The Great Flag Debate
SPENCER-BRUMMEL, ROLF
REPORT FROM CANADA The Great Flag Debate By Rolf Spencer-Brummel Montreal Mercifully, an outside world preoccupied with wider issues and more adult pursuits has shown but perfunctory or...
...We are suffering from a kind of national schizophrenia— are we too British or too American...
...Nor did he foresee that this protracted process (wiping out even the traditional summer recess of Parliament) would further aggravate emotions and delay action on urgent business that had already been put off too long in disputation masking as Parliamentary debate...
...The resolution put before the House, however, contained the provision that the venerable Royal Union Flag (popularly known as the Union Jack) also should be flown "as a symbol of Canadian membership in the Commonwealth...
...With vociferous groups demonstrating for one flag or the other (and some even for their own "home-made" designs), it was obvious that the proposal was going to run into a solid wall of opposition from opposing parties, especially the Diefenbaker Conservatives...
...Pearson seeks single-handedly to impose on this country...
...Even Peter C. Newman, Canadian political journalist and confidant of the Prime Minister, felt constrained to make this admission of his idol's blunder: "This was the summer when the politicians of Canada turned their backs on the needs of a nation in ferment to act out an interminable charade called the Great Flag Debate...
...Promptly he was accused, with some justice, of compromising the integrity of the committee and of putting its members under pressure...
...If the maple leaf pennant was intended as a "sop" for FrenchCanadians, it is significant that the latter scornfully point out that they already have a banner of their own —the fleur-de-lis—which is not recognized in the rest of the country...
...A New Flag By July 1"—Canada's National Dominion Day— proclaimed the banner headlines...
...On that inauspicious occasion, too, Pearson revealed his peculiar personal involvement in the controversial issue and his resolve to force it through Parliament rather than putting it to the people in a referendum...
...More specifically, he might have quoted no less an authority than the Government's chief planner—the chairman of the official Economic Council—who warned that Canada's economic development lags behind that of every other industrialized nation...
...It soon became obvious that the artificial flag issue in its "doublebarrelled" form, far from uniting the deeply divided country, had opened a new rift between Canadians of British and French extraction...
...In those early summer days, he clearly misjudged completely the temper of the people and of Parliament...
...The result seems to have been anticipated by everyone but the Prime Minister...
...So far as Pearson is concernedeven if in the flag controversy he has lacked the qualities of statesmanship —one must in fairness nevertheless give him high marks for sheer courage as well as for occasionally being uncannily close to the truth with other broad assessments...
...This employment with a vengeance of the deadline principle, which was to see many repetitions, led to Finance Minister Walter Gordon's amateurish and disastrous first budget, which had to be drastically revised amid howls of derision...
...Although the six weeks of conferences were supposed to be secret, reports had leaked out of a 9-5 vote favoring Pearson's design, and a 9-5 vote against a proposal for a revised Red Ensign including a fleur-de-lis...
...The question cannot yet be answered...
...A formula was found for handing over the entire matter—which Pearson originally had introduced as a personal and party issue—to an all-party committee which was given six weeks behind closed doors, to come up with an acceptable design...
...Indeed, by the late spring of this year, the group decisions of the new Liberal Government had produced a sequence of failures, starting with the memorable initial "60 days of decision...
...influence...
...In the final analysis, this is perhaps the most telling illustration of the futility of the whole absurd affair...
...Finally, there came one more government debacle: Hard pressed by the Opposition and even from within his own party, Pearson eventually had to perform another turnabout which could only further diminish his stature...
...Only a few hours earlier, Pearson had unfurled publicly the banner which he was asking Parliament to adopt as a distinctive national flag—the design consisting of a cluster of three bright-red maple leaves on a field of white, between vertical bars of blue at the staff and the fly...
...Yet Pearson still seems to have been convinced that an early settlement of the issue was possible...
...Said one independent paper in British Columbia province: "The type of flag which Mr...
...After stubbornly demanding that the vote on the two flags must be "indivisible," he had to permit the splitting up of this contradictory "package" legislation, making possible two separate votes for those who were in favor of one flag but opposed to the other...
