George Stanley - Involvement With The Canadian Flag

Involvement With The Canadian Flag

On March 23, 1964, Stanley wrote a formal memorandum to John Matheson, a prominent member of the multi-party parliamentary flag committee, suggesting that the new flag of Canada should be instantly recognizable, and simple enough so that school children could draw it. He drew a rough sketch of his design on the bottom of the letter.

Stanley had become friends with Matheson in Kingston, Ontario, where their children learned Scottish dancing together. Two months before the Great Flag Debate erupted on May 17, 1964 with Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson's courageous—or strategic—speech at the Royal Canadian Legion's national convention in Winnipeg, Matheson had paid a visit to Stanley at Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) in Kingston. Over lunch at the RMC mess hall, the two discussed heraldry, the history and the future of Canada, and the conundrum of the flag. And as the two men walked across the parade grounds, Stanley gestured toward the roof of the Mackenzie Building, and the college flag flapping at its peak.

"There, John, is your flag," Stanley remarked, suggesting the RMC College Flag's red-white-red as a good basis for a distinctive Canadian flag. At the centre, Stanley proposed, should be placed a single red maple leaf instead of the college emblem: a mailed fist holding a sprig of three green maple leaves.

The suggestion was followed by Stanley's detailed memorandum on the history of Canada's emblems, in which he warned that any new flag "must avoid the use of national or racial symbols that are of a divisive nature" and that it would be "clearly inadvisable" to create a flag that carried either a Union Flag or a Fleur-de-lis. Stanley wrote the pivotal flag memorandum in his study at Cluny House, Pittsburgh Township, just east of Kingston; this fine stone residence was built in 1820 by Colonel Donald Macpherson (c.1755-1829), maternal uncle of Sir John A. Macdonald.

The Stanley proposal was placed on a wall in Ottawa with literally hundreds of other flag designs, and eventually was selected as one of the final three designs for consideration. Through some clever political moves by the Liberal members of the committee, it beat out John Diefenbaker's flag (a combination of fleurs-de-lis, a maple leaf and the Union Flag), as well as the Pearson Pennant (three red leaves conjoined on a stem set against a white background with blue bars on either side).

Stanley's design was slightly modified by Jacques Saint-Cyr, a graphic artist with the Canadian Government Exhibition Commission (and ironically a Quebec sovereigntist), who gave the flag its current look. It was officially adopted as the flag of Canada by the House of Commons on December 15, 1964 and by the Senate on December 17, 1964, and proclaimed by H.M. Queen Elizabeth II, taking effect on February 15, 1965.

Support for the new flag grew quickly, including in Quebec. As Matheson observed in his book Canada's Flag, "when in June 1965, Dr. George F.G. Stanley of Royal Military College ... was granted an honorary doctorate at Université Laval, he was loudly applauded by the student body when the Canadian flag was referred to in his citation. The applause interrupted the citation." French-Canadian nationalists had long demanded that the Union Jack (Union Flag) be removed from any future Canadian flag.

Some debate lingered over whether Stanley or Saint-Cyr should get credit for the flag, but it was settled in 1995 when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien officially recognized Stanley as the father of Canada's flag. Stanley also suggested the name for the Canadian pale, an original vexillological and heraldic device first used in the Maple Leaf flag.