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HISTORICAL FLAGS

The following flags are only a selection of historical flags:

St. George’s Cross

The St. George’s Cross, which is prominent in many provincial and territorial coats of arms, traces its history back to the legend of St. George, who became the patron saint of England in the late Middle Ages. The red cross associated with St. George came into wide use as a national emblem of England in 1274, during the reign of Edward I. The earliest recorded use of the St. George’s Cross in Canada is found in a watercolour painting by John White that depicts English explorers skirmishing with Inuit, almost certainly on Baffin Island during Martin Frobisher’s expedition of 1577. The St. George’s Cross was later incorporated into the coats of arms of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Canada Company, a land settlement and colonization company operating in Upper Canada in the first half of the 19th century.

Fleur-de-lis

The fleur-de-lis was a symbol of French sovereignty in Canada from 1534, when Jacques Cartier landed at Gaspé and claimed the newly explored territory in the name of Francis I of France, until the early 1760s, when Canada was ceded to Great Britain. The Royal Arms of France, with its three gold fleurs-de-lis on a blue field, was the royal emblem displayed whenever French explorers claimed new land in North America.

The “bannière de France” or Banner of France, which also displayed three gold fleurs-de-lis on a blue field, was raised by fur trader Pierre Du Gua de Monts at the settlement on Île Sainte-Croix in 1604, and a swallowtailed flag with fleurs-de-lis flew from Champlain’s Habitation in Québec in 1608. With the death of King Henry IV in 1610, the “bannière” ceased to be used as a national flag.

During the first half of the 17th century, the inhabitants of New France viewed the white flag of the French royal navy as the flag of the French nation. This same flag was widely used after New France became a royal province by an edict of Louis XIV in 1663.

The fleur-de-lis reappeared as a symbol of French heritage in the arms granted to Quebec by Queen Victoria in 1868. In 1948, the Quebec government adopted the “fleurdelisé” as its provincial flag. The fleur-de-lis also appears with the coats of arms of Canada and New Brunswick.

Version of 1606–1800

Royal Union Flag

Following the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the official British flag was the two-crossed jack or the Royal Union Flag. First proclaimed as a royal flag in 1606 after James VI of Scotland became James I of England, it combined England’s flag of a red St. George’s Cross on a white background with Scotland’s flag, a white St. Andrew’s Cross on a dark blue background. After the legislative union of England and Scotland in 1708, the Union Flag was adopted as the Royal Flag for the two united kingdoms.

In the years between the Treaty of Paris and the American Revolution, the Royal Union Flag was supposed to be used at all British establishments on the North American continent, from Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico. In practice, however, it was frequently replaced by the Red Ensign, the flag of the British merchant marine, which featured the Royal Union Flag on a red background.

After the American Revolution, those colonists who remained loyal to the Crown and fought under the Royal Union Flag settled in many parts of what are now Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The Royal Union Flag is often referred to as the flag of Canada’s United Empire Loyalists.

Following the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland in 1801, the diagonal Cross of St. Patrick, red on white, was incorporated into the Royal Union Flag, giving it its present-day configuration.

Version of 1957–1965

Canadian Red Ensign

The Red Ensign, a red flag with the Royal Union Flag in the upper corner, was created in 1707 as the flag of the British Merchant Marine. From approximately 1870 to 1904, it was used on land and sea as Canada's flag, with the addition of a shield in the fly bearing the quartered arms of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Although its use on land had never been officially sanctioned, in 1892 the British admiralty approved the use of this Red Ensign for Canadian use at sea. This gave rise to the name the Canadian Red Ensign.

As new provinces entered Confederation, or when they received some mark of identification (sometimes taken from their seal), that mark was incorporated into the shield on the Canadian Red Ensign. Eventually, the shield was made up of the arms of the nine provinces then in Confederation, often accompanied by branches of oak and maple, a beaver, and the Royal Crown.

In 1922, this unofficial version of the Canadian Red Ensign was changed by an Order in Council and the composite shield was replaced with the shield from the recently proclaimed Royal Arms of Canada, more commonly known as the Canadian Coat of Arms. Two years later, this new version was approved for use on Canadian government buildings abroad. A similar order in 1945 authorized its use on federal buildings within Canada. The Canadian Red Ensign was replaced by the red and white maple leaf flag on February 15, 1965.