New "Yukon" signs to replace old wood ones in 2024

New "Yukon" signs will be greeting people entering the territory in 2024. 

The territorial government is doing away with nine of the wooden place markers that have welcomed visitors along the Yukon's highways and outside the Whitehorse airport since the mid-90s, and replacing them with a modern design.

The new signs, according to government tender documents seeking a contractor to make and install them, will be approximately three-and-a-half metres tall, featuring four jagged, overlaid panels. 

"Yukon" will be displayed across the top two panels — the first one, a deep yellow, and the second, a dark blue — followed by a third panel that can either be left a solid colour or filled with local art. The fourth panel will also be a solid colour, to be picked from an approved palette that includes "Dune" grey, "Fir" green, "Glacier" blue, "Pink sunset" and "lazulite." 

The mock-ups do not include any other writing on the new signs, including "larger than life" — the slogan on the current ones. 

Yukon tourism minister John Streicker, in an interview, said it was time for the old signs to be replaced. 

"They've been there for decades and we heard from… the tourism industry that some of them are getting a little beaten up, and so under our Yukon tourism development strategy it was one of the actions, to try and refresh the signage," he said. 

The new design, Streicker said, lines up with the "Yukon Place" brand, created to help represent and market the territory to potential visitors. Local committees, he added, will be struck to help pick what art goes on each sign, and the art can be changed out "in a few years time" to "focus on something new." 

Tourism Industry Association of the Yukon president Tyler Rose told CBC News that he thought the new design was "exciting" and a long time coming.

"It's good for a change and tremendous opportunity, and I think once the entire process is complete, I think people will be very pleased as it comes out," he said, though he also acknowledged that "updating things is always hard."

Members of the Yukon's opposition parties, however, aren't necessarily fans of the new look. 

Yukon NDP leader Kate White, shown a mock-up of the new sign by CBC News, sighed and groaned heavily. 

"This just, like, reminds me of, I had a bicycle once that was a very current colour and it was hideous and it only survived the one year as being current and then it was just awful. Like, how is that supposed to stand the test of time?" she said of the design. 

"People are gonna make fun of us on Instagram. People are going to take photos of this and they're going to be like, 'You can't believe this is like the welcome sign.'"