MILNES Canada 150: Flag-waving runs in my family
Historian Arthur Milnes and his wife, Alison, embarked upon a special project to mark Canada’s sesquicentennial year: a time capsule. But rather than filling it with things from around their home in Kingston, the couple have reached out far and wide to pe
When I was growing up I loved visiting my grandparents, Herb and Alice Milnes — now both deceased — at their cottage near Midland, Ont., on a bluff overlooking Bluewater Beach.
And it was there, thanks to my grandfather, that my lifelong love of flags began.
You see, Herb Milnes wasn’t a bookish man and, truth be told, he didn’t speak a lot of his grandkids. But we all loved him — still do — just the same.
Herb Milnes, while he never voiced it, loved his Canadian flag and the flagpole he and his best friend, my late Uncle Jack, made out of wood they found in the bush near the cottage.
So at night, without saying a word and regardless of what was going on in the cottage, my grandfather would reverently lower “his” Canadian flag as the sun was setting over a usually glorious-looking Nottawasaga Bay. And then, in the morning, he’d put it back up with equal reverence. Often, whether I was a little boy or a teenager, I’d walk out of the cottage behind my grandfather and simply watch him.
And he never, in my memory, said a thing as he raised or lowered his beloved Canadian flag. Others times, his flag would stay up continually for days on end.
If I was a shrink — and I’m not — I’d suggest that is where my own love of flags, particularly the Canadian flag, but really all flags, began. And when Alison and I bought our first house, in 1999 in Kingston, I didn’t care about a “man cave” or place for speakers for my stereo; I was excited about finally owning my first backyard flagpole.
Which brings me to the Canada 150 letter-writing campaign for our time capsule.
In populating our capsule to mark the 150th anniversary of Confederation, I wanted flags. Lots of them. Special ones. From across Canada and, if possible, around the world.
And while, in my view, you can never have enough special flags, I think we did pretty well.
I hesitate to say which flag arising out of our efforts is my favourite, but I can point to a few highlights.
The fact that on July 1 the Speaker of the New Zealand’s House of Representatives, thanks to one of our letters, had Canada’s flag flown above his Parliament buildings brings me a quiet pride.
Alison and I are also thrilled and honoured that our time capsule will contain a Canadian and U.S. flag, worn as they are, that flew for a month earlier this year above NORAD headquarters in Colorado. And speaking of our American neighbours, it is also humbling — as a Canadian — to know that one of our letters led to the nuclear-powered U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower to fly Canada’s flag in honour of this Canadian anniversary. A picture of that event will also be forever preserved in our time capsule.
Various provincial Speakers, joined by Speaker Geoff Regan on Parliament Hill, have also sent us flags that have flown above “their” own symbols of Canadian democracy.
And, in various places across the U.S. and overseas in the U.K. and Ireland, Canada’s flag flew on July 1 as well.
It might sound hokey and a bit too Jimmy Stewart à la Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but I can’t help it. That’s who I am.
And I know that if he were here, Herb Milnes would agree. He wouldn’t say anything to me, of course, but he’d like “my” new flags.
Finally, that is also why I know he’d be proud that a flag we proudly own, a Canadian flag that once flew over the Peace Tower and was graciously given to us by a former prime minister some years ago, spent all day July 1 flying proudly above Kingston on our city’s highest and most commanding flagpole.
The one at Fort Henry.