...Within a few days the selection of a tentative design was made by Cabinet decision and on May 28— the day the outside world mourned the passing of Nehru—the Canadian newspapers splashed a weird, brightly colored flag replica across their front pages...
...In doing so they've maneuvered themselves into the incongruous position of arguing over what is, after all, only an emblem of nationhood, while resolutely ignoring those problems which threaten the nation's very existence...
...Rolf Spencer-Brummel, a freelance journalist, writes often on political developments in Canada...
...No sooner had agreement been reached on setting up the committee than the still undaunted Pearson made his categoric "Maple Leaf By Christmas" promise...
...There are many others who hold that the flag issue has become nothing but a smokescreen behind which the next general election campaign has already begun to be fought...
...At this writing, the controversial question still is no nearer a solution...
...We are also worried about being absorbed en route by a big bold neighbor...
...What are these real problems of Canada, other than the well-known split between French and Englishspeaking Canadians...
...And there seems to be a widespread illusion among the politicians that these problems will simply disappear in a national orgy of ecstasy over the new piece of bunting and the new national anthem...
...If we ever get the flag, we would have Peruvians saluting it...
...But Pearson, with his penchant for boomeranging deadlines, has announced: "A Maple Leaf Flag by Christmas.' Equally boldly and confidently, the Prime Minister declared that he would take the House of Commons vote as one of confidence: If his flag were to be rejected, the 26th Parliament would be dissolved and he would go to the people in a general election (Canada's fifth in seven years), presumably on this explosive issue which could only widen the existing cleavages...
...A recent comment by the Prime Minister provides a suitable epilogue here: "As a people we appear uncertain about where we are going and whether we are going separately or together...
...Ultimately, by a vote of 10 to 4, the committee came out in favor of a different version of the maple leaf flag: While Pearson's flag had three red maple leaves on a white background with blue bars at the ends, the newly approved design calls for a single red leaf, white background and red bars at the ends...
...are we bi-cultural, multi-cultural or no-cultural...
...When the committee handed in its recommendation October 29, it was clear the fight was not over...
...REPORT FROM CANADA The Great Flag Debate By Rolf Spencer-Brummel Montreal Mercifully, an outside world preoccupied with wider issues and more adult pursuits has shown but perfunctory or incredulous interest in the Great Canadian Flag Debate and its strangely unreal mixture of Alice in Wonderland and opera bouffe ingredients...
...Pearson further committed the cardinal tactical error of inviting the House of Commons to a full-scale debate on the flag, with this issue taking precedence over all other business on its agenda...
...Diefenbaker has charged that the committee design (supported by only one of the five Conservative members) "shows nothing of our heritage as a matter of fact, it would be the Peruvian flag, almost entirely a replica excepting that in the one case you have a maple leaf and in the case of the flag of Peru a representation of some coatof-arms...
...The Red Ensign—its British trappings always a thorn in the side of French-Canadians, but for generations and through two world wars considered Canada's national flag— was to be abolished...
...Still a third independent paper put its finger on the underlying issue which presumably prompted the flag measure: "If Prime Minister Pearson gets his way, the Red Ensign will disappear and a flag that has stemmed from the roots of national history will be abolished...
...On May 17 the bland Prime Minister announced to an annual gathering of the patriotic Canadian War Veterans organization (barely audible above the mounting chorus of boos and catcalls from a predictably hostile Winnipeg audience) his plan to unfurl a Canadian flag "that is truly distinctive and truly national —as Canadian as the maple leaf which should be its dominant design...
...But this was not yet to be the end of the Prime Minister's gyrations...
...Pearson rode to power last year on electoral pledges to resolve the problems that confront Canada...
...More importantly, the cracks in the structure of Canadian Confederation—produced by the relentless pressure of separatist and crypto-separatist Quebec tendencies —were showing to an embarrassing extent, and the government's series of retreats in the face of this mounting French-Canadian nationalism did nothing to enhance its reputation in the rest of the country...
