The flag(s) we had then; the flag we have now
On the 61st anniversary of the red and white Maple Leaf, and change.
“The Pearson flag is a meaningless flag. There is no recognition of history; no indication of the existence of French and English Canada; the partnership of the races; no acknowledgement of history. It is a flag without a past, without history, without honour and without pride.”
-John Diefenbaker, 1964
This past weekend marked the 61st anniversary of Canada’s switch from Red Ensign to red and white Maple Leaf. In following a year where Canada’s aversion to the deliberate breaking of our recently proud immigration standard became entirely mainstream among “old stock” and newcomers alike, the occasion was never bound to pass without robust debate, and even controversy.
Friend of the Substack Michael Bonner just penned a terrific missive over at Without Diminishment, flagging for concern that what motivated the “eminent Pearsonians” of the day still beats in the hearts of our modern progressives.
“The Liberals’ proclivity for effacing our symbols and obliterating historical memory seems to have no limits. Artwork representing Canadian culture and history has been stripped out of the new passports. Statues of monarchs, prime ministers, and other national figures are regularly pulled down without resistance. Streets and institutions have been given new and unpronounceable names so as to ‘decolonise’ them. The cross and the fleur-de-lys have been removed from the crown that sits above Canada’s coat of arms.
“What next? As crazy as it sounds, it has already been suggested that the present flag is inadequate because it does not represent Canada’s Indigenous peoples and should be replaced.”
Bonner closes with, “Ironically, the greatest threat to the Maple Leaf flag is not reactionary conservatives, Red Ensign-loving Tories, Quebec secessionists, or disgruntled truckers . . . The threat rather emerges from the same spirit of progressivist liberalism that created the flag in the first place.”
As witnessed in additional corners of the discourse sphere, particularly on X, this writer is of the opinion that the “greatest threat” may also be shared by those described by Ray Bradbury in The Martian Chronicles.
“There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves.”
In this instance, and without relitigating my concerns from months past, there are those who tend to latch onto these symbols not just out of historic reverence, but for the purposes of something darker. In that shadow, in the potential for allowing our great symbols to fall into the wrong hands — such as a flag that bore three separate designs in 1868, 1921 and 1957, and under which our nation was first forged and the majority of our war dead fought under and died for — we risk serving our past as poorly as anything coming out of the Trudeau years.
Ottawa’s phantom-honking, ‘Battle of Billings Bridge’-holding, outdoor N95-wearing purple-hairs were wrong to imagine the red maple leaf as MAGA-adjacent protest art during the Freedom Convoy, so we can all be keenly aware of the problems with painting our national symbols and their associations with a broad brush.
The worry, however, beyond the obvious, is that when immigration reform tips into “remigration” talk that regulates itself before the camera, but then not on Twitter, in message boards, or in balaclava-laden protests along highways or the Rideau Canal, the productive becomes thoroughly unproductive. If I were a Canadian mass immigration lobbyist, like those at the Century Initiative, or a disloyal private-equity backed employer who cares only for replacement cogs for $10 less an hour, further wrecking a country be damned, such lack of tact would present itself as manna from Heaven.
Diefenbaker fought hard against the Great Canadian rebrand. It’s not hard to see why. But he also understood that “partnership of races,” and that within that coat of arms existed nations within nations. We can ditch our existence as a multi-hyphenate people, and that would surely be for the better, but we can’t whitewash those reds, golds, and deep blues.
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