Don’t let haters hijack Canada’s Red Ensign

First they came for Pepe the Frog. And I said nothing because, to be honest, I didn’t much care that alt-right trolls and white supremacists had co-opted an innocent cartoon frog meme for their own foul purposes.

But now they’ve come for the Red Ensign.

On Canada Day, a small group of alt-right agitators who called themselves the Proud Boys disrupted a First Nations ceremonial event in Halifax. They were carrying a Red Ensign flag.

While the Red Ensign was never Canada’s official flag, different variations of it served as Canada’s de facto symbol from 1868 until 1965, when we adopted the red-and-white Maple Leaf flag.

The Proud Boys aren’t alone. All kinds of conservative fringe groups have adopted the Red Ensign as their standard. They range from the pseudo-intellectual Northern Dawn movement to the more overtly neo-Nazi Aryan Guard. The idea is to somehow turn the Red Ensign into the Canadian version of the Confederate flag, a symbol of white supremacy. The flag, they believe, harkens back to some mythical era of when Canada was “pure” and “white.” This appropriation of the Red Ensign goes back to the early 2000s. But the Proud Boys, the anti-feminist, pro-white group started by Gavin McInnes, have been getting lots of attention.

His racism, sexism and antiSemitism are supposedly ironic.

His earnest followers, however, aren’t in on the joke. They’re boys in men’s bodies, angry, alienated and looking for scapegoats to blame for their own inadequacies. And now, these “boys” are clutching the Red Ensign as their security blanket.

Phyllis Bright, who owns the Flag Shop in Edmonton, gasped when I told her about the alt-right campaign to turn the Red Ensign into a hate banner. “I’m horrified,” she said. “I have shivers. To me, the Canadian flag is almost sacred, and the Red Ensign is as well.”

Bright sells three different kinds of Red Ensign flags, including the version used from 1868 to 1922. Her shop also sells the Red Ensign from the 1923 to 1956 period, as well as the 1957 to 1965 version. That’s the one alt-right groups favour.

Last year from June 1 to July 12, said Bright, her store sold three Red Ensigns, of the 1957 to 1965 design. This year, they sold eight, half of those since July 1, when the Proud Boys hit the news.

The Flag Shop refuses to stock Confederate flags. And Bright is deeply disturbed at the thought that the Red Ensign might suddenly become popular as an alternative symbol of hate and division.

I am, too. The Red Ensign has been part of Canadian history since 1682 when the Hudson’s Bay Company flew a variation of the pennant over its forts and on its canoes. It followed Canadians into battle at Vimy Ridge and Dieppe, Hong Kong, Normandy and Ortona. That’s the flag Canadians flew when they liberated Holland from the Nazis. It’s the flag Canadians flew when they defended South Korea at the Battle of Kapyong, the flag they flew when they went to keep peace in Cyprus.

The Proud Boys in Halifax who brandished the Red Ensign were all off-duty members of the Canadian Navy. What an insult to the memories of the Canadian servicemen and women who fought and died under its colours.

Yes, the Red Ensign is a flag with colonial, imperial history. It was also a flag of conquest and cultural oppression. There were good reasons to replace it in 1965 with something more inclusive, less redolent of Empire. Yet the Red Ensign has also been a symbol of tolerance and liberty. Let’s not allow it to be coopted and debased by an aggrieved fringe. Let’s not let the haters hijack our history.