this saturday i am meeting a very famous canadian (see; Hart, Bret) and i was wondering if it would be a no-no for him to autograph a canadian flag?
would that be disrespectful to the flag?
would it be legal?
Maybe not as famous as you think. I just asked a dozen people here (all of whom have Canadian citizenship and live in Toronto) and they’ve never heard of him. Statistics of small numbers, maybe.
Flags are inanimate objects. They don’t have any feelings. You don’t need to worry about disrespecting them.
Who cares? Do you think Mr. Hart will have an RCMP escort just waiting to arrest all those hapless fans who had the gall to bring forth the sacred emblem of the nation for him to desecrate with his signature? “Sorry, kid, but you have committed an official ‘no-no’. I’m afraid it’s off to the slammer for you. Twenty years with hard labour – that’s what you get for encouraging someone to autograph the flag.”
Bret Harte was an American writer who died about 100 years ago. Getting him so sign a flag would seem to be rather difficult. Oh, that’s not the one? Okay, then.
This seems to be more of an IMHO than a General Question.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
I think what we’re dealing with here is a wrasslin’ hero.
I was going to make a crack about the big dolt would probably sign his commitment papers if you asked him to, but I saw that behind the ring (or whatever it was called) thing about him some time ago, and damnit if he doesn’t seem like a pretty smart feller.
I say ask him if he’s cool with it. If he is, what’s the big hurt? Maounties gonna raid your bedroom looking for contraband?
And, hey, I’m not one to criticize mods, but how is this not a GQ?
“Is it legal to deface the Canadian flag?”
Pretty yes/no as far as I can tell. Now if we’re going into a wrasslin’ argument I’ll buy it, although that thread would probably end up in The Pit.
Well, Bret “The Hitman” Hart is pretty famous (and popular) here in Calgary, where he lives when he’s not on the road. (Anecdote - my sister used to help him buy toys for his kids at Christmas in his local mall. Seems he is a fairly nice guy.) As for the Canadian flag, my guess would be the same defacement rules would apply to it as to the American flag; that is, if you wouldn’t do it to your flag, don’t do it to ours.
Flags are only sacred in the US, and only since the Red Scare. You can use other nation’s flags as clothing and seat cushions if you want to. Someday the US flag will probably go back to it’s roots and be on everyother brand of soap and tobacco, like once was the case.
The Red Scare must have been earlier than I recall, as I’m pretty sure the US flag was pretty “sacred” when it wasn’t dipped to King Edward VII at the London Olympics in 1908.
Oh, how little you know about Canada. The laws there aren’t actual written laws, but comprised of what seems to be the prevailing opinion. That’s 'cause those Canadians are too polite to offend anyone who might not like whatever they decide to write down.
The most common use of the flag here in Canada is as surrogate curtains for the basement apartments of the chronically unemployed. I’m sure that gettting a wrestler to autograph one couldn’t possibly be a more inappropriate usage of a national standard.
I agree with Bob’s Your Uncle– Americans seem to place an importance on the flag that puzzles non-american folks. I vaguely remember a British comedian that had a routine that went (approximately) “Why are you yanks so sensitive about the flag? I mean, I just found out that it’s the law that you’re obliged to destroy a flag if it comes into contact with the ground at any time. Now, we love our queen, but we wouldn’t take it that far…” Guess you had to be there.
This thread reminds me of a TV show I saw here in the UK a few years back (no cite I’m afraid). The producers set up half a dozen groups of people – each group of a different nationality – and sent them on a weekend vacation in Turkey. Then they secretly played various pranks on them to see whether the different nationalities reacted differently.
I don’t recall Canada being included but British, American, German and Japanese definitely were. One of the pranks involved setting their national flags on fire.
The Americans and Japanese reacted worst to this one. Even after the hidden cameras were revealed they weren’t keen to laugh it off, and one American woman wanted to take the remains of the flag home “to give the ashes a decent burial”.
(FWIW, the British group treated every misfortune as a joke and didn’t care much about their burnt flag even before they knew it was a setup.)
There is no pledge of allegiance to either the flag or the constitution in Canada. The only pledge we have is to the Monarch (and that one is seldom used for anything other than commissionings where the commissioning is done by an agent of the Crown and the power of office originates out of the Crown).
No, there is nothing wrong with having someone autograph a Canadian flag. Hell, ol’ Fred Phelps came up here to burn one on the steps of the Supreme Court when it decided to let fags and dykes get married. A Mountie helped him get it lit - so he wouldn’t catch himself on fire and we wouldn’t have to pay for his emergency care with our commie medical system. 
Since we’re the guys who have the big marijuana leaf on our flag do you think that many of us would get upset if someone autographed it?
I wouldn’t.
Straight answer? No, there is no law in Canada concerning trashing a Canadian flag.
But there is a law in Canada directing that if a governmental department reasonably wishes to trash a flag, then the design and manufacture of the flag that the intend to be trashed must first be approved by another governmental department.
Hey, we have our standards.
You know, Rilchiam, I’ve seen that movie at the video store but never broke down and rented it, so that’s not what I was referring to.
In fact, I’m not entirely sure to what I am referring. I saw it on commercial TV, possibly A&E or Discovery or something. I really can’t remember, but it was all about Bret Hart. It didn’t go out of it’s way to be a “see how fake wrestling is” expose, but it didn’t hide the fact that wrestling is entertainment, and predetermined. They explained all about the “faces” and the “heels” and the politics that go on in being a pro wrestler.
For someone who actively guffaws at wrasslin’, I found it riveting.
At the RS/6000 Technical University in Dallas last year, I was given a Canadian flag lapel pin and made an honorary Canadian – twice! By the same guy, at the same hotel bar, on two different nights.
Draw your own conclusions.
Perhaps it was this, then.
That sounds like the ticket.
Cool!