An Alberta man has begun to worry about potential backlash over his personalized licence plate after his father was told he could not longer keep his.
They both read ‘GRABHER.’ It’s not a prompt, but rather a last name.
“It’s a very unique name,” Troy Grabher admits.
Troy lives in Edmonton but is originally from Nova Scotia. His father Lorne has recently been the subject of newspaper headlines far and wide.
In January, the elder Grabher’s licence plate was cancelled by the Nova Scotia government. A letter from the Registrar of Motor Vehicles explains they received a complaint.
“It wasn’t so bad when they took my plate,” Lorne Grabher said from his home in Dartmouth, N.S. “But when they told me the reason why – that was hurtful.”
“While I recognize this plate was issued as your last name, the public cannot be expected to know this and can misinterpret it as a socially unacceptable slogan,” the letter goes on to say.
READ MORE: Nova Scotia nixes license plate bearing man’s surname ‘Grabher’
Both men say at times it has been emotional dealing with the controversy surrounding their name.
The plate was a gift from Lorne to his late father. It later became Troy’s and he eventually signed it over to his dad.
When Troy moved to Alberta, he got his own personalized licence plate bearing the family name.
“I am fearful here in Alberta that there may be a backlash because of this,” he said. “Because of those few individuals that have said, ‘Oh, just get another plate and get over it.’ Well, I’m not going to get over it.”
To his knowledge, there have not been any complaints made to the province. Personalized plates in Alberta can be rejected on a number of grounds, including human rights discrimination, political slurs and foul language.
“I can get it, some person looking at it that didn’t know that was my last name going and looking – ‘Oh, who does he think he is?’ I get that. But don’t be so narrow-minded. Think outside the box.”
One of Troy’s work colleagues recently created a sticker for the back of his vehicle. It reads: “It’s my last name!”