Fifty years ago today, at noon, Canada’s Maple Leaf flag was first hoisted above the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill.
The Flag Debate of 1964 was ranourous. It embodied two fundamentally different views of Canada.
Prime Minister Mike Pearson viewed Canada as a fully independent, multi-cultural nation, with inheritances from both Britain and France, but its own nation. Canada thus needed a flag that was uniquely Canadian.
On the other side, the Leader of the Opposition, John Diefenbaker, whose vision of Canada included a strong link to the British Empire, and fought to the bitter end for the flag to contain symbols of the British connection.
Pearson’s view of Canada prevailed, and the Maple Leaf is the result. Through shrewd politicking and personal bravery, such as first announcing his plan for a new flag to the national meeting of the Canadian Legion, a hostile audience, Pearson won over the support he needed in a minority Parliament. He was prepared to bend when needed, giving up on his own personal favourite design (the “Pearson Pennant”), when he saw that was needed for the final goal. At the end, he needed to invoke closure because of the bitter opposition from Diefenbaker.
And the flag has gone everywhere since, all over the world, and even outer space, as a striking symbol of Canada. Pearson won the debate then, and he’s won it in the succeeding half century. It’s hard to imagine Canada today without its flag.
Here’s some of the designs that didn’t make the cut, courtesy HuffPost: “Beavers were popular.”
(Get your mind out of the gutter. They’re referring to Castor canadensis. I think.)
One personal weirdness for me is that, since I was born less than 50 years ago, I have always known this as Canada’s only flag. On the other hand my mother, the reason I am a Canadian, left Canada at age 20 just over 50 years ago, before it was in place. Somehow, the subject never came up, and I was absolutely gobsmacked when I found out she’d lived her Canadian years under an entirely different flag. American bias, I suppose.
I have a couple of vague memories of when the flag started being used.
The first memory is touring the RCMP museum in Regina with my family, and Dad commenting to the commissionaire about the new flag flying. The commissionaire made some comment about it just having been put up. So that means that I can date my family’s trip to the RCMP Museum to sometime around February 15, 1965, because it was linked to A Great National Event.
My second memory is my Dad teasing my Grammie about the new flag. Dad wasn’t a big fan of it, being a Saskatchewan Tory and all, but he accepted it (unlike Diefenbaker!)
My Grammie didn’t like the new flag, because it didn’t have the Union Jack on it. She was the daughter of Scottish emigrants, who grew up in a Scottish community on the Prairies, and for her, King and Empire were a major part of Canada’s identity.
Mind you, she hadn’t been all that keen on the Red Ensign itself, even tho’ it had the Jack, because she was old enough to remember when Canada flew the Union Jack itself! None of this ensign with the Jack in the corner business.
Given that history, my Dad would tease her about the new flag, because she lived just down the street from the town Post Office, which of course flew the flag. Dad would comment about what a fine view she had of the new flag.
For the rest of her life, until she moved into the nursing home, she saw the new flag every day from her living room window.
I think by the end, even Grammie came to appreciate it.
Yes, I remember the debate on the new flag design.
In a way, Diefenbaker didn’t entirely lose. Look closely at the maple leaf. Its top half is comprised of three crowns. I wonder whether that was deliberate.
