The TikTok star behind Canada’s new (and less flexible) moose crossing sign

Chloë Chapdelaine, who was 18 at the time and living in a small town without WiFi, redesigned the flexible-looking moose sign out of boredom. Now its design will officially replace the previous one.

In the summer of 2017, Chloë Chapdelaine was 18 years old and living alone in a trailer near the small town of Foremost, Alta., Where she had two summer jobs at a swimming pool and a community support center.

She had no WiFi. She did not have a television. And he had exactly one roadside attraction to pique his interest in the freeway route to and from work: a moose crossing sign that, every time he looked at it, it seemed a little strange. A little . . . flexible.

In her spare time, Chapdelaine, an aspiring design student from Medicine Hat, Alta., Decided to take action: “This was the perfect personal challenge to see what I can do.” So he sat down with a Sharpie. He drew a new design that more reflected the “majestic” animal and wrote a lighthearted essay to accompany it.

Chloë Chapdelaine. (Courtesy of Chloë Chapdelaine)

He printed 10 copies and mailed them to various government departments and transportation agencies, not really waiting for a response. But four long years later, the design is in the Canadian Transportation Association’s Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Canada, a guide for governments on the use of road signs across the country. It is already being used for new and replacement signage along highways, and will become more ubiquitous in 2022.

MORE: The Inuk Woman Using TikTok to Expose High Food Prices in the North

Now 23 years old and with a journalism degree from Mount Royal University, Chapdelaine is famous on TikTok after posting about her design. To benefit wildlife rehabilitation at Alberta’s Birds of Prey Foundation, he has started selling T-shirts and sweatshirts with a cheeky mantra he can fully identify with: “Makin ‘the moose out of life.”

Scroll, click or tap the icons to see what changed.

This article appears in print in the January 2022 issue of Maclean’s magazine with the title “Attraction on the road”. Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.