(~5 minutes to read)
Today is the 51st birthday of the Canadian Flag. The familiar red and white flag with the stylized maple leaf replaced its predecessor on the 15th February, 1965.
What was its predecessor? Officially, it was the British Union Flag (or Union Jack as it’s better known), but there was a variation on the Canadian Merchant Maine’s Red Ensign that was frequently flown on Canadian buildings overseas as well as occasionally here in Canada, including on the Peace Tower.
There had been attempts in the 1920s and 1940s to adopt a truly Canadian flag, and the 1946 recommendation included a British Union Flag and a green maple leaf.
The big push came in 1964, courtesy of PM Lester Pearson. He was in favour of a design that featured three maple leaves but he couldn’t win enough support for it, so he appointed a fifteen-member all-party committee and gave it the task of coming up with a new design.
The whole question of what a new flag would feature had become a heated topic between the Conservative John Diefenbaker and the newly-elected Liberal Prime Minister Pearson. From submissions of over 2000 designs in 1964 as well as the archived submissions from 1946, the committee narrowed the selection down to two: the so-called Pearson Pennant and a design submitted by George Stanley, who at that time was Dean of Arts at the Royal Military College of Canada.
The Conservative members of the committee believed that the Liberals would vote for Pearson’s preferred design, and voted for the George Stanley design, believing that they would split the vote and deny the Liberals the clear majority that Diefenbaker insisted was a prerequisite of acceptance of the committee’s recommendation. As it turned out, the Liberals were not in favour of their leader’s preference and also voted for the George Stanley design. The vote was 14-0 in favour. Given that Diefenbaker didn’t really want a new flag at all, and Pearson wanted his “pennant”, I have to assume that both leaders were disappointed. I have to say though that I’m relieved that the Pearson Pennant wasn’t adopted—I’m not sure that I could have worn it with the same pride that I can wear the design that was first flown officially on Parliament Hill on 15th February, 1965.
It’s a beautiful flag. It doesn’t include anything that could divide or favour the founding nations. It’s modern, clean and eye-catching. It’s not fussy like the Union Jack or the Stars and Stripes. It’s not tacky (which is how I see the Pearson Pennant), and it’s easy to draw!
Thankfully, politically-motivated voting worked against the plotters, and for fifty-one years now, Canadians have had a flag that’s respected throughout the world. For reasons that are hotly debated on the wonderweb, Americans allegedly sew the Canadian flag to their backpacks when they’re travelling abroad, but real Canadians can usually spot the subterfuge (although as a Canadian, I’m sworn to secrecy as to how!)
What’s All This About D-Day?
February 15th 2016 is also the 45th anniversary of the eradication of LSD in the UK. By LSD, I mean the old pounds, shillings and pence money system. “L” stood for ‘libra’, “S” stood for “solidus”, and “D” stood for “denarius”, all Roman/Latin terms.
It’s no coincidence that LSD is a double entendre—mind-altering drugs must surely have been responsible for a money system that has twelve pennies in a shilling, and twenty shillings in a pound (£). There were 240 pennies in a pound (£), and half a penny was officially called a “half-penny” but referred to as a “ha’penny” (pronounced “hayp’ny”) by most people, irrespective of social class. A quarter of a penny was a farthing (apparently a corruption of “fourth”). A two-shilling piece was a florin, and there were coins for a quarter of a pound and an eighth of a pound (“crown” and “half-crown” respectively). A guinea varied in value, but settled on 21 shillings, and today the term is still used in horse racing circles.
LSD coins were gargantuan. A penny weighed 9.4 grams and was 31mm in diameter; 48 of these beasts weighed one pound (1lb). Two hundred and forty pennies (value £1.00) weighed almost 5lb! Prior to 1860 they weighed twice that amount. From 1797 to 1859 they weighed half as much again—28.3 grams or one ounce.
For comparison, the current British penny weighs 3.56 grams; the recently retired Canadian penny weighs 2.35 grams.
The old money system took a long time to die off. The five pence and ten pence coins were the same size as the shilling and florin respectively, allowing the old coins to remain in circulation until the early 1990s, when the sizes of the 5p and 10p coins were reduced. Some shopkeepers insisted on pricing their goods in LSD post-1971, although a 20-minute search on the wonderweb failed to yield any information about who, when, and for how long. I do remember fishmongers in my childhood hometown being holdouts, and it seems like they held out for years, even risking prosecution, but memory isn’t authoritative enough, hence the weasel words.
Happy February 15th!
If you’re Canadian, then Happy Canadian Flag Day. If you’re a Brit or ex-Brit and you’re over 60 years old, then shed a tear for the day spending a penny got 2.4 times as expensive, but thank your favourite deity that you didn’t have to write the computer programs that handled British accounts in pounds shillings and pence! I’m young enough to have been spared that pleasure—everything I wrote (in COBOL and Assembler) was simple multiples of ten.
I wonder what else happened on February 15th?
Your Turn
Does Feb 15th have any special significance to you (other than birthday, anniversary etc.)? Is it a special day in your country or the country you were born in? What do you think of the Canadian flag? What are your memories of Decimalisation Day in the UK in 1971? Let the world know by leaving a comment.