50 years ago the Conservatives led by John Diefenbaker were adamantly opposed to the Canadian Flag as we know it today…..Another bit of trivia showing how Conservatives consistently fall on the wrong side of history!

Interesting observation Taxed Out. Conservatives are consistently falling on the wrong side of the law as well. Every time these yahoos try to pass a law, the Supreme Court of Canada strikes it down. The Prostitution Law, Immigration law, heck even Harper’s own candidate that he wanted to appoint to the Supreme Court of Canada was rejected by that same court.

The Harper government is the least law abiding government in the history of Canada, This will be the Conservative’s legacy; wrong side of history and wrong side of the law!

50 years ago if we’d had a referendum to decide whether Canadians wanted the present Maple Leaf flag or the old Red Ensign history might well have been different. But we didn’t. Unfortunately.

Conservatives, whether nominal or actual, will continue to be on the wrong side of history as long as they’re content to simply mount a rear guard retreat against Liberals, and those to the left of them.

So long as they’re content to agree with the contention of their opponents that, “..the poor are poor because the rich are rich”, and can’t (or won’t) explain why that’s simply not so, and deal with the ‘real’ problem causing increasing poverty in the midst of a greater increasing plenty, all they can do is delay their inevitable downfall. We’ll be no happier with their replacements when that happens.

Hey look, Dick Harris actually did something.

I am amazed he knows wher pg is

Funny how this government never misses an opportunity to play politics!
They spent a grand total of $50,000 to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of OUR flag!
Yet they spent millions to celebrate the birthday of Sir John A MacDonald!
The former was brought in by Lester Pearson a Liberal, and the latter was a conservative! You can draw your own conclusions but to me it seems like the conservatives would rather eat horse manure than celebrate something that is red and white,and was a liberal accomplishment regardless of it’s national significance!

Here we go again with the Liberal, left, anti Harper garbage.

There was a lot of controversy about this flag at the time, and you can rest assured that the weak headed, and weak kneed Liberals had no intention of letting it to a referendum because if they had, this flag would not be here to-day.

Without taxing the brains of some posters on this site, you might note that this flag, with the maple leaf was finally accepted after much controversy. The reason it is just a red maple leaf is because they did not want to put anything on the flag to annoy anyone else. Hence a maple leaf. How Canadian.

Now all you bright light posters could perhaps explain to me, that if we are such grand Canadians, such nationalists, and such lovers of our Country, why only 50 people in a population of some 75000 showed up for the ceremonies. There was more people across the street at the Farmers Market, and sitting in Oh Chocolate.

So I wait with bated breath for your left wing, faint hearted, explanations.

Probably ALL the Liberals there ARE in Prince George, Palopu.

Your comment is filled with pompous arrogance, and anger Palopu. What gives you the right to insult us and then demand that we answer your pathetic questions? If you are going to take our opinions and comments personally, and then launch yourself into an autogenic rage, perhaps the site moderator should be giving you a time out?

Taxed Out’s comment, my comment, and socredible’s comment, seem legitimately straight forward opinions framed by well-known, and presented, facts. If you think our comments and opinions are misplaced, or contain errors, then please point those out to us.

May I use this opportunity to further support my assertions that this Harper Government consistently loses court cases? Just cut and paste the following link and add the 3 www’s to the beginning of the link address.

.cbc.ca/news/politics/the-federal-government-s-court-case-losing-streak-1.2696593

Palopu.. I dint hear a thing about any ceremony . Did anyone ? Seems the 50 people there where all part of the event.

“Stanley and Matheson collaborated on a design that was ultimately, after six months of debate and 308 speeches, passed by a majority vote in the House of Commons on December 15, 1964. Just after this, at 2:00 am, Matheson wrote to Stanley: “Your proposed flag has just now been approved by the Commons 163 to 78. Congratulations. I believe it is an excellent flag that will serve Canada well.” The Senate added its approval two days later.’

Obviously it wasn’t only the Liberals who approved the new flag. The majority voted for it.

During the twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties there was an ongoing public debate and demands for Canada to have its own distinctive flag!

It is a great flag and it serves ALL of Canada well!

The red maple leaf as Canada’s unofficial national symbol pre-dates confederation. Feb 15, 1965 it became our official national symbol. Apparently that still upsets some staunch Conservatives.

Get over it people, it was fifty years ago
Are you not proud to be Canadian?
That is what matters, not some fondness for the ‘old’ flag design, or some misguided political bitterness.
I was in primary school when we adopted the Maple Leaf as our flag, and I’m damn proud of this country and our flag!

