Symbolism
Crest
- The crest is the Queen's royal crest (a gold lion statant gardant—standing on all fours and facing the viewer—wearing the royal crown), differenced with a garland of Pacific Dogwood, the provincial flower.
Shield
- The shield features a Union Flag in chief, with a crown (known heraldically as an antique crown) at its centre. In base it has the sun setting into the ocean, representing the province's location on the Pacific.
Compartment
- The compartment is a garland of Pacific Dogwood.
Supporters
- The supporters are an wapiti (also known as elk) stag and a bighorn sheep. The wapiti of Vancouver Island and the bighorn sheep of the mainland of the province symbolize the union of the two colonies which united to form British Columbia in 1866.
Motto
- The motto Splendor Sine Occasu, is Latin and refers to the idea of the sun never setting over the British Empire. "Occasus" (the form 'occasu' is the ablative, required after the preposition "sine") literally means a "setting" or a "going down", such as of the sun, and by extension can refer to "the west". While one can translate the phrase to mean "splendour without diminishment", in combination with the geographical position of British Columbia (in the far west of the former British Empire), the setting sun shown on the shield, and the old concept of the sun never setting over the Empire, the motto should be understood to express the idea "a shining without a sunset".
Read more about this topic: Coat Of Arms Of British Columbia
Famous quotes containing the word symbolism:
“...I remembered the rose bush that had reached a thorny branch out through the ragged fence, and caught my dress, detaining me when I would have passed on. And again the symbolism of it all came over me. These memories and visions of the poor—they were the clutch of the thorns. Social workers have all felt it. It holds them to their work, because the thorns curve backward, and one cannot pull away.”
—Albion Fellows Bacon (1865–1933)