His plate was surrounded by slogans reflecting the Borg’s other catchphrases: “We are the Borg” and “Resistance is futile.”
Troller filed a court challenge in 2017, supported by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a conservative non-profit organization that defends constitutional freedoms through litigation.
As part of the court process, government emails from staff at Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI) were recently filed in court.
The communications show the plate was cancelled not after a formal complaint but when a social media post was spotted by a government employee. Further, the plate should never have been issued in the first place, Ward Keith, vice-president of communications with MPI, said in emails.
“Are there other plates out there that we need to be concerned about? We need a complete listing for review,” Keith wrote in an email April 24, the day he learned of the plate.
“This is really, really serious and we are considering serious disciplinary action for those who were involved and contributed to approving a plate that is so obviously inappropriate at a time when there was significant media coverage about the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, etc ...”
Even after he heard Troller’s explanation that it was a Star Trek reference and not meant as an offensive message about Indigenous people, Keith said it made no difference.
“Even with the rationale he provided, the meaning is the exact same regardless of what race — human or alien — it applies to. My only concern is if we get asked why we issued it in the first place.”
Alarm bells started ringing when a fellow Manitoba government employee saw a Facebook post about the plate and forwarded it to MPI on April 24, 2017, asking: “Is this a real MPIissued plate?”
By April 27, Troller seemed to have accepted that he had lost the plate and requested a replacement with a different Star Trek reference: LOCUTUS, the name of an important Borg character.