New Brunswick’s flag was the result of political wrangling and compromise and was designed by a 28-year-old administrative assistant civil servant who happened to have a passion for heraldry. Yet it became an icon of unity at a time when the nation was very much divided over the issue of flags.
In the early 1960s, discussions about flags were inescapable across Canada – Prime Minister Lester Pearson’s government had been trying to design a new flag. Canada technically didn’t have a flag before this, though the flag called The Red Ensign was used and recognized as the de facto flag of the country, it was never actually official. The Union Jack – Britain’s flag—was officially the flag of Canada, and it flew over Parliament.
Before becoming Prime Minister, Pearson had won a Nobel Peace Prize for the Canadian intervention in Egypt during the Suez Crisis, which marked the beginning of modern peacekeeping. During the crisis, however, Pearson discovered that there was a deeply negative reaction to the Canadian flag. This was because the top left quarter of it featured the Union Jack, and Britain was a belligerent party in the Crisis.
Pearson was not alone in wanting a new and independent flag for Canada. A 1958 Gallup poll shows that 80% of respondents wanted a new and independent flag for Canada, while 60% wanted that flag to specifically include a maple leaf.
Despite the public’s desires, actually agreeing on a new flag design proved deeply divisive and extraordinarily controversial. Pearson’s Liberals tried to debate a new flag in Parliament, but the opposition Conservatives –who wanted to keep The Red Ensign— mounted a filibuster which went on all Summer.
Exhausted by the debate, the decision on selecting one flag design was moved away from Parliament as a whole and given to a committee of 15 Members of Parliament representing all of the political parties. New Brunswick was well represented in that committee, with Conservative Hugh John Flemming and Liberal Jean-Eudes Dube being the only Maritimers among its members.
Despite the flag controversy having raged for five years, the committee was given only 6 weeks to make a selection.
Canadians were asked to submit designs. 3,541 entries were submitted by everyone from schoolchildren to famous artists such as A. Y. Jackson from the Group of Seven.
The committee narrowed the choices down until there were only two flags left.
One was Pearson’s preferred flag, which had two blue bars on either side of it with three red maple leafs in the middle. The other one was designed by historian George Stanley –who would later become New Brunswick’s Lieutenant Governor— which featured two red bars on either side and a single stylized red maple leaf in the middle.
The flag selected by the 15 politicians who sat on the committee had to be unanimous in order to proceed—no small task, especially when the Conservatives didn’t even want a new flag.
The Conservatives, assuming that the Liberals would choose their Pearson’s preferred flag, all voted for George Stanley’s flag. Seeing that the NDP was also voting for George Stanley’s flag, the Liberals outmaneuvered the Conservatives by voting against their own Leader’s choice in order to achieve consensus and the needed unanimous decision.
Canada’s new flag had been chosen.
Not everyone was happy about the new flag.
Nostalgia for Britain ran strong in parts of Canada – especially among veterans of the two world wars, who had fought for, and had seen comrades die fighting under The Red Ensign.
In reaction to the new flag some provincial governments – like Ontario and Manitoba – quickly began to make provincial flags which closely resembled the Red Ensign.
In New Brunswick the Progressive Conservatives -who were in opposition- planned to introduce a new provincial flag based on the Red Ensign.
This was a serious issue for then-Premier Louis Robichaud, of New Brunswick’s Liberal Party.
Robichaud was the province’s first ever Acadian Premier. The Acadian population, who had suffered badly at the hands of the British over the years –ranging from The Deportation to unequal treatment in economic development and job opportunities– would not tolerate having the British flag on their provincial flag. However voting against a design closely resembling the beloved old Red Ensign would be deeply unpopular amongst Anglophones. Robichaud was in a precarious position.
So Louis Robichaud decided to announce a new flag for New Brunswick, one which was entirely different from anything seen before, but which remained traditional enough to meet the approval of conservatives. And it had to be done quickly, and designed in secret, to avoid the explosive controversy which had divided Canada for years.
The problem was that Robichaud did not actually have a flag to announce.
Improbably enough, that difficult task fell to a 28 year old administrative assistant named Robert Pichette who worked for the provincial government who had a passion for vexillology – the study of flags.
For three weeks Pichette worked in secret. He decided to base his design on New Brunswick’s official Coat of Arms which had been proclaimed by a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria nearly a century earlier, in 1868. Pichette’s design was somewhat different from that 1868 Coat of Arms, which quite frankly was a rather poor Victorian drawing painted in the margin of that Royal Warrant which had served for nearly a hundred years as the model for all subsequent drawings.
The golden lion on red in the Coat of Arms may refer to the Duchy of Brunswick in Germany, which New Brunswick is named after, whose symbol was two golden lions on red. (In 1784 when New Brunswick was named the German Duchy of Brunswick was in the possession of British King George III.) On the bottom part of the New Brunswick shield is the heraldic symbol known as a “lymphad”, which may refer to the ship-building which had been so important in building the province, or to the ships in which many Loyalists arrived from the United States in after that country’s Revolution.
It was unusual to base a flag on a Coat of Arms, though it did still meet the criteria of the arcane rules of heraldry which governed flags in the vexillology world Robert Pichette was so enamored with. The choice to base the design on the old Coat of Arms also made it more palatable and less controversial in a province still very divided by the Canadian flag controversy.
Pichette sent his rough draft to Alan Beddoe who was considered Canada’s leading mind on heraldry and vexillology, who had designed Prime Minister Pearson’s favoured flag design that was ultimately not chosen.
Beddoe sent Pichette a finished design. Premier Robichaud suggested the addition of the oars to the ship, which were added.
A prototype of the new New Brunswick flag was stitched in Fredericton, and unveiled on February 24th, 1965, exactly two weeks after the Canadian flag had been officially proclaimed.
Given the context of half a decade of fierce controversy over the new Canadian flag, and ongoing conflicts then raging in other provinces over their flags, the reaction to the design was surprising: the new New Brunswick flag met with instant widespread approval.
The design was considered to be striking and innovative, and was met with the general approval of Anglophones and Acadians, of Liberals and Conservatives.
The new flag was quickly approved of and officially proclaimed, and only one month later, on March 25th 1965 New Brunswick’s flag was first officially hoisted.
