I read with great interest and some nostalgia Frank Salter’s letter (Welcome to Canada, Jan. 21, Western News) about raising Canada’s new flag in 1965.
It was, as he said, a hotly debated matter throughout our nation.
Today, no matter which side of the debate you were on then, I have no doubt about the pride we feel in the flag that replaced the respected Red Ensign many grew up with.
The official launching of a national flag is always an interesting occasion. I wonder how many know that the gold rush town of Barkerville was the site for the very first Dominion Day celebration (now known as Canada Day), an event that proposed both a flag for Canada and a national anthem? It happened July 1, 1868, just one year after Confederation.
This action expressed a remarkable belief in the one-year-old country by people resident in a Crown colony of Great Britain, one not even part of the new nation for four more years.
A committee of Barkerville residents designed and fabricated the flag. It included a stylized form of the maple leaf, a beaver and the British ensign. The night before the town’s big “First Birthday” party, miners secretly erected the tallest flag pole they could find so that their flag would fly well above that of the Stars and Stripes erected earlier by their American colleagues.
Barkerville’s Canadian flag was intended to remind the town’s residents of all nationalities that they were living in a new and different country.
There is a replica of the flag raised on Canada’s very first Dominion Day celebration in the collection at Barkerville Historic Town. It is sure to have pride of place in 2017 during Canada’s sesquicentennial year.
Sue Morhun
Oliver
