Twitter users name Olympic champion’s baby
Mikkelson and husband announced winning name over video-streaming app
After thousands of votes from across the country, the baby that Canada helped name has arrived.
Calder Allan William Reid was born in Calgary around noon Sunday, following “42 lovely hours of labour,” his hockey champ mom told the Star.
Earlier this year, Olympic women’s hockey champion Meaghan Mikkelson, who has gold medals from the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics, and her husband Scott Reid launched their #NameMyBaby challenge, inviting Canadians from coast to coast to make name suggestions on Twitter.
The Calgary couple narrowed it down to eight options this summer — Molson, Everett, Carter, Emerson, Vaughn, Mikael, Spencer and the eventual winner, Calder — and the names faced off in a hockey playoffstyle bracket. In the end, more than 3,500 votes came in, with a hockeyinspired name coming out on top. The couple had their favourites along the way, but Mikkelson said they’re happy with the winner, which they announced live on Twitter through video-streaming app Periscope on Monday.
“The name suits him so perfectly,” she said. “When you look at him, he’s definitely a little Calder.”
Three or four people suggested the name, which hadn’t been on the couple’s radar. But something about it stuck.
“I thought, oh, you know what, that’s actually a cool name,” Mikkelson said. “So that’s how it made its way on to the list.”
With dark hair and “darkish-blueish” eyes, the eight-pound-seven-ounce baby boy looks a bit like both his parents, added the ‘Hockey Mom’ blogger, who also came second on The Amazing Race Canada last year with teammate Natalie Spooner. Mikkelson said the couple decided on the unconventional naming approach after a suggestion from a friend — and didn’t expect the even- tual outpouring of support online. The whole thing “just kind of blew up,” she said.
“It’ll be a really cool story to tell the little guy when he gets older, too,” Mikkelson said. “It was Canada that named him.” The hockey connection ‘Calder’ might just be the perfect name for the newest member of this hockey-loving family.
In the NHL, for instance, there’s the Calder Memorial Trophy given to the rookie of the year — an award named in honour of Frank Calder, the league’s president from its inception in 1917 to his death in 1943.
“My great-uncle (Jim McFadden) actually won that with the Detroit Red Wings in the 1950s,” Mikkelson said. On top of that, her dad Bill won the Calder Cup in the 1970s, “which is like the Stanley Cup of the American Hockey League.”
So if little Calder lives up to his name — and his hockey heritage — he’ll be on the ice in no time.
“My husband played in the minor pros for years and years,” Mikkelson said. “And his dad played hockey, and there’s a lot of hockey in his family and my family.”
Mikkelson hopes to return to Team Canada in 2016 and go for gold at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games.