Time to scrap Ontario’s flag and its outdated British bias

An Ontario provincial flag is flapping in the breeze these days in my Toronto-area neighbourhood. The bright red flag with a British Union Jack in a top corner and the Coat of Arms of Ontario complete with a Cross of St. George appeared recently.

Another neighbour is displaying the Canadian Red Ensign, which was our unofficial national flag until it was replaced by the current Maple Leaf flag on Feb. 15, 1965.

I don’t mind the Red Ensign because these day it flies beside the Canadian Maple Leaf flag at the Vimy Memorial in France, which honours Canadians who fought and died in the First World War. This past weekend marked the 100th anniversary of the end of that war.

But I do mind Ontario’s flag, which in its current design is an outdated relic of a postcolonial time in this province.

Indeed, it’s time Ontario scrapped the current flag. It should be replaced by a flag that no longer reflects a pro-British bias and instead heralds the fully independent province that modern Ontario is today.

The current flag came into being in 1965. Branded “a flag of revenge” by Liberal MPP Elmer Sopha, one of only two MPPs to vote against it, the flag is today a stark reminder of postcolonial Ontario. Sopha accurately argued the flag didn’t reflect the increasingly diverse population of Ontario. That was 53 years ago — and the province is far more diverse today than it was back then.

At the time, Conservative Premier John Robarts rammed approval of the flag through the Legislature in a just few hours. There was almost no prior consultations or debate.

Robarts favoured the design because it paid tribute to the province’s British heritage. Sadly, Robarts used the flag as a statement against the federal Liberal government for dumping the Red Ensign in favour of the new Canadian flag, which ignored all things British, or French, for that matter.

Now, 53 years later, what we’ve got is a flag appallingly out of step with modern Ontario. Having both the Union Jack and our Coat of Arms with its Cross of St. George, the patron saint of England, is an affront to millions of Ontarians born in the province or who have immigrated from somewhere other than Britain.

Today, some 30 per cent of Ontario residents are foreign-born. In the Greater Toronto Area that number rises to nearly 46 per cent. Barely 21 per cent of Ontarians identify themselves ethnically as English, according to the latest census. Almost a quarter identify as Canadians. Significant numbers also identify themselves as French, Dutch, German, Italian, Chinese, Ukrainian, East Indian, Polish, Filipino, Jamaican, Russian, Pakistani, Greek and more.

Oddly, while provincial flags hardly ever make waves, they’ve been in the news twice in the past few days.

In late October, the co-designer of the Franco-Ontario flag, Gaétan Gervais, a Laurentian University history professor, died at age 74 in Sudbury.

I admit I didn’t even know there was an official Franco-Ontario flag. But the flag was first unveiled in 1975 and officially recognized in a 2001 act as the emblem for the Franco-Ontario community in the province. Gervais and co-designer Michel Dupuis, a political science student at the time and who died this past January, developed the flag to instil a sense of pride among Francophones in Ontario.

And just last week the city of Montreal agreed after a legal challenge that starting on Nov. 19 it will give the Quebec provincial flag precedence over the Canadian flag in front of municipal buildings and at civic events. A provincial act states the Fleur-de-lys shall be displayed prominently at official events and buildings.

Maybe the timing to push for a redesign of Ontario’s flag is bad given that the tradition-bound Conservatives are in power.

Still, the government could move quickly by launching a provincewide competition involving schools and professional designers. MPPs would have final say. Response would be huge.

Importantly, as the decades slip by this stark reminder of Ontario’s colonial era will become increasingly anachronistic. Why wait any longer?