Fair's fair

A while ago, came the challenge of a contest to create a new name for Edmonton's summer exhibition, the fair formerly know as "Klondike Days" after a peripheral connection to the Yukon / Klondike goldrush of 1898 and after. A few hundred would be goldrushers tried to make it to the goldfields overland from Edmonton over a trail that was not really there.

More recently it has been unaffectionately known as "CapitalEx."

Today, a short list of finalists, announced by the proud sponsors:

To help us choose the finalists, a selection group including representatives
from the Edmonton Journal, Global Edmonton and Northlands reviewed
all the submissions and narrowed it down to six based on the following criteria:

1. Relevance to the 21st century ahead.
2. Consideration of the incredible historic growth and
continued diversification of Edmonton’s multi-cultural fabric.
3. Defining of the community spirit and outwardly fun
characteristics that make Edmontonians who they are.
4. Embracing of all demographics from new 21st century
babies through to our shining senior citizens.
5. Creative platforms enabling commercial partners to
activate and deliver diverse and intriguing experiences.
6. Agility that will allow a fresh and exciting
new theme to be incorporated every year.

And the finalists are:::

EdFest (submitted by Cynthia Chizen, Leduc County)
The Edmonton Exhibition (submitted by Jon Brenda, Edmonton)
Edmonton Summer Exhibition (submitted by Donna Zaozirny, Edmonton)
K-Days (submitted by Chad Willsey, Edmonton)  [Note: K-Days is a nickname for "Klondike Days]
River City Festival (submitted by Ryan Tomko, Edmonton)
River City Summer Fair (submitted by Joe Romerowicz, Edmonton)

Sorry--but this is the kind of list that gives "prosaic" a bad name.  And it seems to ignore the list of desirable qualities pretty much completely. In fact, if these are the six best, then maybe it was time to declare "No Contest" and revisit the drawing board.

On one Facebook site, only "River City Festival" has a single vote of sympathy. I guess it and the other "River City" option, the "Summer Fair,"  have the advantage of a recurring theme--every year the exhibition can be opened by a big parade featuring seventy-six trombones. But I hope we don't get sued for copyright infringement or have marks taken away for plagiarism. "River City" is not just a nickname for Edmonton, after all. It is the fictional Iowa town setting for Meredith Willson's hit, The Music Man.

And with the name "River City," we can annually focus our need to decorate and costume by picking a different river and its history to centre on. We could be Mississippi river boat gamblers one year, Walt Disney Missouri river pirates another. We could even get ourselves up in marching band regalia.