St. Albert is turning 150 years old next year and things are already ramping up. During the wet Rainmaker Rodeo weekend, the city’s sesquicentennial celebration committee let a huge prairie cow out of the bag on one of the many parade floats. It’s called Moostoos, a bison, and the official mascot for the anniversary festivities in 2011.
Much like what happened during the lead-up to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, things wouldn’t have been the same for many children without the adorable Sumi, Quatchi and Miga to look up to. Moostoos is going to be that key animal, the one people chase and follow. It is meant to tie us to our collective history.
Moostoos was chosen because of how the bison played that critical role to MĂ©tis settlers who participated in ‘buffalo’ hunts. Rendezvous 2011 chair Margaret Plain said the nomenclature revealed a kind of historical misnomer.
“We had decided that we wanted to have a bison but we started our conversation wanting to have a buffalo. We learned that in North America we don’t have buffalo; we have bison,” she said. “Notwithstanding, the MĂ©tis went on buffalo hunts. We’re not trying to correct that part but just for our purposes we’re using the word ‘bison.’”
The bison held a sacred place as the bestower of all of the necessities for a good life. The committee chose it for these reasons and because that gave it a heightened importance and symbolism to this historic people of this area. Referring to the Alberta Elders’ Cree Dictionary and local cultural authorities, they stumbled onto a beautiful Cree word.
“One of the committee members found the word ‘moostoos,’” Plain said. “We did some further research to get the actual word for bison — paskwâwimostos.”
Moostoos showed up for the first time on a fabulous float painstakingly designed and built more than 500 hours by local volunteers Bob Locicero and Louise Height. The float will make future appearances at other parades in Stony Plain, Morinville, Legal, Bon Accord and Edmonton.
