Last modified: 2005-04-23 by phil nelson
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by Pascal Gross
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The white band is supposed to resemble a T for the city's name, but also recalls the appearance of the City Hall building. The flag was adopted on the 140th anniversary of Toronto in 1974.
I got this information from Kevin Harrington's article "Seven Cities
in Search of a Flag" published in the Communications of the XI
International Congress of Vexillology (Madrid, 1985). The City of Toronto is
one of the seven administrative units making up Toronto. The others are
Metropolitan Toronto (covering the whole of the city - the City of Toronto is
only the city centre) and the cities of East York, Etobicoke, North York,
Scarborough and York. All of them have flags.
Jan Oskar Engene
I have just returned from Toronto, and as always on a trip seem to find unusual flags or flag combinations. I searched for an answer to Luc Baronian's question: "Any news on the new Toronto flag ? Is it the former city flag, the former metropolitan flag or a completely new one ?" and in one place did see the Toronto flag as reported above (I attach a coloured version of it - however I saw it from a bus, and cannot vouch for dimensions, angles, etc.)
At Toronto City Hall, where I expected to see this flag, there is a nice
display of the parade of provinces - done as two circles of flagpoles with the
Canadian flag in the centre of each. However, the flag that had the
"pride of place" was a most unexpected flag - a green-white-red
horizontal tricolour, flying on a low roof above (and slightly behind) the two
circles of Canadian and provincial flags (and from the viewer's point of view,
clearly flying "over" the other flags).1 As far as
I can tell it was the patriots' flag of Quebec (an independentiste group),
ratio clearly 1:2 ! I am very curious as to why Toronto city hall would fly
that flag!
Rob Raeside - 28 October 1998
1 This flagpole most often flies the Canadian flag.
However, being a multicultural city, the City Protocol allows the raising of
various other flags. Most of these are national flags of the various ethnic
communities living in Toronto. The one your contributor most likely saw was
the Hungarian flag. In addition to national flags, the rainbow flag of the
gay community flies during Gay Pride Week, and other subnational flags may
also be raised. It is said that these flag raisings are to publicise
particular events in the city, and are typically short-lived. Between these,
it is the Canadian Maple Leaf that flies on this pole.
Aleksandar Ilievski, 25 March 2005