(oh gosh, did I just sound like fierce Shirley? egad)

metalman. ;)

That ‘Canada’ you speak of Digitus was today’s Ontario and Quebec. The rest of us, in all the other Provinces, including the other two of the four that originally Confederated, obviously didn’t count. The tree that dead leaf belongs to doesn’t even grow in all of the present provinces and territories. And in 1965 Quebec was already flying its own Provincial flag in place of the Canadian one, and separatism there already on the rise.

Not because we had the Union Jack in the corner of the old Red Ensign, and Quebecers were offended by that, but because they realised this country had a Federal government that wasn’t doing a damned thing towards reducing their cost of living relative to their standard of living.

Those were the years of economic ‘stagflation’, followed by rapid ‘inflation’. They’d sent a solid bloc of first, Social Credit Party of Canada, then Real Caouette’s Ralliement de Creditiste. MPs to Ottawa. But even when those Social Credit Parties had more seats than the NDP, and held the balance of power in the minority governments that succeeded Diefenbaker’s majority one, the other three Parties moved in lock step to prevent any Social Credit economic initiatives from going anywhere.

Caouette was no separatist, but when all those Quebecers who backed him saw just the same old Liberal attempts at ‘divide and conquer’ by trying to incite animosity between French and English so they could avoid dealing with the real economic problems meaningfully, they turned their support towards separatism.

So where was the big push to have a new flag coming from? Was it brought in to unite us, or to divide us? So far as I’m aware, Quebec is still flying its own provincial flag in preference to the dead leaf thing Pearson wished on us. Though Harper, if he’s accomplished nothing else, has managed to turn them away from separatism. So far.

NyteHawwks comment has interesting connotations; if the Conservatives spent millions celebrating the birthday of Sir John A. MacDonald, a fellow Conservative, and only $50,000 on the 50th anniversary of Canada’s flag, does this mean Conservatives tend to put themselves first before their country? Hmmm…

If the Conservatives were publicly criticised for spending millions on commemorating something like Sir John A MacDonald’s birthday, listened to that criticism, took it to heart that the public wasn’t happy seeing their tax dollars spent that way, and toned the spending down to only $ 50,000 celebrating 50 years of the flag, isn’t that what they’re supposed to do? Listen. To what people are telling them. And then when they do, and act on it….??? Just what the hell DO we want from a government anyways?

Ah yes . The conservatives hero J.A.M . The first pm to screw B.C.ers . The promise to BC was a fixed link to vanisle if we signed the confederation contract . For the welcher macdrunkered 21 million to keep his promise to us was too high . Now we have a third world solution the get to our islands ,boats . Boats that cost us billions in subsities and stand on the throats of us all in Bc . If he had not reneged on his promise to us all , cascadia would be a reality and it would rival the GTA . Kind of ironic that pei got a bridge called the confederation bridge when all they have is 180 k people there but then mccains have to move their potatos . Bc almost left confederation over this screwing and you worry about flags .

Once again Palapu has a knack of insulting anybody and everybody who has an opinion that doesn’t align with his.
For the record, I am far from being a lefty, in fact I used to be a member of the Progressive Conservative Party, and actually worked on more than one election campaign for the old PC party.
What we have now is a party that has been hijacked by the old reform party, and has Zero resemblance to what used to be a party of the centre right. A party that was fiscally conservative, but had at least a bit of social conscience.
Today’s Conservative party is so far right wing that Attila The Hun would be considered a Lefty by comparison.
Mean spirited partisanship has never accomplished anything, and I’m betting it costs Harper his majority at minimum, and perhaps even his government.

The railway link to Vancouver Island was done in after the outbreak of World War One. Not by Sir John A MacDonald, who was dead by then. Up until then the plan was still to have the CPR come across on a series of bridges between the islands in the Straits north of Campbell River. The Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway was constructed at the same time the CPR came across BC, and was financed by the Dunsmuir coal interests on the Island, and the Big 4 group that built what became the Southern Pacific Railway in California. The CPR acquired the E&N after the turn of the century and extended it up to Courtenay, with grade put in further north, but not the tracks. When the war broke out, construction halted. After the war ended, Canada found it was over-built with railways ~ two of the transcontinental lines went bankrupt and had to be taken over by the government to save them, (and Canada’s reputation with international money lenders as a safe place to invest), which re-organised them as the CNR. There was a period of rationalisation started after it was realised there wasn’t ever going to be enough traffic, or international markets to sell product into, to warrant the mileage already built. The idea of the railway link to Vancouver Island was one of the casualties.

NyteHawwk. What you have now is a Conservative Majority Government.

Seems people like to ignore the Majority part of the Conservative Government, and try the old tact that with the Liberals, NDP, and Greens, Harper does not have the majority of the popular vote, and therefore doesn’t really represent the Majority of Canadians.

