![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Waving the flag
Feb. 15th, 2013 10:59 amIt was 48 years ago today that Canada adopted the maple leaf flag. We very nearly ended up with a different version of the "Pearson Pennant", a flag with blue strips on the side and three maple leaves in the middle. In fact, many retail outlets in 1965 were already selling such a flag, alongside soon-to-become-obsolete Red Ensigns.
In 1967, when we were planning our end-of-year open house, our class was working on a vision of what the world, or at least Canada, would look like in 2067. I wanted to design a new flag, but the teacher quickly nixed that idea. Other adults cynically suggested that little design work would be involved - all that would be needed would be to add another star to the U.S. flag! But hey, we'd just adopted a new Canadian flag, so I guess maybe I figured we should revisit our design every decade or so. I wonder what would have happened if I'd suggested composing a new national anthem. It was around that time that "O Canada" officially replaced "God Save the Queen" as our anthem, although both remained in use - during high school assemblies, for example, the band opened with "O Canada" and closed with "God Save the Queen". It was all taken very seriously and I recall one student getting into deep doodoo for pretending to play an imaginary violin during one of those performances.
Another true story: When I was around eight, I got a Kenner "Play-a-Tune" device for Christmas. It came with a supply of plastic strips with little bumps in them - sort of the audio equivalent of 80-column computer cards - and each strip had one tune on it. You fed the strip into the device, turned the crank, and the tune would play, though the audio quality was certainly nothing to write home about! Anyway, one of the strips played a tune that I knew as "God Save the Queen", but because the product was American, it was labelled "My Country 'tis of Thee". Sort of like how our encyclop(a)edias, very much geared to U.S. audiences, would try to explain, say, the size of a country by indicating that it was "about twice the size of Texas" and superimposing a little diagram of the state of Texas over the actual map of the country. I knew nothing of copyright laws in those days, but I guess if you live in a powerful and litigious country like the U.S., you can afford the best lawyers your greenbacks can buy!
Back to the flag, though. While there's plenty of information out there about the tortuous process that led to the adoption of our current flag, something I've been unable to find out is this: When did the Red Ensign replace the Union Jack as Canada's official or unofficial flag? Certainly most pictures of and films about Canada during the "Great War" seem to suggest that the Union Jack had exclusive pride of place on Canada's flagpoles. And even shows about World War II often show the Union Jack. If the Red Ensign was actually only in common use for perhaps twenty years or so, it does seem rather ironic that the ditching of it caused so much fuss and bother and controversy.
In 1967, when we were planning our end-of-year open house, our class was working on a vision of what the world, or at least Canada, would look like in 2067. I wanted to design a new flag, but the teacher quickly nixed that idea. Other adults cynically suggested that little design work would be involved - all that would be needed would be to add another star to the U.S. flag! But hey, we'd just adopted a new Canadian flag, so I guess maybe I figured we should revisit our design every decade or so. I wonder what would have happened if I'd suggested composing a new national anthem. It was around that time that "O Canada" officially replaced "God Save the Queen" as our anthem, although both remained in use - during high school assemblies, for example, the band opened with "O Canada" and closed with "God Save the Queen". It was all taken very seriously and I recall one student getting into deep doodoo for pretending to play an imaginary violin during one of those performances.
Another true story: When I was around eight, I got a Kenner "Play-a-Tune" device for Christmas. It came with a supply of plastic strips with little bumps in them - sort of the audio equivalent of 80-column computer cards - and each strip had one tune on it. You fed the strip into the device, turned the crank, and the tune would play, though the audio quality was certainly nothing to write home about! Anyway, one of the strips played a tune that I knew as "God Save the Queen", but because the product was American, it was labelled "My Country 'tis of Thee". Sort of like how our encyclop(a)edias, very much geared to U.S. audiences, would try to explain, say, the size of a country by indicating that it was "about twice the size of Texas" and superimposing a little diagram of the state of Texas over the actual map of the country. I knew nothing of copyright laws in those days, but I guess if you live in a powerful and litigious country like the U.S., you can afford the best lawyers your greenbacks can buy!
Back to the flag, though. While there's plenty of information out there about the tortuous process that led to the adoption of our current flag, something I've been unable to find out is this: When did the Red Ensign replace the Union Jack as Canada's official or unofficial flag? Certainly most pictures of and films about Canada during the "Great War" seem to suggest that the Union Jack had exclusive pride of place on Canada's flagpoles. And even shows about World War II often show the Union Jack. If the Red Ensign was actually only in common use for perhaps twenty years or so, it does seem rather ironic that the ditching of it caused so much fuss and bother and controversy.
