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Why this flag won't fly


From the Globe and Mail:

Newfoundland nationalists have flown the pink-white-and-green since before the province joined Confederation.

In late May, four young men climbed the hills across the harbour from downtown St. John's and raised it again.

Twenty-one-year-old Greg Pike was one of them.

"To me it is a sign of hope and strength for our future. I feel it is a symbol of a new attitude that Newfoundlanders and Labradoreans have taken on; an attitude that says we are not going to be pushed around any more," Mr. Pike said. "This campaign is not about separation.."

Herein lies the problem. Since Canada adopted the current flag in 1965, replacing the Red Ensign, the goal has been to divorce the country from all symbols of its past.

That was a past of personal responsibility, small government, and social conservatism.

Thanks to Pierre Trudeau and his successors, including the current prime minister, Paul Martin, Canada is about dependence on tax-funded programs, big government, and social liberalism.

Hence the elimination of the symbols of the past. For Newfoundland to adopt the tricolour is to swim against that current, and I think they'll find more than a few politicians and bureaucrats who won't be big fans of that.

It's just a flag, but flags are one of the most fundamental symbols we have. The tricolour is about history:

It is popularly believed that the "Newfoundland tricolour" was originally designed during the 19th century to make peace between competing Irish and English sealers in St. John's.

As the story goes, Bishop Michael Fleming created the flag — using a white handkerchief to join a pink flag, representing the English rose, with a green flag, representing the Irish shamrock.

In the 1940s, people who objected to Newfoundland joining Canada raised it.

A bishop designed it? A clergyman?! That just makes it worse! Better to stay with the new flag that means, well, nothing:

After joining Canada, Newfoundland flew the British Union Jack. In the late 1970s, artist Christopher Pratt was commissioned to design a new provincial flag. Adopted in 1980, it retains the colours and a series of triangles, that are reminiscent of the old Union Jack, and a gold arrow meant to point to a promising future.

Ah, the future. That's right, keeping looking at the future. There is nothing in the past of value that we can learn from. The future. The future.

A popular flag, Pratt's design, is it?

"This campaign is about changing our current geometrical mess of a flag into something meaningful for our province." [Greg Pike]

Meaningful? That's dangerous talk. Ottawa will tell you what's meaningful.

As for Christopher Pratt -- well, his art is all about straight lines:


I suppose his flag design shouldn't have come as a surprise:

Me? I like the tricolour.

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Angry in the Great White North by Steve Janke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. Based on a work at stevejanke.com.
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