On Feb. 15, 1965, about 10,000 people gathered on Parliament Hill to watch the raising of Canada’s new flag.
At noon, amid a muffled 21-gun salute, a gust of wind gave the flag “the first flutter of life,” Peter C. Newman observed.
“If our nation by God’s grace endures a thousand years, this day will always be remembered as a milestone in Canada’s national progress,” said prime minister Lester Pearson.
Pearson managed a smile from his flu-ridden body before returning to bed. John Diefenbaker, who had fought the flag as opposition leader, wiped away tears.
Fifty years on, the flag is an imperishable symbol of national sovereignty. More than ever, we are a nation of flag-wavers. But its birth is less than “a milestone.” Indeed, the Conservatives are happy to ignore the flag.
For a government that has made history its mantra, we would expect this anniversary to be a big deal. It’s not.
On Jan. 11, Stephen Harper was in Kingston, Ont., to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Sir John A. Macdonald. A coin was struck and a stamp issued; the government spent $4 million.
Celebrating the past is the responsibility of a self-aware people and its leaders. The problem is that as much as this government likes to remember, it does so selectively.
The Conservatives spent millions commemorating the War of 1812 (though not the 200 years of peace between Canada and the United States that followed). They lavish money on projects recalling Canada’s role in the world wars and the Korean War.
From Historica Canada, the federal government commissions excellent oral histories from veterans. In our role in international peacekeeping, it is uninterested.
Of other anniversaries — such as the patriation of the British North America Act and the establishment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 — it does little.
See the pattern here? To the Conservatives, peacekeeping, the Charter — even the founding of NATO in 1949 — are achievements of Liberal governments. Why celebrate them?
The Conservatives opposed the flag ferociously in 1964. A bloviating Diefenbaker misplayed it from the beginning, when he proposed a divisive national plebiscite to decide the issue.
As Parliament debated a new flag over 37 days in the autumn of 1964, Diefenbaker mourned the loss of “the Christian crosses, the spiritual elements” from the old flag. An Edwardian in the Jet Age and an unreconstructed anglophile, he could not understand the changing Canada.
True, French Canada was not demanding a new flag (“Quebec doesn’t give a tinker’s dam about a new flag,” sniffed an unelected Pierre Elliott Trudeau in June 1964), but a visionary Pearson saw its importance as a unifying national symbol.
Courageously, he announced his commitment to a new flag before the Canadian Legion in Winnipeg. Amid a chorus of boos from angry veterans, he kept talking.
After 308 speeches and acrimonious debate, the flag was approved on Dec. 15, 1964. The vote was 163 to 78. Almost all the opposition came from Conservatives — though francophone Tories voted with the majority — who immediately found themselves on the wrong side of history.
So it’s unsurprising to learn that a Conservative government — which is building a (misplaced) Memorial to the Victims of Communism in Ottawa and finds $1.5 million to raise awareness of the Holodomor, the state-sponsored Ukrainian famine in the 1930s — is spending all of $50,000 to commemorate the Maple Leaf.
It is left to patriots like Mauril Bélanger, the MP from Ottawa-Vanier, to wave the flag on its golden anniversary. He has designed an attractive poster tracing the flag’s history, which he is distributing to 14,000 students.
Belanger, bless him, is doing what the government should be doing.
Today, in the relentless politicization of our culture, we have Conservative history and Liberal history.
It raises the question: At noon on Feb. 15, will Stephen Harper and his ministers stand with Liberals and New Democrats under the Peace Tower and honour the Maple Leaf?
Andrew Cohen is a professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa.
