FLAGGING ENTHUSIASM
Banner brouhaha? Not so much, Simons writes
Don’t get in a flap. But Edmonton’s flag debate is about to resume.
Wait. Are you telling me you don’t care about the debate over whether to replace Edmonton’s old-fashioned 50-year-old flag with a new banner?
You’re not alone. To judge by a new report, which will be presented to the community services committee of city council Monday, Edmontonians don’t give a flying flag about the issue. Only seven members of the public bothered to respond to a recent online survey about replacing the city’s official flag. (And since I was one of them, that means only six “real” people weighed in.)
The city did gather another 1,638 responses from its Edmonton Insight Community, a preselected group of Edmontonians who care about civic issues and love to answer online surveys. But even they — the keenest of the keen — seemed unmoved by the question. Only 19 per cent said they were “very supportive” of changing flags, while 44 per cent were “somewhat” or “very” unsupportive.
That wasn’t because they rallied round the old flag. Only 12 per cent of respondents said they loved our current flag — 38 per cent said they neither loved it nor hated it. In fact, by a very small margin, people seemed to like the proposed new design for a flag better than the existing one. They just didn’t feel any particular enthusiasm to change.
The city ran this idea up the flagpole. No one saluted. So why are we having this debate at all?
Well, there’s no doubt our current flag, commissioned for Canada’s 1967 centennial, is less than soul-stirring.
In the centre is the complicated city crest, which includes a mace (symbolizing Edmonton’s role as the provincial capital), a blazing sun (denoting our alleged sunny weather), a winged wheel (a nod to our history as a centre of northern aviation and transportation), a wavy blue ribbon (a shout-out to the North Saskatchewan River), and a sheaf of wheat (a connection to our agricultural roots), all on a royal purple background (because, hey, why not). They’re flanked on one side by a bearded fur trader, holding a rifle and wearing a traditional Métis sash, and a pretty, book-hoisting blond in sandals and a blue sundress, who’s meant to symbolize Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom.
And as if all that weren’t enough clutter, the trapper and the goddess are standing on a green lawn, and below them are the words Industry, Integrity and Progress.
All that appears on a field of white (representing peace) with sky-blue borders (representing the river). It’s the sort of cheerfully anachronistic mess that vexes vexillologists and other such flag scholars.
So I understand why Mayor Don Iveson got excited last year when Randy Ermineskin, grand chief of the Treaty 6 First Nations, presented him with an innovative re-interpretation of the city flag, created by Edmonton artist Ryan McCourt. McCourt’s design takes the colours and key symbols of the river and the sun from the existing flag and reworks them in a more stripped-down, abstract and striking form. It’s a much cooler, more contemporary look.
Iveson and his council colleagues were enthused enough by McCourt’s design, which is meant to symbolize the enduring, eternal nature of the treaty relationship, to commission this survey.
I quite like McCourt’s bold, bright design. And I quite like the idea of choosing a flag that could symbolize a new relationship between the city and the Treaty 6 nations, especially in this sesquicentennial banner year.
But you can’t capture the flag if you can’t capture the public imagination. There’s no wave of support for this plan. And that should give council pause. Voters hate seeing councils get bogged down, wasting time and energy with fights over symbolic issues — and you could hardly think of a more symbolic issue than this one.
It’s time, I think, to drop the flag on this whole discussion. Sure, our current standard is a bit hokey and a bit political problematic. But even if Edmontonians don’t exactly love it, they recognize it as theirs, and as a part of their history.
Instead of changing our colours, we could fly the McCourt banner alongside our existing one, as an acknowledgment of the new future we hope to create together on Treaty 6 land. That might be an elegant, simple way to commemorate the past and embrace the present.
And, if our civic enthusiasm is flagging, this might be about as much flag debate as we can bear.