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EESTI ELU reedel, 6. mail 2022 — Friday, May 6, 2022
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The record-breaking legacies of Estonian-Canadian masters athletes Vincent Teetsov The sporting world pays a great deal of attention to young athletes. But a love of sports is far, far from over when you’re no longer in your youth. Once you get bitten by the bug of competition and physical activity, that urge will stay with you. Perhaps forever. World Masters Athletics de fines masters (or veteran) athletes as “women and men of not less than thirty-five years of age.” For each gender, there are 15 age categories, of five years each, from 35 to 105. Certainly, attending a competition for masters athletes will show you what a lifelong commitment to sports looks like. Though, it’s not just casual exercise. These athletes want to win. Masters sports encompass everything from boxing to swimming. In the Toronto Estonian community, there have been a few notable examples of record-breaking masters athletes in track and field. On a Canada-wide level, one of these athletes is Helgi Pedel, who currently holds both indoor and outdoor high jump records
The new face… (Continued from page 10)
dience so far has been mostly branding connoisseurs and people within the smaller VEMU circle since this is a brand for a museum and the actual, physical building has yet to be built. We are doing pre liminary work that paves the way to the actual museum and the real life of the brand. I think the feedback and situation can truly be assessed when the museum has been around for a while, at which point we can start to fully implement the brand in a bigger perspective. If you take the brand for the Estonian National Museum, which is also done by us, as an example, the amount of things that have to do with branding such as events and branded messages is immense. VEMU brand implementation is just in the beginning stages in com parison but we’re working up to being able to assess the recep tion of the brand surely and steadily. VEMU: How did you get into the branding realm and everything that it entails? KK: I used to work in adver tising which is basically tactical branding; you do everyday work and create advertising messages to be used in daily life. When I started working in a design agency, I got into much less tactical branding and more strategic branding. By strategic branding I mean creat ing the brand, setting up the values, communication tools and goals, and letting other
for the age category of W80 (women between 80 and 84). Holding at least 15 Canadian masters records, as of Novem ber 2021, in events from javelin to indoor triple jump, is Karl Trei. In his life, he dominated the men’s age categories from M75 to M90, steadily breaking records as he got older. Narrow your record-keeping to just the Province of Ontario, looking at data from as recently as March 2022, and you’ll find even more Estonians. Helgi Pedel makes an appearance again through her exceptional abilities in the long jump, high jump, and triple jump events between the W65 and W80 categories. Aleksander Ernesaks holds the M80 record for the 100 metre sprint. Jaan Roos is still the master of long distance in the M45 and M50 categories of the 5,000 metres event. Jüri Daniel threw his way to records in the M95 shot put and discus events. Karl Trei is here again, too, holding 13 provincial records in 100 metres, short hurdles, high jump, long jump, triple jump, and javelin. Showing the most range in women’s masters athletics among these Estonians is Elga
Meri, who dominated the W70 200 metres, long jump, and discus, the W75 weight throw, as well as javelin events from W65 to W75. What’s surprising here, is that although Meri enjoyed sports as a spectator, she was not a track and field athlete all along. Not before she left Estonia, nor after she arrived in Canada. For her, it started at age 65, after retiring from her job at Manulife Financial Corporation. It didn’t take long for Meri to be recruited into the Kalev Masters Track Club, coached by Arvo Tiidus. Her son, Jaan Meri, de scribes how the club was “look ing for women competitors to help them score points in the Ontario club competition.” After refining her technique, she be gan to win events in her local area, within Ontario, across Canada, in the United States, and then at an international level. This encouraged her to strive for more. Explaining her energetic, sporty demeanour, Jaan recalls how “she was the only grand mother I knew who had weights in the basement for training purposes.” When babysitting
people deal with the tactical side. For me, it has been quite a logical and natural progression moving from the detail-oriented side of branding to the one that focuses on the bigger picture. But some people are satisfied continually dealing with the tactical side of it all which is necessary as well because if you do strategic branding you sometimes become so distanced from the everyday aspects which actually make up the life of a brand. Sometimes you end up needing to find yourself again as well as the brand be cause there’s this “ivory tower” syndrome that can set in when you continuously deal with the strategic side of branding. VEMU: Was it difficult to balance staying true to aspects of “Estonian-ness” such as flag colours, cultural imagery etc. while also being detached enough from that to peak interest in non-Estonians? KK: Yes, I think balancing the amount of “Estonian-ness” was probably the most difficult part of the rebranding process; especially gauging the “Esto nian-ness” of Estonians who live abroad and those who live in the home country. [Native Estonians] have a different viewpoint of being Estonian; there are some big differences because we are in Estonia and engulfed in “Estonian-ness,” the Estonian identity doesn’t have to make room for itself. If you are in Canada, that is the dominant national identity and therefore, “Estonian-ness” and Estonian identity must speak more for itself. Creating the
