WHO DESIGNED THE CANADA RED MITTENS?
Photo Courtesy of Marcas Major
www.relofone.blogspot.com
I've been trying to find out the answer to this question for months now and finally, Marcas Major, the Canada Rd Mitten designer himself, wrote about his inspirational maple leaf mittens design this week on his utterly fascinating, 'think way outside the box' blog.
On November 30, 2007 Marcas Major emailed his business proposal to Vanoc, followed on December 1, 2007 by an email to Vanoc with the above photo of the prototype of his Olympic mittens with a maple leaf in the palm.
Excerpt from Marcas Majors original email proposal:
"Please share my dream of attending the 2010 Winter Olympics by letting me make this fun idea a reality. I am originally from Kimberley, BC and know that all Canadians would be proud of displaying a part of Canadian heritage with an enthusiastic wave to the world!"
Since then, he has received several emails from Vanoc and there was quite a bit of emailing back and forth for quite awhile with the usual corporate linguistics making the required business actions clear as mud. Marcas was told that his idea had been entered into the database and that that was all he could do in terms of having his proposal accepted. Apparently, he also would need to come to Vancouver to attend a business networking aka 'schmooze festival' as well as go through the daunting bidding process to gain the right to be involved with any aspect of the production or distribution of the final product.
But gee whizzickers Canada! I think this would normally be classified as 'intellectual property'. When a person submits a song, for example, to the music industry, then that song is still owned by that song writer/musician; the song idea, the lyrics and the music. Other business entities would then bid for the right to copy, produce, market and distribute that song, giving the agreed upon share of the profits to the person who originally created it.
I wonder why this would be any different. Why would we even want it to be any different. Marcas says that while he was wildly excited to see his idea come to fruition on opening ceremony day, he also feels kind of sad that he was somehow excluded from taking part in the entire Olympic Celebration.
Though it is clear from reading through the thread of emails that Marcas' prototype is definitely where the design came from, he has never received any public credit for his design, nor the opportunity to be a part of the torch relay, the opening ceremonies or any event at all.
Unbelievably, to this date, our great Canadian designer of our now famous mitts STILL does not even have a pair of the red mitts to call his own!
So thanks, from all the world, Marcas Major, for a superbly stellar idea and design for these utterly captivating, heart warming and world uniting little red mitts. I hope you at least get a letter of thanks from VANOC at some point and many letters of support from around the world.
And somebody, PLEASE, send this original Canadian mitten designer a pair of the mitts that he designed.
O CANADA! OMG!
BUY CANADA RED MITTENS HERE
