Last modified: 2005-09-02 by phil nelson
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Are there actual records of badges of the Canadian Provinces being used on the Blue Ensign? If there are, what is the earliest date?
I think that this is not specifically covered in Dean's 'Chronology of the Canadian Blue and Red Ensigns', but is more or less assumed to have occurred.
I ask, because on what appears to be a proof sheet of about 1880, for an Admiralty Flag Book that was not published, the following note is next to the illustration of the Canadian shield.
"This badge with the crown is used by the Governor-General, and
without the crown, in the fly of all vessels belonging to the Dominion of
Canada irrespective of the particular Province to which they belong."
David Prothero, 16 April 1998
Flags Through The Ages And Across The World [smi75b] by Whitney Smith shows the following ensigns for the provinces of Canada :
Chris Pinette, 30 June 1998
A couple of observations.
The illustration at the bottom of pages 186/7 in Flags Through The Ages And Across The World [smi75b] is full of errors.
It's half of a supplement that was published in a children's magazine and reading the caption at the left of page 186 I feel that Whitney Smith used it as an illustration of the fact that, "The compiler of the flag chart at the turn of the century thus felt no hesitancy in devoting half the space for his 'flags of the world' to the red and blue colonial ensigns of Britain's overseas territories." I don't think that he ever intended it to be taken as an accurate representation of any particular flag.
A Blue Ensign defaced with the badge a Canadian Province. Has anyone ever seen such a flag, or a photograph of such a flag, or even a description of an actual Canadian Province Blue Ensign?
I would be very interested if anyone could write that they had.
David Prothero, 2 July 1998
Like you, I have never yet seen photographic or other convincing evidence that there were provincial ensigns (other than pre-Confederation Newfoundland). Of course, absence of evidence doesn't prove anything, and I haven't done a thorough, systematic search.
Some of my reading shows that if provincial ensigns were used, they were not widely known in the Second World War era. In the minutes of the joint committee appointed to design a national flag (1945-6), one of the witnesses stated that it was a common belief in Canada that only Nova Scotia had a provincial flag. (I take this to mean that Nova Scotia began using the current banner of arms when the ancient arms were rediscovered around 1930.) The witness stated that this belief was technically incorrect, and that all the provinces were legally entitled to use banners of their arms as provincial flags--they just chose not to do so. A few members of the committee asked questions in response to this, but none of them--who were from across the country, and who were presumably appointed to the committee because of their interest in things like flags--asked a question like "What about the New Brunswick blue ensign? Isn't that the provincial flag?" So this seems to indicate that provincial ensigns were little known in the decades preceding 1945.
However, I still have an open mind on this issue--I'm not convinced either
way.
Dean Tiegs, 2 July 1998
The only blue ensign discussed in Flags of Canada (Fraser [fra98]) is the Newfoundland one but no description. He notes, as did Mr. Tiegs, the fact that there was not a movement to develop flags until this century within Canada.
For New Brunswick, he notes the coat of arms on the Canadian Blue Ensign as early as 1870.
Additional note, in his discussion of British Columbia, Fraser notes that the Canadian colonies were granted the right to place their badges on a blue ensign in 1865 and that a Vancouver Island resident did so but there is no evidence that this was widely accepted.
From his work in progress, it appears that Canadian Provincial flags were
relatively rare until this century.
Phil Nelson, 3 July 1998
Here's a chronology of the Canadian Red Ensign.
01 July 1867: Dominion of Canada formed by confederation of the province of Canada (which becomes Ontario and Quebec), Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick.
26 May 1868: A royal warrant grants arms to the four provinces and creates the Great Seal of Canada, which is the four provincial arms quarterly. Though the Great Seal looked like a coat-of-arms, it technically was not. The Canadian Red Ensign was probably created shortly after this (without formal authority) and flown over Parliament, but I have no date for this. The Nova Scotia arms did not look like the current ones. They were silver (or gold?) with a wavy blue horizontal bar charged with a silver salmon, with two thistles above and one below.
15 July 1870: Creation of Manitoba from part of the North-West Territories.
02 August 1870: The design of Manitoba's seal finalized: similar to the present arms, but without the rock, with a crown on the cross, and with the buffalo portrayed charging. The Manitoba symbol (and those of the later provinces) were never officially added to the Great Seal. However, this made little difference, since the Red Ensign was an unofficial flag anyway. Most flag makers usually added the symbol to the Red Ensign. Until 1921, there were many variations in displaying the shield on the flag: sometimes a white disk was behind the shield, sometimes there was wreath of maple leaves or a wreath of roses, thistles, and shamrocks, and sometimes the shield was topped by a beaver or crown.
20 July 1871: Confederation of British Columbia. B.C. initially used an unofficial symbol: the royal crest (a crowned lion standing on a crown) with the motto "splendor sine occasu." Sometimes this was flanked by laurel or laurel and oak, and sometimes the letters B and C were to the left and right.
01 July 1873: Confederation of Prince Edward Island. It continued to use the seal design it had used since 1769. Very similar to the present coat-of-arms, except that the motto "parva sub ingenti" was an integral part of the design.
1874: First request to the