Canada: Wanted: a Flag

Three weeks after the House of Commons had debated newly defined Canadian citizenship, members had a go at another nationalistic proposal: that a committee should be appointed to choose a distinctive national flag for Canada. For six hours the chamber rocked with the roll and peal of patriotic oratory.

Tall, chesty Ian Mackenzie, Minister of Veterans Affairs, roared in his broadest Scottish burr: "We in Canada have shared the Union Jack—we will always honor it. . . . But we have nothing peculiarly and indisputably our own ... as the symbol of this great nation of ours." Conservative George R. Pearkes plumped...

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