Could Montana’s hills grace Alberta plates?
Calgarian says he’s seen mountain scene south of border —
With stylized wheat in the foreground, and rolling hills and mountains in the background, Brent Nicols says he immediately recognized the scenery adorning one of the options for Alberta’s new licence plate.
The Calgary man has travelled extensively in southern Alberta and says it’s the spitting image of a place he’s been before.
The problem is, Nicols claims, that place isn’t in Alberta.
“That’s Sweetgrass Hills in Montana,” he said firmly. “I know that for a fact.”
Earlier this month, the province unveiled three potential designs for a new licence plate, which will be available next spring. The public is encouraged to vote in an online survey to determine which plate will be used.
The design that Nicols believes is based on the Sweetgrass Hills uses a stock photo the province purchased from Shutterstock, said Service Alberta spokeswoman Lisa Elliott. The photo was titled “Foothills of Alberta,” she said.
If a person stands facing south near the Alberta hamlet of Manyberries, Nicols said they’ll see the same view on the other side of the Canada-U.S. border that’s on the plate.
“I’ve been to this place, I’ve travelled the whole of southern Alberta,” he said. “That’s the Sweetgrass Hills. I don’t care what anybody says, I’m telling you that’s what it is.”
As an Albertan, Nicols said he considers it a personal insult that one of the plate designs might not even be representative of the province.
“It’s beautiful scenery,” he said. “But it has nothing to do with Alberta.”
Service Alberta consulted 3M Canada to come up with the design concepts.
In a statement, 3M Canada spokeswoman Carla McFarlane said Service Alberta requested a “representation of an Albertan landscape.”
“The mountains in the designs were meant to generally represent the area landscape and were not intended to represent any particular mountain range,” McFarlane said.
The second plate option is a view of the mountains near Moraine Lake in Banff. The third is an artist’s rendering of a mountain scene, said Elliott.
While it’s not clear whether the first plate depicts Alberta or Montana, government use of imagery has been controversial in the past.
In 2009, the provincial government used a photo of a beach in northern England as part of Alberta’s $250-million rebranding initiative. When the Edmonton Journal revealed that the photo was not, in fact, of an Alberta beach, the government apologized, saying in a statement, “We screwed up. We’re sorry.”
In 2011, the government also came under fire for hiring a Vancouverbased production company to shoot an international tourism campaign for Travel Alberta.