Geoff Russ: The Red Ensign is neither a hate symbol nor a symbol to hate (2024)

What should we make of the Red Ensign? Most people see it only when it is brought out on Remembrance Day, and few times apart from Nov. 11.

Controversy over Canada’s first flag recently re-emerged in a story about the Ottawa-funded Canadian Anti-Hate Network, which falsely deemed it to be racist.While that was old news, having been written about in the National Post and elsewhere two years ago, it is difficult to ignore the growing appropriation of Canada’s first truly national flag by bad actors.

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Activists of all stripes and those intoxicated by nostalgia keep trying to make the Red Ensign into something it is not. Cultural socialists have attempted to besmirch it as a hate symbol, while white supremacist groups have tried very hard to confirm those false accusations.

Simply put, the Red Ensign is a flag of Canada and for all Canadians. It is not the current official flag, but it still represents the country and an enormous chunk of its history from 1868to 1965.

Perhaps that is why far-left activists wish to slander it and the provincial flags it inspired, as if it symbolizes the first half of a foreign country’s lifespan, with an alien culture that has no place in modern Canada. On the contrary, the Red Ensign deserves to be fully respected and accorded its due share of prestige. Canada cannot be divided into pre- and post-1965 eras, and there has never been an “old” or “new” Canada, there is only one.

This attempt to manufacture historical amnesia via demonization is uniquely suited to our nation. Among the Atlantic countries, Canadians are perhaps most affected by cultural memory loss.

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In the United States, the founding fathers Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Alexander Hamilton are still alive and well in the cultural canon, with Hamilton experiencing a complete rehabilitation via Lin-Manuel Miranda’s eponymous musical. American writers like Mark Twain are still widely known and read.

Across the ocean in the United Kingdom, the legacies of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher are still fought over to this day, while Shakespeare and many other long-dead authors remain iconic.

Among Canada’s Fathers of Confederation, the average person can probably name Sir John A. Macdonald. Regarding writers, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro and maybe Yann Martel are well-known, and both are products of what is falsely held as the “new,” more enlightened Canada that apparently emerged after World War II.

Stephen Leaco*ck and the Confederation Poets are mostly forgotten. Two of the only widely-known artists from the “old” Canada are the painter Emily Carr and Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables.

The Group of Seven, once regarded as the best artists to ever emerge from Canada, have been accused in the modern day of “erasing” Indigenous people by not including them in their beloved landscape paintings. Landscapes often do not feature any walking, talking creatures as they are usually not the point of a landscape painting. But the attack is still emblematic of what passes as critical analysis.

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There is hardly a single serious thinker who would disagree that Canada is a colonial country. Canada can never be fully decolonized without the disappearance of parliamentary democracy, the English and French languages, and almost the entire population, and that reality did not disappear because a flag was replaced. The red Maple Leaf flag is a result of the same processes and history as the Red Ensign, and doing away with the latter would not change a thing.

Canada has never undergone a revolution. Our current government is a direct descendent of the first independent Parliament in 1867, and all the colonial assemblies that preceded it. Therefore the Red Ensign cannot be regarded as some reactionary relic like France’s pre-Revolution royal flag.

Those who talk the most about the Red Ensign generally fall into three categories. The first and most harmless are chronically online, but honest, nostalgists who see the Red Ensign as Canada’s true flag. The second are white supremacists who have tried to make the Red Ensign into Canada’s Confederate battle flag.

Finally, the third are the smorgasbord of far-left activists, often Anglophobic students reading English literature or Common Law, who see the Red Ensign’s Union Jack in the top-left corner and begin seething at the representation of anything British as an irredeemable symbol of cartoonishly evil imperialism.

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It belongs to none of these groups, either as a hate symbol or a symbol to hate. The Red Ensign should be a treasured symbol of Canada whose value is not negated by the passage of time.

Thousands of Canadians fought and died under the Red Ensign during the First and Second World Wars, the most noble and influential episodes in Canada’s history. The fact that Remembrance Day remains the least-controversial Canadian holiday is a testament to how Canada’s efforts in both wars are still highly regarded.

There is no Canada under the Maple Leaf flag without the Canada of the Red Ensign. Both are perfectly fine flags with fully honest and appropriate reasons for their display.

The Red Ensign is not, and should not make a comeback as, Canada’s recognized national flag. Unlike the surreptitious changing of Dominion Day’s name to Canada Day in 1982, the switch to the Maple Leaf flag occurred after a lengthy and honourable public debate from 1964 to 1965.

Could anyone imagine iconic moments like Paul Henderson scoring at the 1972 Summit Series, Sidney Crosby winning the gold medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics, or Terry Fox running across Canada under anything but the design and colours of the current flag? The Maple Leaf makes for an objectively beautiful banner, and there is no worthy reason to replace it.

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What is impossible is mentally placing the Maple Leaf flag alongside Canada’s efforts in the First or Second World War or Korea. Canada was a force for good in those conflicts under the Red Ensign, and it would be very strange if that legacy was tossed out as being a part of the “old” Canada.

It would be nothing short of a tragedy if the Red Ensign became permanently shelved, similar to how much of pre-1965 Canada, along with its artists, writers and politicians, has become vilified or forgotten.

Canada’s first century was not spent as an unfriendly country under a foreign flag, it was as the same country we live in today. Public servants, elected politicians and others should think twice before demonizing the Red Ensign, for it would be no different than insulting the red Maple Leaf.

National Post

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