brand in such a way that it is interesting and fresh to native Estonians was important as well because although most of the audience is in Canada, the brand has to work in Estonia as well; Estonians should, as an entity, support VEMU’s cause. VEMU: Do you see the creation of a brand for an orga nization/business as a way of giving it a living, breathing identity that evolves and moves along with it over time? How do you see VEMU’s brand evolving in the years, decades to come? KK: Yes, a brand does have to evolve with an organization or business. Some marketing directors like to change a brand’s identity in its entirety, including the logo, every 5 years but from a customer perspective, the image they’ve gotten used to has completely changed all of a sudden. That applies to brands as well, if they change things up too often, it can come off to customers as them being confused. You have to pick the correct building blocks and they can be changed when need be, usually the mes sages and advertising are a couple of the easiest things to change and they should adapt to everyday fluctuations. But the brand core, should change only when the organization changes itself or if there’s a big world event that requires change. It’s like being an adult and having all of your values and ideas set straight, you can change your haircut and your clothes but you don’t change who you really are. I think VEMU’s values can
Karl Trei, Valden Sadul, Aleksander Ernesaks, Elga Meri, and Helgi Pedel at the 1991 World Masters Athletics Championships in Turku, Finland.
her two grandchildren, she would challenge them to races and “take them to the basement and train with them together. She trained very seriously and was constantly in physiotherapy for some injury or another.” Sports could provide disap pointment, such as when a knee surgery prevented Meri from continuing to partake in race walking, a sport that she set a Canadian record in. However, sports could also provide im mense satisfaction, or internal strength during life’s most diffi cult moments.
survive the next couple of de cades for sure, even when the world is changing at an enor mous rate. All that is currently happening in Ukraine has brought up these suppressed fears for us that have been under the surface for the past 30 years or so. But even if you consider that the Estonian iden tity is being put to the test right now, VEMU’s story is at a good point right now. VEMU: What is your favou rite component in the journey of the creation of a new brand? What do you especially enjoy working on in that process? KK: I do a lot of visual design but at the same time, I also deal with a lot of copy righting. I really enjoy defining a brand using words and messages and seeing how it is then transformed through graphics; sometimes by doing them myself or by other team members. I think it’s the verbal part of a brand that really in terests me the most because the verbal aspect also includes communication with the client and the customer. We always get a lot of textual ideas from discussions with a client, we then pick them up and modify them so they can be put into messages and values, and finally transformed into graphics. VEMU: What are some noteworthy projects that Velvet has worked on to date? KK: We did the Estonian government’s national identity which was also a national pride project. We deal with a lot of museums, the brands in projects such as those are sometimes
The same could be said for the legendary Karl Trei, after a pedestrian accident, where he was hit head-on by a car when crossing the road. It is rare for anyone to survive an accident like this; but not only did he survive, and restore his ability to walk, he was victorious in a 300 metre short hurdles event just a few years after. Trei was a man who was up for a challenge. At his posthu mous induction into the Hall of Fame, Canadian Masters Athletics member Emil Müller (Continued on page 12)
already in existence so if we work on an exhibit, we create a brand for the general exhibition and the design. I’m personally really proud of the Patarei prison exhibit a few years ago that we were involved with. We also did a complete concept design (interior and branding) for Oru Hub Hotel which is a small life style boutique hotel in Tallinn and worked for student hostel in Riga, Latvia called Duck Republik. Velvet does capitalist projects as well as we can and we really enjoy working with government and public sector related projects in general. If this has piqued your interest, Kristian can be seen and heard speaking in depth about the topics mentioned above as the keynote speaker at VEMU’s 10th annual fundraising night on May 14th. VEMU’s planned new permanent exhibit, which has been worked on in collaboration with Velvet, will also be a topic of discussion at the fundraiser. Spots are filling quickly, register before May 7th at https:// estoniancentre.app.neoncrm. com/np/clients/estoniancentre/ event.jsp?event=3& or by calling 416.925.9405. See you there and stayed tuned for the next interview coming up soon! If you’re interested in knowing more about the design aspects of VEMU’s rebrand and the stories behind them, check out a seminar on that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smjko_ LwwYg&t=85s On behalf of VEMU, KATI KIILASPEA