Under our system of Government we have a Government that has the majority of seats, and once elected represents all Canadians. So whether people like it or not, your Government to-day that represents your interests, is Conservative.

The next election will determine if this changes or not. This election will be an opportunity for Canadians to make some changes if they feel that is necessary.

The lashing out at the Harper Government, and the constant
tripe, that he somehow is part of a world conspiracy, and anti Canadian is to say the least insulting, hence I return the insults to the senders.
Seems they don’t like to receive what they send out.

In any event the flag issue was not well attended, and if you look at the size of the cake they were cutting one could draw the conclusion that they did not expect a big turn-out. Hmmmm.

Socred , I don’t know what history books you read but you’ve got Bc history totally wrong . He was very much alive when he reneged and gave us no fixed link back in 1879 breaking his promise of 1871 . He called us the spoiled child of confederation . You don’t have to make things up . Try looking it up first .

NyteHawwk:- “What we have now is a party that has been hijacked by the old reform party, and has Zero resemblance to what used to be a party of the centre right. A party that was fiscally conservative, but had at least a bit of social conscience. ”
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What the “old reform party” missed was the current impossibility of being both ‘fiscally conservative’ and adequately funding a ‘social conscience’. So their answer was to ignore the latter. Make everyone work for their daily bread, and if it’s not filling enough, they should be working harder. And longer. Producing more, and consuming less, and saving the difference. Eat stale bread, in other words. For that’s the physical equivalent of what they’d have us do. We can easily see some of the other variants of such a philosophy. Export the best, and stick us with the rest. Just look at the quality of the average 2×4 in your local building supply. Hardly J-grade, is it?

Regardless of such inane efforts at wisdom, the math simply won’t work. Nor will it work if they, or any of the other Parties try to put their ‘social conscience’ ahead of ‘fiscal conservatism’. “The budget will balance itself.” It won’t, it doesn’t now balance for the country as a whole, (or we wouldn’t continue to rack up UNREPAYABLE debt in EVERY jurisdiction at a rate far faster than actual economic growth is costing us.)

It isn’t that we COULDN’T physically have both, but for that to happen the figures of finance would have to completely reflect physical reality. Which they currently don’t. And so we continue to have, for an ever increasing number of people, a worsening financial poverty in the face of an ever growing physical plenty. One were continually more able to add to, but even more ever unable to afford. Took a walk through the local Chev dealer’s car lot yesterday. Hardly a new pickup truck or decent car on it under $ 40,000.

The left of centre Parties will tell us this is because wealth, which they equate exactly to money itself, is not equally distributed. That the “poor are poor because the rich are rich.” And soaking the rich with more and more taxes is the answer. To take their money off them, to give it to the poor. Who never still seem to get very much of it. Even Robin Hood had overheads and administration costs. They tell us that there must be a leveling DOWN financially. Because if money and wealth are one and the same that’s all there can be. And when they try to put what they preach into practice, that’s exactly what happens. EVERYONE IS leveled DOWN. Aside from trying to give credence to the old saying that ‘misery likes company’, so we’ll make everyone equally miserable, nothing meaningful is accomplished. The ‘poor are still poor’, and soon they tire of the equality of misery and toss the lefties out.

One would think, after witnessing seemingly endless repetitions of this same scenario decade after decade, we would begin to ask, “Why?” But we don’t ~ maybe because NONE of the current parties, whoever their antecedents may be, want to face that issue. Perhaps a better question would be then, “Why not?” Is there some ‘conspiracy’ somewhere that maybe they’re ALL a part of? Or is there just a natural collective ignorance when it comes to relating ‘wealth’ and what’s supposed to be an exact numerical REFLECTION of it, ‘money’ itself? And whether it is or is not?

Ataloss, the CPR was originally supposed to come down the Homathko River Valley and carry on across a series of inter-island bridges to Vancouver Island and its final terminus at Victoria. The company, in spite of all the massive land grants given to offset construction costs (which was also the practice in railway construction in the USA in that era), bled red ink profusely. They had very little cash flow, and huge construction costs, with little or no freight traffic to offset them in western Canada.

Sir William Van Horne, who was in charge of the CPR’s construction, determined it was more cost effective to build it to Vancouver harbour FIRST. THEN they would build the fixed link to Vancouver Island, and the connection to the Dunsmuir syndicate’s E & N Rwy., which was in place to Nanaimo. The link to Vancouver was completed in 1885. A subsidiary company, CP Navigation, hauled railcars from Vancouver harbour to Nanaimo harbour, and offered passenger ferry service to Nanaimo, Victoria, and other ports on the Island.

