Canada: Wanted: a Flag

Three weeks after the House of Commons had debated newly defined Canadian citizenship, members had a go at another nationalistic proposal: that a committee should be appointed to choose a distinctive national flag for Canada. For six hours the chamber rocked with the roll and peal of patriotic oratory.

Tall, chesty Ian Mackenzie, Minister of Veterans Affairs, roared in his broadest Scottish burr: “We in Canada have shared the Union Jack—we will always honor it. . . . But we have nothing peculiarly and indisputably our own … as the symbol of this great nation of ours.” Conservative George R. Pearkes plumped for the Red Ensign.* Conservative Thomas Church cheered for the British Union Jack: “One flag . . . one anthem, one throne, one Empire.” So many had ideas that at session’s end decision had to be deferred.

To help the proposed committee in its task, some 400 Canadians had already sent flag designs, ranging from dull to weird, into Ottawa (see cut). Most of them favored a maple leaf. Other ideas: a beaver, a fir tree, wheat, the French fleur-de-lis, stars, miniature Union Jacks, a design like the U.S. flag, with a stripe for each of the Dominion’s nine provinces. CCFer Gladys Strum proposed a flag picturing “a buffalo, a beaver, a maple leaf and a mountain. Yes, and we had better have a river on it too.”

Many Canadians doubted that the committee could sift the mass of suggestions, agree on one and get it through the House of Commons. History backed them up: Parliament has debated a national flag off & on for 20 years.

*The merchant navy’s “Red Duster,” Cana-dianized after Confederation by superimposing the Dominion coat of arms on the fly (outer end of the flag), and Canada’s unofficial flag.