Rallying Round a Flag

Prime Minister Lester B. ("Mike") Pearson stood before the Royal Canadian Legion in Winnipeg, discussing a subject near to his heart. During his election campaign in the spring of 1963, he had promised to give Canada a national flag of its own to take the place of Britain's Union Jack and Canada's semi official Red Ensign, incorporating the Union Jack and the Canadian coat of arms. Now, said Pearson, he was ready with a design. As later approved by his Cabinet, the flag features three red maple leaves on a white field with a vertical blue bar on each end, symbolizing Canada's motto. "From Sea to Sea."

The reaction could hardly have been pricklier had Mike Pearson suggested a red porcupine on a bed of pine needles. The war veterans almost booed him from the hall, and throughout the land other flag-waving Canadians raised a howl. Editorial cartoonists had a field day; a flag-toting Pearson dodging the shot and shell of protest; Pearson with a flag in one hand, a gun in the other, threatening John Q. Canada. Vowed Newfoundland's Premier: "We will continue to fly the Union Jack if we are the last place in Canada to do it." In angry letters to a Winnipeg newspaper, Pearson was voted down ten to one.

"Bad art, a bad flag," grumped an advertising executive in Vancouver. "It's the kind of flag someone might fly over a yacht, but not over a country," added an Edmonton publisher.

Dangerous Division. The hullabaloo reflected far more than a revolt over esthetics or the Prime Minister's no tions of heraldry. As Pearson himself was only too well aware, it reflected a deep and dangerous division between Canada's English-speaking majority and its French-speaking minority centered in the province of Quebec. To English Canadians, the Union Jack is a cherished symbol of Canada's strong allegiance to the mother country. But to French Canadians--with their own lan guage, Roman Catholic religion and cultural identity--the Union Jack is an ugly reminder of Quebec's forcible conquest by England in 1759, and what they regard as their own second-class status ever since.

French Canadians complain that "Englishmen" control Quebec's industries and natural resources, that although the country is officially bilingual the federal government operates in Eng lish only, that French Canadians are discriminated against in the civil service, and in a thousand other ways. The disaffection has been growing, until today a considerable number of French Canadians want out of Canada alto gether. Separatist groups are clamoring for secession, to the point where a legislative committee is now studying what this would mean to Quebec. Then there are the extremists, who call themselves the Quebec Liberation Army, and have been planting bombs in mailboxes, dynamiting army installations and looting armories. In the matter of flags, Quebec flies its own French fleur-de-lis over provincial government buildings in preference to the Red Ensign or the Union Jack.

Saving Not Building. Since his election, Pearson has been trying hard to repair the disunity. He has given French Canadians a stronger voice in Ottawa, has appointed a Royal Commission on Biculturalism, even modified a new federal, social-security-type pension plan to guarantee Quebec's participation. He conceives of a flag that all Canadians can salute as one more plank in the program, and for good measure, he hopes to substitute O Canada for God Save the Queen as the national anthem.

To prove he means business, Pearson intends to regard the flag vote as a vote of confidence. He will probably win it: Canada's three splinter parties have pledged to support his minority Liberal government on the vote. But a flag and an anthem are only first steps in joining together divided Canada. "Our problem today," said Mike Pearson to the House of Commons recently, "is not one of nation-building. It is a problem of nation-saving--saving this nation from forces that weaken and could ultimately destroy it."

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