In the early 1900’s, the CPR bought the E & N Rwy., and most of its land grant, (less what Dunsmuir had already sold, and some properties retained as part of his coal mining businesses). Those coal properties were later sold to Canadian Collieries (Dunsmuir) Ltd., which was part of the Mackenzie and Mann stable of companies whose shares were being promoted in England at that time. Included in those companies was the Canadian Northern Pacific Railway, which was also building rail lines on Vancouver Island to compete with the E & N, and planned its own fixed link to the mainland. All that ended after the outbreak of World War One. After the war the idea was abandoned, there was simply no way it could have ever been made to pay. The country was over-built with railways, and not enough traffic, or external markets, or internal ones, to pay for them all. That is FACT. You can go research it all for yourself if you think I’m making any of it up.

I’m of the age where the only Canadian flag I’ve ever seen flown is our current one. It sure as hell works for me!

Best flag out there.

“Best flag out there!”

Yes!

Those who do not like it can start a country wide petition to replace it with something else! Good Luck with that!

NMG….please, send maple syrup and beavertails. :-)

The flag is an inanimate object. Flags historically reflect some reference to the Countries history.

We have no history for the Maple Leaf flag other than the last 50 years.

The flag choice that came in second was the Maple Leaf with the Ensign in one corner, and the Fleur De Les in the other corner. This would have been a more accurate reflection of Canadian history, however it was not chosen.

The flag we have to-day is the Canadian flag and that’s what we have. The issue is the small number of people who showed up at the ceremony to celebrate the flags birthday.

I want the Red Ensign. This has been a great history lesson. What really baffles me is Pals love of Harper when he hated his stand in at City Hall Ms. Green.
Cheers

Hands down, the best comment posted in this discussion thread is NyteHawwk’s. When you read it, the revelation that it is the “naked truth” laid bare hits you like a clue-by-four. NyteHawwk’s comment:

“Once again Palapu has a knack of insulting anybody and everybody who has an opinion that doesn’t align with his.

For the record, I am far from being a lefty, in fact I used to be a member of the Progressive Conservative Party, and actually worked on more than one election campaign for the old PC party.

What we have now is a party that has been hijacked by the old reform party, and has Zero resemblance to what used to be a party of the centre right. A party that was fiscally conservative, but had at least a bit of social conscience.
Today’s Conservative party is so far right wing that Attila The Hun would be considered a Lefty by comparison.

Mean spirited partisanship has never accomplished anything, and I’m betting it costs Harper his majority at minimum, and perhaps even his government.”

I was pretty young when the Maple Leaf flag became official, but I do remember that it meant more to me than the old Red Ensign did.
Perhaps that’s because I do not have British ancestry! Even in 1965 Canada was a country of very diverse ethnicity, and the British had already become a minority.
As for the party and lack of attendance…who knew it was on?

“As for the party and lack of attendance…who knew it was on?”
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Obviously, the FEW that really cared. I much preferred the Red Ensign myself, and so did most of the people where I was living in 1965, judging from the tone of their letters-to-the-editor of the local paper at that time.

Many of those letters were from people who hadn’t a drop of British blood flowing through their veins. But they did have a healthy respect for British common law, and for living in a country whose government (then, still), was based on it. One where you were ‘innocent until proven guilty’, not as was the opposite under the laws of many of the European countries they, or their parents or grandparents had emigrated from.

I remember well the particularly eloquent letter written in favour of the Red Ensign by the daughter of some Italian immigrants who lived up the street from us. Her dad had come to Canada with his parents in his elementary school years, and her grandmother never did learn to speak very much English. But nobody cared about that, they all fitted in and were treated with the same respect accorded anyone else.

Many years later, after we’d had the Maple Leaf flag for quite some time, I was in a conversation with some then recent Chinese immigrants, and the subject drifted around as to why they’d chosen to come to Canada instead of going to the USA. They had relatives in each country who were willing to sponsor them, but they came here.

The Canadian asking the question queried whether it was because we had medicare, or better social programs, than the States did? And then whether because our flag was more respected abroad than the Stars and Stripes was? The mother of the family, who was still in the process of learning English and could’ve let any of her children who already knew the language reply, burst out, “No, no. It ecause Canada have Queen. Republic no good. Long time ago, China have Emperor, Viet Nam, too, (they were Chinese ethnically, but from Viet Nam). Get rid of Emperor, everyone always fighting for top job. No good. Prime minister okay, can always be fire, not up on top. Get up on top, like US President, no good. Fight alla time. Have Queen up top, much better.”

So lets hope if we ever get around to deciding that our monarchy is not Canadian, too, we won’t believe those who think other ethnicities see something wrong with that being “too British”. And we’ll be given a free choice in a referendum, rather than having some other insipid Prime Minister trying to decide what’s best for us symbolically.