Why The Red Ensign Should Be Made An Official Flag

In 1965 Canada adopted our current flag, and I really have no complaints about it. It’s iconic, distinctly Canadian, and even gave the world a new term in vexillology, the “Canadian Pale”. The only issue I have with the flag is that it came into existence as a vanity project of Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson.

Pearson had been on a crusade since at least 1960 to replace the de facto Canadian flag at the time, the red ensign. So much so that it became official Liberal policy for the 1963 federal election; it was promised that “within two years of taking office,” a Liberal government would submit a flag design to parliament. They weren’t joking. In June of 1964, Pearson introduced the infamous “Pearson Pennant” design. It was heavily disliked by Pearson’s colleagues in the House of Commons, and a poll conducted by Gallup found that only 48% of Canadians liked the design, with 41% opposed. Pearson heard the criticism, withdrew his design, and decided to delegate the responsibility of selecting a new flag to a parliamentary committee consisting of seven Liberals, five Conservatives, and one member each from the NDP, Social Credit Party, and the Ralliement Créditiste.

Canadians submitted thousands of flags to the committee, and it ended up voting unanimously – perhaps by accident – on October 22nd, 1964 to send the flag designed by George Stanley to the House of Commons for debate. It was chosen out of the three finalists after the variant with the Union Flag and Fleur-De-Lis was eliminated.

A month-and-a-half-long debate over the flag then occurred in the House, with John Diefenbaker’s Conservatives launching a filibuster in a last-ditch effort to avoid the inevitable. A motion of closure was introduced on the advice of French Conservative MP Léon Balcer, and members voted 152-85 to adopt closure, limiting speeches to 20 minutes and forcing a vote on the matter. After an additional 250 or so speeches, on December 15th, 1964, at 2:15 AM, the House voted 163-78 to adopt the flag. On December 17th, the Senate followed suit, voting 38-23 to adopt the flag.

Diefenbaker dubbed the new flag “A flag by closure, imposed by closure”. I can’t help but agree with him. The lack of a public referendum on such an important national symbol, something that the flag committee explicitly denied Canadians, is truly ridiculous.

Obviously, these days almost nobody would vote to change the flag back. But why not finally recognize the red ensign as an official flag of Canada in some capacity? There are other examples of countries adopting more than one national flag. Bolivia has two flags, and Uruguay has three. Numerous countries have altered versions of their national flag – or completely different flags – as their naval jacks, naval ensigns, civil ensigns or state flags. Japan still proudly flies the controversial Rising Sun Flag as its naval ensign, and the Union Jack itself has official status in Canada to this day as the “Royal Union Flag”.

So, why has the Canadian red ensign fallen into such a neglected status, with some even making the outrageous claim that it is somehow a symbol of hate? The Trudeau government even spent $268,400 of taxpayer money on a pamphlet which tells schoolchildren that “Its usage in modern times is an indicator of hate-promoting beliefs”.

This is all nonsense, of course. The red ensign is a proud symbol of our history.

It is the flag that our soldiers fought under in the World Wars and in Korea. The flag saw the signing of the Statute of Westminster, which gave us near full autonomy from the United Kingdom and a distinctly Canadian monarchy. It was our flag during our expansion westward, seeing the admission of more than half of the provinces into Confederation with the exception of the original four. These reasons alone should be enough to make it an official symbol in my eyes.

In what capacity could it be an official flag? Well, I have a couple of ideas. The first would be to just simply make it a sort of alternate national flag of Canada, like the Wiphala in Bolivia referenced earlier. This would probably be the less likely option, but I think it could work.

Another idea would be to make the red ensign the flag of the monarchy of Canada in general. While each individual member of the Canadian Royal Family has their own distinct flag in Canada, no flag represents the entire Royal Family as a whole. I suppose one could argue that the Royal Union Flag is used in that way, but I don’t think that’s accurate, as it symbolizes our membership in the Commonwealth and allegiance to the Crown – but not really the Crown itself.

These are just a couple of ideas – there are probably countless additional ways the flag could be used in an official capacity. One way or another, I would love to see this flag make an official comeback somehow, someday.