The Town of Eston has a new gopher that will be starting to pop up around the community.

The Town along with the Thrive Saskatchewan committee set out to find a new gopher image through a gopher design contest and after reviewing the submissions, Eston local, Richard Pope, was the winner.

The drawing will now be submitted to graphic artists who will transform Pope’s sketch into a digital format that will be incorporated into various signage around the town.

“We plan on doing a play on words, so we’ll have signage around town, for example, at the pool, there will be a sign with the gopher image and it will say ‘Gopher a swim’. It won’t necessarily be new branding, but just a way to introduce the gopher back into the community,” said Jody Schmidt, Chief Administrative Officer for the Town of Eston.

The contest and project are apart of the Thrive Saskatchewan initiative, which aims to engage communities and organizations to build, “resilient and vibrant economies”.

In a previous interview, Schmidt had mentioned a possible comeback of the iconic gopher races that some would say, put Eston on the map many years ago. She said, currently, they are unsure if the races will make a comeback.

“The Lions Club would handle that, but we are hopeful we can bring it back for one of our events, but we will have to discuss things further with the Lions Club, talk about the logistics and what-have-you, to see if it would be a possibility,” said Schmidt.

In conjunction with the Thrive Saskatchewan initiative, Schmidt said they are excited to be bringing back a bi-weekly farmers market to the community starting in June. It has been at least four years since Eston has hosted a farmers market and Schmidt hopes it will not only bring the community together, but also, bring out locals from surrounding communities to Eston.