...Pearson then decided to strike out boldly on his own—without, it is reliably reported, consulting his closest advisors or his party caucus...
...Meanwhile the whole issue was to be removed from the glare of public opinion—to the regret of the wily flag manufacturers who had enjoyed a windfall churning out a variety of colorful pennants for eager Canadians of different political persuasions...
...Indicative of the hostile reception across the country, at least during the early stage, was a survey of 28 newspapers which showed only seven of the editors supporting what came to be known as the "Pearson Pennant...
...Symbolism is no comfort to the one in every four Canadian adults who does not earn $1,000 a year, or to the one in every three Canadian bread winners who cannot make enough money to pay income tax...
...Having previously ruled that the controversial matter must be decided not by a House committee but by a House of Commons vote, obviously along party lines, and, if need be, rammed through a solid phalanx of opposition, he now reversed this decision too...
...had, even in the summer months and despite a business boom, an unemployment figure which stood at 265,000...
...In a desperate gamble to achieve unity that ostensibly he could not attain by other means, he contrived to wrap up the country's troubles in the new national flag and anthem as symbols of nationhood and freedom from the fetters of British and U.S...
...So far all the affluent Canadian society has done is to produce the worst poverty ever displayed in a modem industrial nation along with a way of life that mimics the virtues of Imperial Vienna six decades ago...
...The Prime Minister has set his embattled government and the nation itself on a collision course of his own making...
...Another independent (Vancouver) journal called the new flag, "The glorified dish towel that Mr...
...A leading newspaper, the Edmonton Journal, has said in a widely quoted editorial that Pearson is convinced the Federal power and the unity of the nation are so much in peril at this moment that nothing less than a settlement of the flag issue "can demonstrate the genuine desire of the Pearson government to reach a rational accommodation with Quebec, and thereby to reestablish Ottawa's power to control Canadian affairs.' The population at large in Quebec, however, has on the whole remained aloof from the bizarre controversy...
...They were perhaps most succinctly stated by a labor columnist in the Toronto Telegram: "The real answer to the troubles of Canada is the challenge to a socalled affluent society to eliminate the poverty that is our national curse...
...It is, of course, politically safer for members of Ottawa's Parliament to work themselves into a frenzy over how many, if any, maple leaves should appear on a cloth emblem than to grapple with the question of where the money and the imagination are to come from if the real problems that divide Canada are to be solved...
...Taking their Flag Debate and heavy doses of heraldic dissertations quite seriously, they have gaped enthusiastically at the incongruous sight of tumult piled upon tumult as the hard-pressed government of Prime Minister Lester Pearson has sought to settle Canada's deep-seated problems by the convenient device of defining new symbols...
...Such a debate, with every MP claiming his right to speak at full length on the matter, was bound to drag on for months and develop into a filibuster by the Opposition...
...Now many Canadians feel that the Prime Minister—whose stature has long been over-rated—has vacillated, fumbled and failed at almost every turn...
...Such a situation could hardly be in the interests of the country at a time when unity was never more urgently needed or could more easily be lost...
...it is to appease Quebec still further at the expense of the rest of the country...
...The Prime Minister's object is easy to appreciate...
...The Prime Minister may succeed in ramming the new flag through Parliament but in doing so he will add to the disunity his other pleas these days affect to avoid...
...Thus at last, with sigh of relief, the Canadian parliament on September 10 suspended the flag debate...
...Nonetheless, in another remarkable about face a few weeks later, Pearson apparently had second thoughts and abandoned his previous determined stance by permitting a "free vote" after all to enable the government to survive an adverse decision...
...The implication that the party with the most popular flag is the one best fitted to run the country would be ludicrous if it were not so dangerous...
...But the somewhat undignified affair has made heavy emotional demands on Canadians of all political persuasions...
...Pearson proposes appears to resemble something we've come to expect from one of the Banana states or some primitive republic newly founded in the African jungle...
...He might have added that Canada (with a population roughly onetenth that of the U.S...
...Editorials mirrored the country's unfavorable reaction...
Vol. 47 • November 1964 • No. 24
