Category: Prince Charles

Sunday, February 15, 2015 marks the 50th anniversary of today’s independent Canadian maple leaf flag. The ultimately successful birth of the flag in the 1960s had some precedents in the 1940s and even the 1920s. And in his excellent Canadian flag history the meteorology professor emeritus from beautiful BC, Alistair B. Fraser, notes that “the Maple Leaf” was recommended as “pre-eminently the proper badge to appear on our flag” in the 1890s! These early rumblings suggest how long ago it was widely enough recognized that the old British North American red ensign, with a Union Jack in the top left-hand corner, was only a halfway house on what the constitutional law professor Brian Slattery has called “the long process of decolonization that Canada has undergone since 1867.” (more…)